Dan,
I don’t know the origins of “onces,” but it’s feels like a way of life in Bogotá. “Onces” literally translates to “elevens.” I asked someone from Bogotá once why it’s called “onces,” and he told me because it aguardiente has 11 letters in it. IYKYK.
A watched a person run her day back once, and she listed “onces” twice — once at 11am and once again at 4pm. On its surface, “onces” is just a time of day to grab a snack, but it shouldn’t be a solo act. It’s one of the most consistent social moments of any given day for most Bogotános. A parenthesis that the city opens twice a day, and everyone steps inside.
Morning “onces” — or first “onces” — falls sometime between 10am and noon, typically 11. This is the part of my day I walk to a cafe for my own sustenance. I walk by, through, and around “onces” on nearly every other street corner (more than 11, for sure). Huddled compatriots surrounding street vendors. Thermos-dispensed coffee, empanada or palito de queso in hand. Something warm, something savory.
Each group I pass is distinctive despite sharing the same moment. Construction worker “onces.” Food delivery app rider “onces.” Younger professionals emerging from their office “onces.” I catch fragments of connective tissue conversations as I pass. Reliving a gol from the recent match. Making jokes at someone’s expense. Commiseration of a personal challenge. It’s whatever it needs to be for that group, in that moment. The custom provides the space, the people fill it with what’s alive between them that morning.
I never catch more than a snippet though, because I don’t pause and participate. My pace persists with purpose to my place of pouring coffee for one.
When I pop into a cafe to grab and go, older folks are inside, settled into their own “onces.” Same warmth as the street corner version but slower, steadier. They aren’t going anywhere, but I am. I watch them for a beat longer than I need to while I wait for my coffee. I take it to go.
Second “onces” looks different than first “onces” at 11. In the afternoon, without needing to know the time, you know it’s “onces” by the sidewalk-hogging formations. Walls of shoulder-to-shoulder lined friendlies walking the street with an ice cream cone or maybe an occasional cigarette, canvassing a block or two. Laughing together, taking a drag of ice cream, some walking arm in arm. For whole parts of a day the sidewalk stops being a route to somewhere and becomes the somewhere. The whole city pauses, and the pause has a shape. Not planned by anyone, not on any calendar, but more reliable than anything designed.
When I first encountered afternoon “onces,” I was... annoyed, let’s just say. My pace is a brisk big-city pedestrian pace. A purpose-based pace. And sidewalk-lined walking walls of leisurely strollers blocking that pace, they... perturbed me. Their moment interrupted my momentum.
But when I think about it now, I scratch my head. I got bent out of shape by their social connection? It offended my determined stride? It’s more like I didn’t want to stop. Like I wouldn’t give myself permission to pause. Years of conditioning trained my body that moving with purpose is purpose. That the space between destinations is dead time to be compressed, not inhabited. And here was an entire culture that had decided, collectively, that the space between things is also where life happens.
I still walk fast most days, but I’m learning to slow it down. I still regularly enjoy a coffee for one these days, but that’s happening less and less now. I appreciate this parenthesis more. The way the city opens it, the way the people step inside it instinctively, the way nobody has to justify it, the pause, to anyone. Bogotá built more room into its day than what productivity calls for. And every morning and every afternoon, that excess room fills with the sounds of people who didn’t forget what it’s for.
Dan Muirhead spent 15+ years paid to make people pay attention. Now he is more interested in what is worth paying attention to. Based in Bogotá, with roots in Dallas and frequent time in Miami, he writes Bogotá Letters and profiles makers to document how cities are used versus designed, and how objects are made to be lived with. More at danmuirhead.co.