Colombia's tienda trap

@wwaycorrigan

[For an audio/vlog version of this story, click here.]

Whenever I'm back in Ireland, I make it my business to get some Marks and Spencer chocolate-chip cookies. They are, as far as I'm concerned, the best of their kind around. But while I find them truly delicious, I also know that I shouldn't over indulge in them. Too much of a good thing and all that.

A beer a day keeps the blues away, doesn't it?

So it's just as well that the nearest Marks and Spencer department store is a good distance away from my Irish base. Were there one nearby, I'd be tempted to make these scrumptious sweet treats a daily delight on visits to the land of my birth. Although the price of them these days does help to make one think twice before temptation tends to take over.

Indeed, the price of most things in Ireland gives me pause for thought. My Colombian pesos lose much weight in euro-land, notwithstanding the currency's strong performance during the last few months.

Not-so-dear beer

Back in Colombia, while the price of many staples continues to rise, this hasn't really been the case with beer, especially when one takes the steady increase in minimum wage into account. Compared with other products and socialising pursuits, beer is fairly competitively priced.

'Santandercito's at-times hedonistic haunts do put one's temperance to the test.'

In working-class barrios, such as my current abode of Santandercito in Bogotá's far north, one can get a 750 ml bottle of ordinary-but-fine Costeña — my tipple of choice these days — for 3,800 pesos, the equivalent of about one euro. In comparison, the price of a cinema ticket is around 20,000 pesos — over five times more expensive; a standard lunch in Bogotá, about three times more costly. In fact, Colombia is placed towards the top of the list for countries in the world with the most affordable beer.

So, when at a loose end of an evening and not wanting to be in one's quite cramped, shared place of residence — pretty much an everyday feeling — a couple of beers at the local tienda bar is an appealing option.

Yet, like the Marks and Spencer cookies, I know that it's not the healthiest consumption choice one can make. I do, though, only sporadically indulge in the cookies — that I'm only in Ireland every now and again is a significant help, of course.

In contrast, consuming Colombia's competitively priced beer is a far more regular occurrence. And while I'm usually disciplined in the art of moderate drinking, at times I go over my self-imposed limits. Santandercito's at-times hedonistic haunts do put one's temperance to the test.

I used to think that if I had my own well-equipped place, this tienda temptation would decrease significantly. But experience over the last couple of years has told me differently. I generally prefer to be in a public setting for most of the day — or at least out and about — and while panaderías serve their purpose during the daylight hours, by nightfall tiendas are more appealing.

Downwardly dining

That I can take to the tienda with such regularity is mostly due to the fact that I am single, childless and not an employee. Were any of these to change, then so would, most likely, my late-evening routine.

Right now, I don't see those conditions changing, not organically anyway. Thus, it leads me to sometimes think that I'll have to force the change.

In my recent mini-series on Dr Samuel Johnson, I noted how he advised that one should endeavour to 'smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.' Now, I'm not saying that there are no wise or relatively rich folk in Santandercito's tiendas. For one, intelligence comes in various forms. And there are a fair few in the barrio who seem financially comfortable.

It may be just the case that my current preferences are doing little to advance my cause. One slight problem is that I'm not sure what cause I should be advancing towards right now. It's like I'm caught in a trap. Colombia's tienda trap.
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Listen to The Corrigan Cast podcast here.

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Let's get physical

@wwaycorrigan

[For an audio/vlog version of this story, click here.]

'Let's get physical, physical; I wanna get physical, let's get into physical.'

Wrong Way Corrigan gets put through his paces at Walter's tienda.

Those lyrics, as some of you may recognise, are from the song Physical, originally recorded by the late Olivia Newton-John in 1981.

Considering how the rest of the song goes — 'let me hear your body talk' comes after the lyrics we've just quoted — the physical Newton-John sang about is not quite the one I have in mind here. While the setting for the music video is a gym, a little bit more than a solid, individual workout is suggested.

A problem to work out

Now, I'm not against intimate physicality per se, but the workout I want to talk up is one that doesn't require a partner. It can either be physical labour or planned exercise, the latter important for those whose regular lives are devoid of much movement, which is the case for many in high-income nations. Whatever form it takes, the idea is that it gets one's heart racing, lungs pumping and sweat glands exuding.

As somebody who is not a fan of gyms and whose current work life tends not to be that physical, I try to do my best to work up a sweat in other ways: Kinaesthetic exercises at home; walk when and where I can and do so with purpose and power; in general, the aim is to be as energetic as possible in daily tasks that require movement.

Ideally, though, I prefer it when a chore I undertake naturally involves an amount of physical exertion in order to get it done. In this way, I don't have to find a time to fit in exercise into my daily routine: a case of exercise necessarily coming with what one has to do or wants to do.

Alas, these days, it's rare enough that any work I'm charged with is of a physical nature — getting aggressive with frustrating technology doesn't really count.

So getting the opportunity to do some hard-ish labour is something of an enjoyable novelty.

This was the case over the Christmas period just gone.

Walter's Mitty

Walter, the owner of one of my preferred tienda bars in San Martín de los Llanos, asked me to lend him a helping hand on what is one of his busiest nights of the year: Christmas Eve running into Christmas morning.

'Receiving gruff orders reminds me of the times I worked on building sites where intellectually challenged labourers exercised the tiny bit of power they enjoyed by barking out instructions at their perceived inferiors.'

It'd be a stretch to say I was honoured to be asked — I'd visions of an old practice in Ireland where a drunkard helps out in his local in return for booze — but it was going to be a novelty for me and so worth a try. More importantly, it would give me something additional to do as I drank — I was allowed to gently imbibe during my shift — on a night that I'm largely indifferent towards in these parts.

My main task was to keep Walter's four deep-fridge-freezers stocked with both bottles and cans of beer as well as fulfilling the orders of customers, with the vast majority buying crates of booze to take home. So there was a lot of hauling of beer crates here and there, stocking and restocking, with little rest time. And while I could restock at a decent speed, the overworked fridges were struggling to cool down the beer, such was the turnover.

Even after we pulled down the see-through shutters at 4 am to organise things for the next opening, the odd reveller continued to rock up looking to keep the liquor flowing and the party going.

Seeing as how Walter asked me back to help him again on New Year's Eve, I took it as a sign that I performed well. Or at least I wasn't a complete failure.

One of the biggest drawbacks was that at times I failed to understand Walter when he gave me an order. In my defence, I've noticed that even native Spanish speakers sometimes struggle to understand Walter because his speech isn't the clearest due to missing front teeth.

I'm also not great at taking orders, especially ones delivered gruffly, of which Walter was occasionally guilty. Receiving orders in such a style reminds me of the times I worked on building sites where intellectually challenged labourers exercised the tiny bit of power they enjoyed by barking out instructions at their perceived inferiors.

The intensity and duration were ratcheted up a few notches on that New Year's Eve/morning — the busiest period of the whole year for Walter. This shift was of 12 hours, 5 pm to 5 am, as opposed to an eight-hour one the previous time.

Not only that, but Walter asked me to return to help him from 10 am to 5 pm on New Year's Day, so in a sense it could be said I did a 24-hour shift, split by an extended morning break.

Rugby roll

With just a trickle of customers on New Year's Day compared to what went before, my main task was to bring crates full of beer to the tienda from a small storehouse at the back of the premises, some 30 metres away. I also had to take the crates stocked with empties from the tienda to the storehouse.

As most of this 30-metre distance has a smooth, tiled surface — in between the tienda and the storehouse is a motel managed by Walter's sister — the easiest and most enjoyable way to carry out this task was by pushing the crates, stacked five-high, along the floor. It felt like I was in a rugby maul, with shouts of heave from the imaginary spectators driving me on. Something to that effect. It did get the heart racing, lungs pumping and sweat glands exuding in any case.

It was my favourite chore of the whole experience for the following reasons: It had a decent physical element to it, working different muscles; I was left to my own devices doing it, with the added bonus of not having to deal with tipsy and occasionally annoying clientèle; and I'm fairly sure Walter was quite pleased that I did it rather than him. Small, rotund Walter wouldn't strike one as the most athletic man about town. Although with practice, he could hold his own in the front row of a rugby scrum.

I must add that Walter did pay me for my labour. For the first shift on 24 December, I thought my payment was going to be in kind, basically free beer and food, the latter being a not-too-shabby Christmas dinner. But I got a decent enough cash payment, too. Had I not been paid for that initial stint, I would have been less inclined to return. Although seeing as how I dislike New Year's Eve, I probably would have gone back to help out regardless; a different way to pass the night.

I'm not, however, looking to go full-time as a tienda bar assistant. I have other ways to get physical activity into my daily routine. And I do like to be my own boss, when and where I can.
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Listen to The Corrigan Cast podcast here.

Facebook: Wrong Way Corrigan — The Blog & IQuiz "The Bogotá Pub Quiz".

Not-so-price-smart Bogotá

For the last 20 months Bogotá's only regular quiz (trivia) night, IQuiz, has been on the go. It's still quite a niche event, a nature of the beast that it is, perhaps. 

Nonetheless, as a labour of love, it's been relatively successful and, going by the reaction of those who participate, an enjoyable, fun and lively event, which is what we want it to be.

Nice place, but overpriced for what you get ...

From an organisational and venue-sourcing point of view, it's been quite an experience. 

You see, for us, IQuiz is not meant to be exclusive, set aside for just a certain sector of Bogotá's inhabitants. Yet, in such a disparate, economically unequal city, balancing the needs of IQuiz with the desire to make it accessible to as many as possible has been tricky.

Generally speaking, the spacious, bar-style venues IQuiz requires are only to be found in the more affluent parts of the city, and that means paying multiples of what you'd pay in a more bog-standard setting (Colombia's strata system, where certain parts of the city pay much more for services, plays a part in this). 

Or if they're not in exclusive areas, such places usually sell their refreshments far pricier than the establishments around them. A case of 'give it a Western tinge, increase the price'.

More than just giving a place a Western flair (in music and style), the more Westerners or foreigners with money who frequent it, the greater justification for price hiking. Fair enough, if the clientele is happy to pay, repeatedly, your prices and with business going well, why would you consider lowering them?

Indeed, in many of the pubs we're referring to, the customers are people earning salaries that would be considered decent in more developed countries, with some being paid in dollars or euros. 

Also, there's the strategy, so it goes, that maintaining higher-than-average prices helps to keep undesirables away. Yet, for the likes of Bogotá's Zona T and Parque 93, it's unlikely that the ñero types will flock there to socialise, whatever the price. They might come, as some already do, for less innocent reasons. (In any case, gomelos — Bogotá's posh — can be just as unbearable as their ñero opposites.)

Obviously, it's a numbers game on two fronts: if people are still coming and you're in the black financially wise, then great.

However, from what we've witnessed, it appears that some of these 'finer' watering holes aren't exactly fulfilling their potential. It's actually difficult to see how they are making money at all. It's either a case of the owners having deep pockets or the business is being used for more sinister reasons.

Not only are the places that fall into this underperforming category overpriced and generally underwhelming, they have a service charge to boot. 

Now, tipping for a job well done is one thing, but almost forcing people to pay extra for being served when, more often than not, the ones doing the serving behave as if they'd prefer to be doing anything but, that's just a deal-breaker. We'll take the personal touch of the local tienda over such coldness any day.

It would be interesting to see some of these stale Western-style pubs adopt a sort of Ryanair approach: cut back the prices substantially to get customer numbers up. 

The arrival over the last couple of years of the Bogotá Beer Company (BBC) bodega franchise in the city was a half-turn in that direction. However, considering these bodegas only sell the 'fancy' BBC beers, they're still somewhat exclusive.

A lack of start-up capital is why the Wrong Way Pub hasn't opened its doors yet. Of course, were that to happen, we might just find that running a bar à la Ryanair wouldn't be viable. 

Be that as it may, for the moment, we'll try to keep bringing IQuiz and its associated discounts to a venue near you!
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'You've been had, Bogotá style.'

There’s an old story about a man in a restaurant who begins friendly banter with an adjacent table. 

He gets on so well with his new acquaintances that he offers to pay their bill. So up he gets, goes to the till operator and points down to where his friends are sitting. They wave back, acknowledging that it’s them who are to be the recipients of the man’s generous offer.

False friend: This tienda owner (the man in the yellow T-shirt) appeared all friendly. He was, however, anything but.

Yet, the snag is, the man has actually told the restaurant employee that it’s the guys at the table who are going to pay his bill. And off he goes, before anyone realises what’s happened, never to be seen again.

It’s an interesting yarn, but one that you’d have to think falls into the urban myth category; you couldn’t get away with it in this day and age, surely? Alas, not so. There are a few crafty operators in Bogotá who are not only willing to give it a go but, aided by incompetent, indifferent employees and owners, manage to get away with it.

In fact, the Bogotá version doesn’t require any acknowledgement from those being duped, as happens in the account above. No, the trickster just leaves, apparently giving a knowing nod to the owner and his bill is placed on the tab of those he had been casually talking to, uninvited at that.

Of course, the till operators know full well that it isn’t the intention of those remaining to fork out for the man who just left. Nothing, though, is said until it comes to payment time. Then, it’s expected that the extranjeros (foreigners) will nonchalantly pay for everything; sure it’s what we’re here for, to treat the locals.

Unfortunately, I was the victim of such an incident in downtown Bogotá. Now, my approach would be, and was, to refuse to pay, but the company I was with pulled rank and handed over the cash to avoid any hassle. It was probably the safer move for where we were (which was a tienda bar on Carrera 10 with 18; see photos).

'Relax, the foreigners will pay for everything.'

In one regard, hats off to the guy who had his tab transferred to ours. If there’s a chance he can get away with it, why not? My anger is directed more at the establishment’s owner. That he could just cheekily expect that we’d pay for things we didn’t ask for nor want is infuriating, to say the least. ‘A plague on his house’ is the best I can wish for him.

The lesson to be learnt from this: If there’s a tab system in operation in a place that you’re not too familiar with, it’s best not to go with the norm, but pay as you go instead. Messy episodes as the one mentioned can thus be avoided.

Plus, it underscores, again, the fact that you can never drop your guard in these parts. It also, sadly, betrays the mantra of many Colombians that they are amongst the friendliest in the world.

On a slightly more positive note, I can rest assured that this wouldn’t happen to me in my local watering holes in the barrios of La Perseverancia or Egipto; at least there they’d ask for a drink if they were stuck.

You see there’s still hope for Colombia, just about.