publicprufrok

https://comfy.com.co/#servicios

The Expats group recommends Comfy. They’re a home massage service, they don’t have a location that I can see.

BAW Thai has two locations and they seem highly recommended. They don’t offer any of the weird massage types, like tantric or nuru or whatever. That was a problem I was having… a place would have a very respectable looking website, and they would offer the usual massages, but they would ALSO offer the sexual massages… I just don’t want to take a chance on anyplace like that.

BAW has two locations, they’re called Nogal (means walnut) and Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara is the fancier place, but it’s further away.

Nogal “menu” with prices here

Santa Barbara “menu” with prices here

So, I have never lived anywhere with a lot of street-art. It’s possible that I’m asking really basic questions in this post. If that’s the case, please educate me. Below are grafitti characters that I see again and again all over the city. What are they? Are they political or cultural statements? Gang signifiers? Tags for individual artists or groups? Popular cartoon characters or memes? Are they shorthand for something, or just completely abstract? Would love to know. Everyone that I’ve asked so far (both ex-pats and a few Colombians) claims that they don’t pay any attention to the street-art, and haven’t noticed any repeating characters or motifs.

The Listener

In my neighborhood, the Listener is a bit of an uncommon sight, but I’ve noticed that he’s nearly ubiquitous in other neighborhoods much further north. Of all the recurring street art characters I’ve noticed, he’s the MOST stylistically diverse. Rarely will you see two that are identical. The key characteristic is the big ear on the left aside. He’s usually smiling or looking restful / contented. Often but not always he has that one sweat-drop-thing near his head. He usually has a part in his hair.

With this guy in particular, I would just really love to know what he stands for! What does it mean? My best guess is that it’s a political message of some kind? Or maybe not, maybe Colombians just think his big ear is hilarious or something.

Bemused Bunny

Very, very common.

The Gremlin

The Gremlin is an uncommon sight. An interesting thing to note about the Gremlin is that he is much less stylistically uniform than a lot of recurring characters. I could easily believe that he’s not the tag of a single artist, more like a meme that lots of people reproduce.

Update: I have some more info on “the gremlin” – as I have called him. For starters, he’s supposed to represent some sort of bat. More importantly, he’s often accompanied by the numbers 13 & 12. You can see that in a few of the examples below. 1312 is just a numeric replacement cypher – standing in for “ACAB” – which in turn is short for the English phrase “All cops are bastards.” I still have a lot of questions, (like, why use an English phrase?) but it’s nice to know a little bit more about this guy.

This Percy is having a chat with the Gremlin

Wolfie

Very common indeed. Just speculating, I think this guy is probably the work of a single artist.

Zergling

The Zergling is rare. I’ve only seen 3 or 4 of them, mostly from the window of a Taxi. This is the only one I’ve managed to snap a picture of.

Schnoz-Goblins

These are really common in my part of the city. I don’t see them as much when I’m out and about. I’d say about tied with Wolfie for how often I see them. There’s a lot of variety, as you can see. They’re all kinda androgynous-looking, with a huge curved nose, and they usually have prominent freckles around the eyes and forehead that kindof look like strawberry seeds to me. That, and the pink-purple skin made me think they were, like, strawberry-people or something at first.

You can just see a couple of goblins peeking out from under the flyers

Variant Schnoz-Goblins

These guys are the Schnoz-goblin’s really creepy cousins. They’re pretty rare though.

The Shrew

Anthro-Bull

Plastic Bag Ghost

The Very Elusive Cosmic Owl

They’re hard to find. Out of the whole city, I’ve only seen 3 of these so far.

Patchy Percy

The Headcrab

Relatively common, although he’s not concentrated in any one part of the city, he seems to be sprinkled pretty evenly throughout Bogota. I have NO IDEA what he’s supposed to represent.