SPURIA // FIELD NOTES

The Rider's View: Which Monument Is Just Out of Frame in Bogotá?

Bellingcat Globetrotters. A street photo with a motorbike on a crosswalk and no EXIF. Yellow plates said Colombia, a pink dog in a shop window led to one vet clinic on Carrera 7, and Street View turned around to the bust the photo leaves out.

/easygeoint/📍 4.6455, -74.0615/#geolocation#bellingcat#streetview#osint

Title: The Rider’s View (Bellingcat Challenge, Globetrotters series)

Description: This street scene was captured by Giancarlo, but perhaps he left out an historic detail.

Question: What nearby monument can the rider see from their vantage point? The monument is to a person, what is their name?

The answer, up front: the photo was taken at Carrera 7 and Calle 60 in Chapinero, Bogotá, Colombia. Right next to the frame, on the corner of the Parque de los Hippies, stands a bust of the poet Julio Flórez. The challenge site accepted the answer.

Julio Flórez

The question is a two-stage one: first find the corner, then look where the photo doesn’t. The monument isn’t in the picture. That’s the “historic detail” Giancarlo left out.

The challenge photo, portrait format: a wide street under a cloudy sky, a dark office block with horizontal louvres on the left, high-rises and a yellow traffic light arm in the middle, a plaza with a tall conifer and a white trailer on the right, and in the foreground two people on a black motorbike crossing a zebra crossing

The whole brief. No EXIF: the file carries no camera, date or GPS tags. No street sign is readable.

Step 1: What’s in the frame

The challenge photo with red boxes: the dark office block with louvres on the left, a shop sign at its base, the yellow licence plate of a car, the traffic light arm with the towers behind it, and a paved patch on the plaza

What carries the solve: the plate for the country, the shop sign for the street, the office block and the traffic light arm for the match.

  • Licence plates: yellow, long and narrow, black characters.
  • Street furniture: yellow and black traffic light poles, a separate bike lane with bollards, a green police motorbike on the plaza.
  • A skyline of high-rises at the end of a long, straight avenue.
  • A shop sign at the foot of the dark office block on the left.

Step 2: The country from the plates

Yellow plates with black letters on private cars are the classic tell for Colombia. The Plonk It guide for Colombia confirms the plate shape and colour. The green police motorbikes and the Andean high-rise skyline fit too.

How sure? Plates alone are a strong lean, not proof. They settle the country, not the city.

Step 3: Read the shop sign

An enlarged crop of the shop front at the foot of the office block: red boxes around a sign reading Movet with a red logo, and a large pink low-poly dog statue in the shop window

The sign reads Movet, and behind the glass stands a pink low-poly dog. The dog turns out to be the better clue.

The sign reads Movet. A search for:

movet store colombia

Google results for movet store colombia: movet.co, Movet, Larga vida para tu mascota, a network of veterinary clinics in Bogotá, Medellín, Manizales and Pereira

Movet is a chain of veterinary clinics in four Colombian cities.

…returns movet.co, a network of veterinary clinics in Bogotá, Medellín, Manizales and Pereira. Google’s autocomplete adds movet bogota as the top suggestion, and the skyline is big-city scale, so Bogotá is the first city to check.

Google autocomplete for movet store: the first suggestion, movet bogota, in a red box

Autocomplete ranks movet bogota first.

Step 4: Find the branch

The site’s clinic menu lists 13 branches in Bogotá:

The Movet site's clinic menu: Bogotá, 13 sedes, in a red box, above Medellín, Manizales, Pereira and Cali

Bogotá has 13 branches. Each has its own page with a storefront photo.

The Movet clinic finder: a map of Bogotá with 13 markers and a list of districts, with Chapinero in a red box

The clinic finder, sorted by district.

There’s no clever shortcut here: work through the list. Each branch page shows a photo of its storefront, so you compare each one against the challenge photo. Chapinero is first in the list, and its photo already shows the pink dog:

The Movet Chapinero page: Clínica Veterinaria Movet Chapinero, address Carrera 7 # 59-54 in a red box, and on the right a photo of the storefront with the Movet sign and the pink low-poly dog statue behind the glass

Clínica Veterinaria Movet Chapinero, Carrera 7 # 59-54. The same pink dog stands in the window.

The Movet clinic finder zoomed in on Chapinero: a marker on Carrera 7 near Calle 59 and 60, with the list entry Clínica Veterinaria Movet Chapinero, Carrera 7 # 59-54

On Carrera 7, between Calle 59 and Calle 60.

How sure? A chain can have the same statue in several branches, so the dog is a strong lead, not the proof. The proof is the street match in Step 5.

Step 5: The Street View match

Open the address on Google Maps and switch to satellite view. The clinic is on Carrera 7 at Calle 59A Bis. Across the avenue, one block north, the Parque de los Hippies (officially Parque Sucre) fills the corner of Carrera 7 and Calle 60. On its east corner, Google Maps shows a label: Monumento a Julio Flórez.

Google Maps satellite view of Carrera 7 between Calle 59 and Calle 60: the Parque de los Hippies on the west side, a red box around the label Monumento a Julio Flórez on the park's east corner, red arrows along Carrera 7 and Calle 60, and the Clínica Veterinaria Movet Chapinero label on the east side of Carrera 7

The clinic on the east side of Carrera 7, the park across the avenue, and the monument on the park’s corner at Calle 60.

Drop into Street View at the corner of Carrera 7 and Calle 60 (“72 Cl. 60”, February 2025) and face south along Carrera 7:

Side by side: above, the challenge photo cropped to the street, with red boxes around the office block with louvres, the Movet sign, the traffic light arm with the white tower behind it, and the plaza; below, Street View from February 2025 at the same corner with red boxes around the same office block, the same Movet sign, the same traffic light arm and tower, and the same white trailer on the plaza

Top: the challenge photo. Bottom: Street View, February 2025, Carrera 7 at Calle 60. The office block, the Movet sign, the traffic light arm in front of the white tower and the white trailer on the plaza are all in the same place.

Four fixed features match:

  • the dark office block with horizontal louvres on the left,
  • the Movet sign at its base,
  • the yellow traffic light arm in front of the white residential tower,
  • the white trailer on the corner of the plaza.

The moment it’s settled: the traffic light arm cuts across the white tower at the same height in both frames. Two things that far apart only line up like that from one spot.

Step 6: Turn around

From the same Street View point, turn right, towards the plaza the photo cuts off:

Street View from the same point at Carrera 7 and Calle 60, turned towards the park: the traffic light pole and the white trailer on the left edge, a high-rise with orange accents behind trees, and in the middle a red box around a bust on a tall stone pedestal at the corner of the park

Turned towards the park: the traffic light and the white trailer from the challenge photo on the left, and the bust on its pedestal at the park corner in the middle.

The bust stands at the corner of the park, right beside the crossing. The motorbike in the photo is on that crossing, so the monument is in the rider’s line of sight, just outside the photographer’s frame.

Verification

The Google Maps label is the first source. The second is independent of Google:

  • El Tiempo reported in 2013 on the monument’s missing pedestal (Buscan el pedestal del monumento al poeta Julio Flórez). The article places it at Calle 60 and Carrera 7a in Parque Antonio José de Sucre, the park known as the “parque de los hippies”. It was made by sculptor Luis Pinto Maldonado and stood there from 21 May 1967. It was moved within the park when the park was remodelled in 2003, and the original pedestal disappeared.
  • A local history of the park adds that around 1970 it was called Parque de las Flores, after the bust of Julio Flórez.

Julio Flórez (1867–1923) was a Colombian Romantic poet, the most popular of his time.

Ruling out the alternative: the Movet chain has 13 branches in Bogotá. The Street View match settles which one: only at Carrera 7 and Calle 60 do the office block, the traffic light arm and the tower line up.

Answer

Julio Flórez

Bust of the poet Julio Flórez (Luis Pinto Maldonado, 1967), Parque de los Hippies / Parque Sucre, Carrera 7 at Calle 60, Chapinero, Bogotá, approx. 4.6455, -74.0615.

Takeaways

  • Shop signs are search queries. A chain name narrows it to a country, and the chain’s own branch list narrows it to a handful of addresses.
  • Look for what makes a branch unique. A chain has one logo but many storefronts. A decoration like the pink dog tells branches apart where the sign can’t.
  • “Out of frame” questions need a turn, not a zoom. Once the spot is fixed, turn the Street View camera to see what the photographer cropped out.
  • Match on alignments, not objects. A traffic light arm and a tower each exist in a thousand places. The two lined up at the same height exist from one corner.

Sources