Centenario at Night: Between Old-School Cantinas, Family Homes, and Silence

The first sound: the metal shutters coming down at six

If you live in Centenario, you don't need a clock to know it's six in the evening. That's the exact moment the neighborhood changes its skin. It's not a dramatic or violent change; it's a metallic sigh that runs through the blocks: the sound of the metal shutters of commercial establishments coming down. First one, then another, and within fifteen minutes, the entire Calle 5 between Carrera 10 and 12 becomes a corridor of corrugated steel. Shopkeepers put away the soda crates, the ladies at the stationery stores gather their accounting notebooks, and private security guards turn on their flashlights even though there's still sunlight. It's the prelude to the night in a neighborhood that, unlike its neighbor Granada or Parque del Perro, doesn't light up with neon signs or loud music. It lights up with 40-watt yellow bulbs, with half-open doors, and with voices that lower their tone.

Centenario is a neighborhood in the east-central part of Cali, minutes from the CAM and Plaza de Cayzedo, but its rhythm is that of a small town within the city. It was born in the mid-20th century as a middle-class residential area, with single-story houses, internal courtyards, and pedestrian passageways that today are its best-kept secret. But the night here is not that of the Calle 9 clubs or the trendy bars on Avenida Sexta. The Centenario night is something else: a strange mix of old-guard cantinas, family homes that lock up early, and abandoned warehouses that hold the echo of what they once were. In August 2026, the neighborhood remains that intermediate territory, where the cultural night owl finds more questions than answers, and where silence is as much a protagonist as the music.

Old-guard cantinas: where time is measured in drinks

To understand the night in Centenario, you have to walk without rushing. It's not a neighborhood for tourists looking for lines at the door or signature cocktails. It's a neighborhood for sitting on a plastic chair, ordering an aguardiente or a nice cold beer, and letting the conversation carry you. The traditional cantinas don't have flashy names, and many don't even have a visible sign. They are small establishments of about twenty square meters, with a Formica bar, a mirror at the back, and a refrigerator that hums louder than the music. The smell is unmistakable: spilled beer, cigarette smoke, damp wood, and that cheap perfume from bathroom air fresheners that never quite manages to cover the old smell.

The cantina on the corner of Carrera 11 and Calle 5

This is perhaps the most well-known in the area, although it has no official name. The neighbors call it "Don Ramiro's place," after the owner, a 78-year-old man who still serves behind the bar with a blue apron that seems not to have been washed since the eighties. Here the music is classic salsa, but at a moderate volume. You hear Grupo Niche, Fania, Joe Arroyo. Don Ramiro doesn't play reggaeton or vallenato: "people come here to hear real music," he says while drying a glass with a rag that has seen better days. The regulars are a fixture: the retiree who arrives at 7pm to have a single beer and stays until 10, the woman in her fifties who sells lottery tickets and sits at the same table as always, and a couple of men who talk about soccer and politics with equal passion. Beers are around $5,000 COP, and aguardiente by the glass can cost $4,000 COP. Reference prices as of August 2026, subject to change.

The pool hall on Calle 4

Two blocks from there, on Calle 4 with Carrera 12, is one of the few pool halls left in downtown Cali. The place is spacious, with six pool tables whose felt is worn from years of use. The light is white and harsh, the kind that forgives neither wrinkles nor dark circles. Here, the characteristic sound isn't the music (which is usually salsa or boleros at low volume), but the sharp crack of the ivory balls against the cushions. The owner, a skinny guy with glasses everyone calls "the professor," charges $8,000 COP per hour of play. There are characters who come every night: the professional gambler who never loses, the Universidad del Valle student who sneaks out of the house to play a game, and an old man who doesn't play but sits and watches, nursing a beer for two hours. It's a place to observe, to understand how the neighborhood relates to leisure: without haste, without fuss, with a dignity that seems inherited from another era.

The corner store on Carrera 10

Not all the cantinas in Centenario are formal. The store on the corner of Carrera 10 and Calle 3 is, first and foremost, a neighborhood supermarket that sells bread, milk, and eggs during the day. But at night, after 8pm, the owner brings out a portable cooler with beers and aguardiente, sets up two plastic chairs on the sidewalk, and without saying a word, turns the curb into an impromptu bar. This is the meeting point for the neighborhood's younger night owls, those who don't have money to go to Granada but want to feel part of something. There's no music here, just conversation. They talk about work, the country's situation, their kids, the price of rent. It's a place where the night becomes community therapy, where the silence between drinks isn't uncomfortable, because everyone knows they're there for the same reason: to not be alone.

Family life in the internal passageways: the other Centenario

But the night in Centenario isn't just cantinas. In fact, most of the blocks are residential, and the internal passageways are the heart of the neighborhood. These passageways are pedestrian alleys that connect the main streets and avenues, flanked by one- or two-story houses with wooden doors and wrought-iron barred windows. They are the territory of the families who have lived here for decades, and at night, as the cantinas begin to fill up, the passageways gradually empty out. By 7pm, you no longer see children playing soccer against the walls. By 8pm, grandmothers bring their chairs out to the door to catch the evening breeze, but they speak in hushed tones, as if not wanting to disturb the atmosphere. By 9pm, almost all the doors are closed, and the only movement is a neighbor taking out the trash or the building's cat walking along the edge of the rooftops.

What's fascinating about Centenario is that coexistence between the public and the private. The cantinas are on the corners, in plain sight, but the internal passageways are a world apart. There are passageways where people have lived for fifty years without knowing the neighbor in the other house, and others where the doors are wide open until 10pm, with the television on and the smell of sancocho wafting out into the street. The night in these passageways is a ritual of enclosure: the metal gate comes down, the bolt is thrown, the living room light goes off, and the bedroom light goes on. The neighborhood gradually goes mute, and the voices you hear are those of the security guards walking with their flashlights and their dogs, marking the territory with slow steps and the occasional whistle.

For the visitor, walking through these passageways at night is an almost spiritual experience. There are no signs, no tourist guides mention them, there's no signage. They simply appear between the houses, like tunnels leading to another time. The light from the streetlamps is dim, yellow, and the shadows stretch in strange ways. You hear water running through a pipe, the distant bark of a dog, the creak of a door. It's easy to imagine that in the fifties, when the neighborhood was new, life was like this: slow, silent, familial. And it's that feeling of being in a place that hasn't changed that makes Centenario so special to those who know it.

The silence of abandoned warehouses: memory in ruins

If the cantinas are the voice of the night and the passageways its breath, the abandoned warehouses are its memory. On the eastern side of Centenario, towards Carrera 13 and 14, there are several warehouses that were once textile stores, merchandise depots, and mechanic shops. Today they are empty, with rusted metal doors, broken windows, and walls covered in concert posters and poorly done graffiti. At night, these structures are imposing. There's no light inside, and the silence that emanates from them is dense, almost tangible. It's the kind of silence that makes you lower your voice for no reason, walk faster, avoid staring too long at the dark windows.

There's one warehouse in particular, on Calle 4 with Carrera 13, that the neighbors call "the haunted one." They say that in the seventies it was a tire depot that caught fire one early morning, and that since then strange noises have been heard: knocks on the walls, footsteps on the roof, the crying of a child. No one can confirm it, but the legend persists. What is certain is that the warehouse has been unused for at least fifteen years, and its facade is a reminder that the neighborhood wasn't always what it is today. There was a time when Centenario was an important commercial hub, with factories and warehouses that employed hundreds of people. That economy died, and the warehouses were left like skeletons of a more prosperous past.

For the cultural night owl, these ruins have a particular appeal. They're not places to enter (not recommended, for safety), but they are worth observing from the sidewalk. The moonlight filters through the half-collapsed roofs, and the shadows of the structures are projected onto the cracked pavement. It's a perfect setting for reflection: on the passage of time, on the fragility of businesses, on how cities grow and forget their own corners. In August 2026, some of these warehouses have been bought by investors planning to turn them into bars or galleries, but for now, they remain monuments to silence.

Solitude and camaraderie: the two faces of the Centenario night

There's something contradictory about the night in Centenario. On one hand, it's a neighborhood where solitude is felt strongly. The man who arrives alone at Don Ramiro's cantina, the woman who walks quickly through the passageways to get home, the security guard who paces without finding anyone to talk to. Solitude is in the air, in the echo of footsteps on the cement, in the lights that go out one by one. But on the other hand, there's a nighttime camaraderie not seen in other neighborhoods. The regulars at the cantinas know each other by name, ask about each other's families, lend each other money to complete the beer. The security guards have tacit agreements with the shopkeepers: they whistle twice if they see something strange, and the other responds with a cough. There's an invisible network of care that makes the night not as hostile as it seems.

Perhaps that's why cultural night owls find Centenario such a fertile place. It's not the raucous party of Calle 9 or the elegance of Granada. It's a space where introspection is possible, where one can sit on a curb and look at the stars