Clare Hand
is a self-described flaming London lesbian. She’s invested the very last 12 months writing about
queer women’s nightlife
inside her area. She files the atmosphere, songs, fashions, ambiance (will you get laid or generate brand new friends?), and the ones behind the nights.
Clare
determined it won’t end up being directly to only report dyke night life within one area, thus she packed the woman handbags and smack the highway. She’s discussed the thriving views in
Nyc
,
San Francisco Bay Area
, Bogota, São Paulo, Berlin, and Dublin at this point; this list helps to keep broadening. Monitor the woman
Dyke Nightlife Diaries
right here.
Night One
The initial thing i actually do while I will a unique urban area is actually Google my method to my personal peepsâ”Queer taverns inâ¦,” “Lesbian pubs inâ¦,” “Gay bars in⦠.” Bogotá’s results happened to be encouraging, with a lesbian club also known as Moza and a few gay barsâmainly into the town’s brand-new bustling social center, Chapinero.
On saturday night, my personal sweetheart and I whizzed across town in somewhat yellow cab to Moza. We pulled upwards, strode out, and found that Moza was no more. It shut down a while ago, described the protection shield in the (hetero) bar that stands in its wake. El Mozo (Moza’s homosexual brother club) was actually coming, so we nipped over indeed there to acquire that it had vanished too.
We decided to recoup in a non-gay bar; the site ended up being alive with Latin rhythms and passionately Salsa dancing (right) partners. Lone guys, their own breaths nice with aguardiente (Colombia’s national alcohol; exactly what tequila should Mexico), came in mosquito-like droves, each on a mission to access the unclaimed dames. They were all very courteous and realized that a no meant no, although heteronormative weight within this club ended up being a large amount, especially when we would psyched ourselves up for every night of hanging out with hundreds of Latin-lesbians.
We quickly remaining and went old school. Flipping on all of our queer-dar, we mooched all over streets interested in all of our peers. It didn’t take long before we found (what we determined had been) three other lezzas. We approached and tentatively enquired about Moza and “bar gay,” while eying within the duration of their particular nails, hoping to maybe get a hold of a secret lesbian bar or something associated with type.
They certainly were really thinking about the convo and talked with our company for a while towards lackluster lesbian world within urban area. Before long, the dykiest-seeming of your new crew (who’d been by far the most vocal on the topic) kept to go to a home celebration. We had been left with the other two who’dn’t involved with the homosexual talk therefore adamantly but happened to be eager to hold on with our company.
âYou desire ladies?” she asked eagerly.
We mentioned we performed, presuming we were on a gay-level. Off we hopped in a taxi, which whisked all of us out for good few blocks before finding yourself at an inconspicuous entrance in the middle of no place. Both security protections (which knew the chaperones) checked you with utter bemusement. “Qué?” they mentioned over and over to our manual, as if she had been wanting to simply take several wildebeest to the bar.
We ascended the mirror-covered stairway assuming we had been going around a key queer mecca but shortly realised that we’d been taken up a brothel. Without a doubt there is nothing completely wrong with brothelsâi am all for secure places for gender staff members to complete their particular jobâhowever, the feeling in this place had been terrible; a handful of ideal guys, egos throbbing while they surveyed the space of scantily clad females. Every person provided you inquisitive looks. They held the expectation we happened to be either attending buy or promote intercourse when all we actually desired would be to sip a cerveza and dancing to Sylvester. We left quite easily, strolled home and mulled across epic troubles of your large homosexual evening out for dinner.
Evening Two
Let us attempt again. Theatron, Bogotá’s fourteen-room superclub, is prepared for all, but it is a homosexual club (becoming precise, the biggest gay club into the Western Hemisphere) at heart. At 10 p.m., we had gotten for the 200-people queue, which wrapped around the place’s belowground carpark like an anaconda. A techno bass thumped from the roof, and everyone jittered with exhilaration.
Once inside the house, we settled 55,000 pesos ($17) and were given somewhat synthetic glass for limitless beverages forever. This can be one common part of Colombian organizations, and contains a very positive impact on the atmosphere inside the house; cash and exchange tend to be taken off the room, and no one risks being plunged into an existential crisis whenever examining their bank balance the second early morning.
We roamed all over place bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and determined that this isn’t really a venue. It is a village that provides refuge to a huge number of pleasure-seeking people each week. Team orchestrate the space meticulously; herding flocks of people, keeping stairways complimentary and churning out mixer-after-mixer.
You’d probably need per week in venue to truly can grips along with it. Residence music played within the central open-air place. It’s created like an urban area heart, with elevated DJ decks in the middle and beverage taverns, food stores, and bars on its borders. There had been at the very least ten DJs each night. They blended countless genres in various distinct areas. Reggaeton played in a chapel, enter a large amphitheater. Donna Summers played for the psychedelic disco room, Celia Cruz is found on in the salsa suite, and a DJ flew in from Berlin to take control the techno chamber.
From my personal findings that evening, it would appear that various genres attract different degrees of heteronormativity. Salsa and reggaeton happened to be exactly about the heteros dry-humping beneath the church’s stained glass windows. The pop room was mostly youthful, jubilant gay dudes flailing their own arms because they drunkenly serenaded their particular friends. Techno appeared to attract probably the most alternate lewks (piercings, died-hair, some fetish equipment). It was more queer room, though ruled by tanked homosexual guys whom popped capsules and de-clothed because the night developed.
The majority of people had been Latin American; there are a couple of gringos from local hostels and just a few Black men and women. All in all, there had been possibly three various other queer femme couples boating the venue. One duo had matching purple and blue-dyed bobs. Another were a Mexican pair I would sat close to on airplane to Bogotáâ we demonstrably move around in small sectors.
We gravitated on queerness from the techno roo but left around midnight to go to (what we believed was actually) the ladies’s toilets: a red doorway, a safety guard out top, while the term “Eve” created above the doorway.
We realized it was a very glam entry to a lavatory once we climbed the glittery-pink staircase. When we strike the very top, we realized that this was actually no bathroom therefore we had unintentionally discovered a secret lesbian club. In fact, Bogotá’s just lesbian barâperiod.
The space was kitschy: fuchsia pleather sofas, a hot pink club, pop-art paintings of dykons like Ellen, Gwen, Gaga, and Ginger covered the walls. There clearly was a-pole dancing stage (which was positively becoming used), a giant dance-floor, in addition to just feminine DJ into the building.
There have been about thirty people within. In the beginning all of us danced in a huge kumbaya asexual circle, given that it ended up being cold and uncertain who was queer and who was only experiencing the femme power (in a good way).
Since evening progressed and DJ began flowing more steamy Latin (Reggaeton and dancehall) rhythms throughout the audience, lovers began developing kept, correct, and center. The room soon turned into exactly what can just be described as a clothed live-demo on the A-to-Z of standing lesbian intercourse opportunities. Couples new and old had been definitely choosing it. It actually was raw, hedonistic, Sapphic miracle.
Though we had been effortlessly encased in a huge gay club, the deficiency of doorway plan, much safer space policy, or effective prioritization from the place’s primary entrance required that the designated region proved a blessing for all of us lezzas. This secret lesbian club ended up being the only real place in the site in which a woman could kiss a woman minus the fear of opening a close look to a sniveling drunk man baring their teeth with glee. We accepted the freedom of Eve, associated with the key lesbian club.
At the front end for the bar (we’d can be bought in along side it home) stood a large material door, 2 yards by 2 meters (6.5 legs by 6.5 feet), with three home ladies claiming “solo por chicas” on repeat. Most got it and managed to move on, but tiny batches of dudes lurked away from gate, lingering for 5 or ten minutes, standing on their unique tip-toes like horny meerkats, wanting to sneak-a-peak within the restricted region.
Since the clock struck 3 a.m., we pried our selves away from Eve so we could discover more of the site. While carrying out the rounds inside beautiful, sprawling town of hedonism, we stumbled across Lotus, a “solo hombres” location (presumably built to make a safer space for gay guys to explore off the blended audience). It’s safe to express, there had been no categories of ladies clambering to own a glance inside truth be told there.
We went as a result of the techno area and spent the rest of the couple of hours getting wet with these men and women. We kept at 5 a.m., happy to possess discovered this undoubtedly unique place, as well as more happy having uncovered Bogotá’s secret lesbian club.
Theatron Calle 58 #10-32, Bogotá, practice
@theatronbogota
.
