Clare Give
is actually a self-described flaming London lesbian. She is invested the final year authoring
queer ladies’ lifestyle
in her town. She files the environment, music, fashions, vibe (will you get laid or generate new friends?), and people behind the evenings.
Clare
determined this won’t end up being to only document dyke nightlife in one single city, therefore she stuffed the woman bags and hit the path. She is discussed the thriving views in
Nyc
,
Bay Area
, Bogota, São Paulo, Berlin, and Dublin yet; this list helps to keep growing. Monitor the woman
Dyke Nightlife Diaries
here.
Night One
The first thing i actually do when I can a fresh area is Google my option to my peepsâ”Queer bars inâ¦,” “Lesbian pubs inâ¦,” “Gay bars in⦠.” Bogotá’s results were promising, with a lesbian nightclub called Moza and a few homosexual barsâmainly inside the town’s new bustling social hub, Chapinero.
On saturday evening, my personal girl and I also whizzed anywhere in just a little yellowish cab to Moza. We pulled upwards, strode away, and discovered that Moza ended up being not much more. It sealed down a while ago, explained the safety shield in the (hetero) club that stands in its aftermath. El Mozo (Moza’s homosexual bro bar) was coming, therefore we nipped over here locate so it had vanished also.
We decided to recoup in a non-gay bar; the venue was actually live with Latin rhythms and passionately Salsa dancing (right) lovers. Lone dudes, their own breaths nice with aguardiente (Colombia’s national liquor; exactly what tequila should Mexico), came in mosquito-like droves, each on a mission to access the unclaimed dames. They certainly were all extremely polite and comprehended that a no intended no, nevertheless the heteronormative body weight within this bar was actually alot, especially when we would psyched our selves right up for a night of partying with countless Latin-lesbians.
We soon left and went old school. Switching on the queer-dar, we mooched round the streets wanting our very own peers. It did not take very long before we found (everything we determined were) three fellow lezzas. We approached and tentatively enquired about Moza and “bar homosexual,” while eying up the period of their nails, aspiring to maybe find a secret lesbian bar or something like that associated with the type.
They were extremely keen on the convo and spoke with our company for some time regarding the lackluster lesbian world inside their town. Before long, the dykiest-seeming of our own new crew (who would also been by far the most vocal on the topic) kept to visit a house party. We had been kept making use of different two who hadn’t engaged in the mature gay chat thus adamantly but were eager to hang around around.
âYou wish ladies?” she requested eagerly.
We said we did, presuming we had been on a gay-level. Off we hopped in a taxi, which whisked all of us out for a few obstructs before winding up at an inconspicuous doorway in the middle of nowhere. Both protection guards (whom understood the chaperones) checked united states with utter bemusement. “Qué?” they mentioned over and over to your guide, as if she was actually attempting to get multiple wildebeest into the club.
We ascended the mirror-covered stair case presuming we had been heading as much as a secret queer mecca but eventually realised we’d been taken up a brothel. Without a doubt there is nothing completely wrong with brothelsâi am all for safe spaces for gender employees to accomplish their jobâhowever, the vibe in this particular location was terrible; a handful of appropriate men, egos pulsating as they surveyed the bedroom of scantily clad ladies. Everybody else gave us interested looks. They presented the expectation we had been possibly likely to purchase or sell intercourse when all we really wished were to sip a cerveza and dancing to Sylvester. We kept very rapidly, strolled house and mulled on top of the impressive troubles of one’s huge gay particular date.
Evening Two
Let’s take to once more. Theatron, Bogotá’s fourteen-room superclub, is actually ready to accept all, but it is a homosexual club (to be precise, the largest gay nightclub inside the american Hemisphere) at heart. At 10 p.m., we got in the 200-people waiting line, which covered round the place’s underground car parking like an anaconda. A techno bass thumped through the roof, and everybody jittered with excitement.
As soon as around, we paid 55,000 pesos ($17) and were given slightly plastic glass for endless drinks forever. This might be one common thing in Colombian groups, and it has a very good influence on the atmosphere around; cash and exchange tend to be taken off the area, without one risks being plunged into an existential crisis whenever checking their lender stability another day.
We roamed all over site bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and concluded that this isn’t really a venue. Its a village that gives refuge to a huge number of pleasure-seeking individuals each week. Staff orchestrate the area meticulously; herding flocks of people, maintaining stairways cost-free and churning out mixer-after-mixer.
You’d probably need per week in location to really get to grips with-it. Residence music played during the main open-air place. It is designed like an urban area heart, with elevated DJ porches in the middle and beverage bars, food stores, and pubs on the outskirts. There have been at the least ten DJs every night. They blended numerous genres in various unique spaces. Reggaeton played in a chapel, play a large amphitheater. Donna Summers played into the psychedelic disco space, Celia Cruz is on within the salsa room, and a DJ flew in from Berlin to dominate the techno chamber.
From my personal observations that night, it seems that different genres draw in different amounts of heteronormativity. Salsa and reggaeton had been about the heteros dry-humping in chapel’s stained cup windowpanes. The pop music space was actually mainly younger, jubilant gay guys flailing their particular arms while they drunkenly serenaded their own pals. Techno did actually entice more alternate lewks (piercings, died-hair, some fetish equipment). It was more queer room, though ruled by tanked homosexual guys which popped tablets and de-clothed just like the night evolved.
We happened to be Latin-American; there have been multiple gringos from neighborhood hostels and only a number of Black men and women. Overall, there have been perhaps three some other queer femme lovers boating the site. One duo had matching red-colored and blue-dyed bobs. Another were a Mexican pair I would sat close to about airplane to Bogotáâ we demonstrably move around in tiny circles.
We gravitated towards the queerness of techno roo but kept at about midnight to visit (what we believed was) the ladies’s commodes: a green entrance, a security safeguard out front, while the word “Eve” composed above the home.
We figured it was a very glam access to a bathroom once we climbed the glittery-pink stairway. As soon as we strike the top, we realized this was no bathroom and now we had accidentally uncovered a secret lesbian club. Indeed, Bogotá’s sole lesbian barâperiod.
The area had been kitschy: fuchsia pleather sofas, a hot red bar, pop-art mural art of dykons like Ellen, Gwen, Gaga, and Ginger lined the wall space. There clearly was a-pole dancing phase (that was seriously becoming utilised), a big dance-floor, in addition to sole feminine DJ for the building.
There were around thirty people within. To start with we danced in a big kumbaya asexual circle, given that it was actually cool and ambiguous who had been queer and who was simply merely enjoying the femme power (in a good way).
Once the evening progressed and also the DJ began pouring much more passionate Latin (Reggaeton and dancehall) rhythms on top of the group, couples started forming kept, right, and hub. The space shortly turned into exactly what can only be described as a clothed live-demo of the A-to-Z of standing lesbian intercourse jobs. Couples new and outdated happened to be completely choosing it. It was raw, hedonistic, Sapphic magic.
Though we had been effortlessly encased in a massive homosexual club, the possible lack of home policy, less dangerous room plan, or active prioritization at venue’s primary access created that this specified place showed a godsend for all of us lezzas. This secret lesbian bar was actually the actual only real set in the venue where a female could kiss a woman without any concern with opening a watch to a sniveling intoxicated guy baring his teeth with glee. We embraced the liberty of Eve, of secret lesbian club.
At the front end regarding the club (we’d are available in the side door) stood a huge metal gate, 2 yards by 2 meters (6.5 feet by 6.5 foot), with three doorway ladies claiming “solo por chicas” on perform. Many got it and shifted, but little batches of men lurked away from door, lingering for five or 10 minutes, looking at their own tip-toes like naughty meerkats, attempting to sneak-a-peak during the forbidden region.
Because clock struck 3 a.m., we pried ourselves from Eve so we could discover more of the site. While performing the rounds inside gorgeous, sprawling village of hedonism, we found Lotus, a “solo hombres” location (presumably enabled to produce a safer area for homosexual dudes to explore away from the mixed crowd). Its secure to express, there had been no categories of women clambering to own a glance inside here.
We went as a result of the techno area and spent the rest of the few hrs getting wet with these people. We left at 5 a.m., delighted having discovered this undoubtedly unique place, and even more content to possess uncovered Bogotá’s secret lesbian bar.
Theatron Calle 58 #10-32, Bogotá, follow
@theatronbogota
.