Dyke Nightlife Diaries: The Secret Lesbian Pub In Bogotá’s Gay Superclub

Clare Give
is actually a self-described flaming London lesbian. She actually is spent the very last year writing about
queer ladies’ lifestyle
in her own town. She files the environment, music, fashions, ambiance (might you get laid or generate brand new friends?), and those behind the evenings.

Clare
chose so it wouldn’t end up being straight to just record dyke nightlife in one urban area, thus she stuffed her handbags and smack the street. She actually is discussed the thriving scenes in
Ny
,
San Francisco Bay Area
, Bogota, São Paulo, Berlin, and Dublin at this point; this number could keep increasing. Keep an eye on her
Dyke Nightlife Diaries
right here.

Evening One

The very first thing i really do as I will a town is actually Google my personal method to my personal peeps—”Queer taverns in…,” “Lesbian pubs in…,” “Gay bars in… .” Bogotá’s results were encouraging, with a lesbian club also known as Moza and a small number of homosexual bars—mainly for the area’s brand-new active cultural center, Chapinero.

On monday night, my personal sweetheart and that I whizzed anywhere in some yellowish taxi to Moza. We pulled up, strode out, and found that Moza was forget about. It shut down a while ago, demonstrated the safety shield at the (hetero) club that stands with its wake. El Mozo (Moza’s gay bro club) was just around the corner, so we nipped over truth be told there to find so it had vanished also.

We made a decision to recoup in a non-gay bar; the location ended up being lively with Latin rhythms and passionately Salsa dancing (straight) partners. Lone guys, their particular breaths sweet with aguardiente (Colombia’s national liquor; what tequila would be to Mexico), was available in mosquito-like droves, each on a mission to recover the unclaimed dames. They were all very courteous and realized that a no intended no, nevertheless heteronormative fat contained in this bar was actually a great deal, specially when we might psyched our selves up for per night of partying with numerous Latin-lesbians.

We quickly remaining and moved old school. Switching on all of our queer-dar, we mooched across roadways wanting our peers. It didn’t take long before we stumbled across (everything we made the decision were) three fellow lezzas. We approached and tentatively enquired about Moza and “bar homosexual,” while eying within the duration of their own fingernails, looking to possibly find a secret lesbian club or something like that with the sort.

These were extremely interested in the convo and spoke with us for a time concerning lackluster lesbian scene in their city. In a short time, the dykiest-seeming in our new staff (who’d already been the essential singing on the subject) left to visit a property party. We were remaining making use of the various other two who hadn’t engaged in the homosexual talk very adamantly but had been eager to hang around with our team.

‘You desire women?” she requested enthusiastically.

We stated we performed, presuming we were on a gay-level. Off we hopped in a cab, which whisked you away for good couple of blocks before winding up at an inconspicuous entrance in the center of no place. The two protection guards (just who knew our chaperones) checked all of us with utter bemusement. “Qué?” they said over and over to the manual, as if she was attempting to get several wildebeest in to the club.

We ascended the mirror-covered stairway presuming we had been heading to a secret queer mecca but eventually realised that individuals’d already been taken fully to a brothel. Definitely you’ll find nothing completely wrong with brothels—i am all for safe areas for sex employees to accomplish their job—however, the feeling in this particular location had been terrible; a few suited males, egos throbbing while they surveyed the room of half-clothed females. Everyone offered united states interesting looks. They presented the hope that we had been often attending get or promote intercourse whenever all we actually wished was to sip a cerveza and dance to Sylvester. We kept rather rapidly, strolled home and mulled on top of the impressive failure of our own big homosexual particular date.

Night Two

Why don’t we take to once more. Theatron, Bogotá’s fourteen-room superclub, is ready to accept all, but it’s a homosexual nightclub (become accurate, the biggest gay dance club in the american Hemisphere) at heart. At 10 p.m., we had gotten from inside the 200-people queue, which wrapped round the location’s underground car parking like an anaconda. A techno bass thumped through the ceiling, and everyone jittered with enjoyment.

When around, we paid 55,000 pesos ($17) and were given only a little synthetic mug for endless products all-night. This really is one common thing in Colombian groups, and it has an extremely positive effect on the environment internally; money and trade are taken from the space, with no any concerns becoming plunged into an existential crisis when examining their bank balance the next early morning.

We roamed round the place bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and determined that this is not truly a location. It really is a village which provides haven to 1000s of pleasure-seeking people every week. Staff members orchestrate the space meticulously; herding flocks men and women, maintaining stairways complimentary and churning out mixer-after-mixer.

You’ll need a week from inside the location to actually arrive at grips with-it. House songs played from inside the main open-air place. Its created like an urban area heart, with elevated DJ porches in the centre and cocktail bars, food stores, and pubs on the borders. There were at the very least ten DJs every night. They blended numerous types in a variety of distinct rooms. Reggaeton played in a chapel, pop in a giant amphitheater. Donna Summers played from inside the psychedelic disco area, Celia Cruz is found on within the salsa suite, and a DJ travelled in from Berlin to take over the techno chamber.

From my personal observations that evening, it appears that different genres draw in different quantities of heteronormativity. Salsa and reggaeton happened to be all about the heteros dry-humping in chapel’s tarnished glass windowpanes. The pop room was mainly youthful, jubilant homosexual dudes flailing their own arms because they drunkenly serenaded their friends. Techno did actually entice the absolute most renewable lewks (piercings, died-hair, some fetish gear). It absolutely was by far the most queer space, though controlled by tanked homosexual guys just who jumped drugs and de-clothed given that night evolved.

People happened to be Latin-American; there are a few gringos from regional hostels and simply a few Black men and women. In general, there had been possibly three various other queer femme couples floating around the site. One duo had corresponding purple and blue-dyed bobs. Another had been a Mexican couple I would sat near to in the jet to Bogotá— we plainly relocate little circles.

We gravitated on queerness with the techno roo but left at about midnight to visit (whatever you thought was actually) the women’s toilets: a green entrance, a protection protect out front, while the phrase “Eve” authored above the doorway.

We thought this was an extremely glam access to a lavatory once we mounted the glittery-pink stairway. As soon as we hit the top, we realized this had been no lavatory so we had accidentally found a secret lesbian club. In reality, Bogotá’s just lesbian bar—period.

The room was actually kitschy: fuchsia pleather couches, a hot pink club, pop-art mural art of dykons like Ellen, Gwen, Gaga, and Ginger lined the walls. There was clearly a-pole dance stage (that has been surely getting used), a huge dance-floor, together with sole feminine DJ when you look at the building.

There have been around thirty of us within. To start with most of us danced in a big kumbaya asexual group, as it ended up being cool and not clear who was queer and who had been only experiencing the femme fuel (in a good way).

Just like the evening evolved therefore the DJ began flowing much more passionate Latin (Reggaeton and dancehall) rhythms on the audience, couples started building left, correct, and middle. The area shortly evolved into exactly what can only be described as a clothed live-demo in the A-to-Z of standing lesbian gender roles. Couples new and outdated had been positively opting for it. It was raw, hedonistic, Sapphic secret.

Though we had been successfully encased in a massive gay nightclub, having less doorway plan, much safer space plan, or effective prioritization at venue’s primary entrance created that selected place showed a blessing for all of us lezzas. This secret lesbian club was the only real devote the location in which a girl could hug a girl without having the concern with starting an eye fixed to a sniveling intoxicated guy baring his teeth with glee. We embraced the freedom of Eve, of key lesbian club.

In front associated with the bar (we would are available in along side it home) endured a big steel gate, 2 yards by 2 meters (6.5 legs by 6.5 foot), with three doorway females stating “unicamente por chicas” on recurring. Many first got it and managed to move on, but little batches of men lurked away from gate, lingering for 5 or ten full minutes, standing on their tip-toes like sexy meerkats, wanting to sneak-a-peak in forbidden region.

Due to the fact clock hit 3 a.m., we pried ourselves from Eve therefore we could experience a lot of location. While undertaking the rounds in this beautiful, sprawling community of hedonism, we found Lotus, a “solo hombres” region (apparently designed to make a safer room for homosexual men to explore off the combined crowd). Its secure to state, there have been no groups of ladies clambering for a peek inside there.

We headed down to the techno place and spent the residual handful of hrs getting sweaty with these individuals. We kept at 5 a.m., happy to own discovered this truly special site, and even more content to have uncovered Bogotá’s key lesbian bar.

Theatron Calle 58 #10-32, Bogotá, follow
@theatronbogota
.