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

Clare Hand
is actually a self-described flaming London lesbian. She is invested the last season currently talking about
queer ladies lifestyle
inside her area. She documents the atmosphere, songs, trends, ambiance (might you get set or generate new friends?), and people behind the nights.

Clare
decided which wouldn’t end up being right to merely report dyke night life in one single area, thus she stuffed the woman bags and smack the roadway. She’s written about the thriving scenes in
New York
,
San Francisco
, Bogota, São Paulo, Berlin, and Dublin at this point; this listing will keep broadening. Keep close track of the woman
Dyke Nightlife Diaries
right here.

Evening One

First thing i really do whenever I will another urban area is Google my way to my personal peeps—”Queer taverns in…,” “Lesbian taverns in…,” “Gay bars in… .” Bogotá’s outcomes happened to be guaranteeing, with a lesbian nightclub called Moza and a handful of homosexual bars—mainly for the town’s brand-new bustling social hub, Chapinero.

On saturday evening, my personal gf and I also whizzed anywhere in some yellowish taxi to Moza. We pulled upwards, strode out, and found that Moza ended up being you can forget. It closed down a while ago, explained the security shield at the (hetero) club that stands in its wake. El Mozo (Moza’s gay sibling club) had been coming, therefore we nipped over here to get it had vanished as well.

We decided to recover in a non-gay club; the place was lively with Latin rhythms and passionately Salsa dancing (straight) partners. Lone men, their own breaths nice with aguardiente (Colombia’s nationwide liquor; just what tequila is always to Mexico), came in mosquito-like droves, each on a mission to recover the unclaimed dames. They were all extremely polite and understood that a no suggested no, nevertheless the heteronormative weight inside club was alot, especially when we would psyched ourselves up for per night of hanging out with numerous Latin-lesbians.

We quickly remaining and went old school. Turning on all of our queer-dar, we mooched across the roads selecting our peers. It don’t take long before we found (what we chose had been) three fellow lezzas. We contacted and tentatively enquired about Moza and “bar homosexual,” while eying in the amount of their own fingernails, aspiring to perhaps get a hold of a secret lesbian bar or something like that of this sort.

They certainly were really keen on the convo and spoke with our team for some time regarding lackluster lesbian scene within their area. Before long, the dykiest-seeming in our brand-new team (who’d also been the absolute most vocal on the subject) kept to attend a residence celebration. We were kept aided by the various other two who’dn’t involved with the homosexual chat thus adamantly but happened to be eager to hang away with our company.

‘You want girls?” she questioned enthusiastically.

We stated we performed, presuming we were on a gay-level. Off we hopped in a cab, which whisked you out for an excellent couple of blocks before finding yourself at an inconspicuous entrance in nowhere. The 2 security guards (exactly who understood all of our chaperones) considered all of us with utter bemusement. “Qué?” they mentioned continuously to our tips guide, as though she was actually attempting to just take a few wildebeest inside bar.

We ascended the mirror-covered staircase presuming we were heading doing a key queer mecca but soon realised we’d already been taken up a brothel. Needless to say there is nothing incorrect with brothels—I’m all for safe rooms for gender employees to complete their particular job—however, the vibe in this particular spot had been bad; a small number of suited guys, egos throbbing while they surveyed the area of scantily clad ladies. Everybody gave you wondering looks. They held the hope that people were sometimes planning get or promote gender when all we really wanted were to sip a cerveza and dance to Sylvester. We kept pretty quickly, moved house and mulled over the epic problem of your huge homosexual date.

Night Two

Why don’t we try once again. Theatron, Bogotá’s fourteen-room superclub, is prepared for all, but it is a gay nightclub (become accurate, the biggest gay dance club in the american Hemisphere) in mind. At 10 p.m., we got inside 200-people waiting line, which covered across place’s underground car parking like an anaconda. A techno bass thumped from roof, and everyone jittered with excitement.

When inside, we settled 55,000 pesos ($17) and were given a little synthetic mug for endless beverages through the night. It is one common part of Colombian organizations, and contains an extremely good influence on the atmosphere in; money and trade tend to be taken out of the room, no one concerns becoming plunged into an existential situation whenever examining their bank stability the following day.

We roamed across the place bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and figured this is simply not actually a location. It is a village that provides haven to a huge number of pleasure-seeking folks every week. Employees orchestrate the room meticulously; herding flocks of people, maintaining stairways free of charge and churning out mixer-after-mixer.

You’d probably need per week inside the site to really will grips along with it. House music played in the main open-air area. It is developed like an urban area middle, with increased DJ decks in the centre and beverage pubs, meals stores, and bars on their outskirts. There had been at the very least ten DJs each night. They combined numerous types in various unique spaces. Reggaeton played in a chapel, pop in a huge amphitheater. Donna Summers played in the psychedelic disco area, Celia Cruz is found on for the salsa collection, and a DJ travelled in from Berlin to dominate the techno chamber.

From my observations that evening, it seems that various genres draw in various amounts of heteronormativity. Salsa and reggaeton happened to be about the heteros dry-humping in church’s stained glass house windows. The pop music room ended up being generally young, jubilant homosexual dudes flailing their particular arms because they drunkenly serenaded their unique pals. Techno did actually draw in many alternative lewks (piercings, died-hair, some fetish equipment). It had been probably the most queer space, though ruled by tanked homosexual dudes just who popped capsules and de-clothed as evening evolved.

Many people were Latin-American; there were various gringos from regional hostels and only a number of dark individuals. On the whole, there are possibly three different queer femme partners boating the place. One duo had matching yellow and blue-dyed bobs. Another had been a Mexican pair I’d sat next to throughout the plane to Bogotá— we obviously move around in tiny circles.

We gravitated to your queerness with the techno roo but remaining at about midnight to go to (what we thought had been) the ladies’s toilets: a pink entrance, a security shield out front side, plus the term “Eve” authored over the door.

We thought it was a tremendously glam entry to a toilet once we mounted the glittery-pink stairway. As soon as we strike the top, we realised that ended up being no toilet and now we had inadvertently found a secret lesbian bar. In reality, Bogotá’s only lesbian bar—period.

The area ended up being 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 a-pole dancing stage (which was certainly becoming utilised), a large dance-floor, and also the just female DJ inside building.

There have been about thirty folks within. To start with each of us danced in a large kumbaya asexual circle, since it had been cool and confusing who was simply queer and who had been just enjoying the femme power (in an effective way).

Given that night evolved plus the DJ started pouring more steamy Latin (Reggaeton and dancehall) rhythms over the crowd, partners began creating left, correct, and middle. The area quickly evolved into what can simply be described as a clothed live-demo of the A-to-Z of waiting lesbian sex jobs. Couples brand-new and old were absolutely going for it. It actually was natural, hedonistic, Sapphic miracle.

Though we had been effectively encased in a huge homosexual club, the lack of door policy, safer area policy, or productive prioritization on location’s primary entry required this particular selected region proved a godsend for people lezzas. This key lesbian bar was actually really the only devote the place in which a girl could kiss a female without the fear of starting an eye fixed to a sniveling intoxicated guy baring his teeth with glee. We accepted the freedom of Eve, for the key lesbian bar.

At the front end of club (we would are available the medial side home) stood a huge steel gate, 2 meters by 2 yards (6.5 legs by 6.5 legs), with three door women stating “solo por chicas” on recurring. Most got it and managed to move on, but tiny batches of dudes lurked away from entrance, ongoing for five or 10 minutes, standing on their own tip-toes like naughty meerkats, trying to sneak-a-peak inside forbidden region.

While the time clock hit 3 a.m., we pried ourselves far from Eve therefore we could discover a lot of venue. While performing the rounds contained in this gorgeous, sprawling village of hedonism, we came across Lotus, a “solamente hombres” place (apparently built to produce a safer area for gay dudes to explore out of the mixed audience). Really safe to say, there were no categories of females clambering to possess a look inside there.

We headed down seriously to the techno place and spent the rest of the number of several hours obtaining sweaty with this folks. We kept at 5 a.m., pleased for located this genuinely special location, and also more content to have revealed Bogotá’s secret lesbian bar.

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