Clare Give
is a self-described flaming London lesbian. She’s spent the last year authoring
queer ladies’ nightlife
in her town. She documents the atmosphere, songs, fashions, ambiance (are you going to get set or create brand new friends?), and people behind the evenings.

Clare
chose so it wouldn’t be right to merely report dyke lifestyle in one city, so she packed the woman handbags and strike the street. She actually is discussing the thriving scenes in
New York
,
San Francisco Bay Area
, Bogota, São Paulo, Berlin, and Dublin yet; this record helps to keep increasing. Keep an eye on the woman
Dyke Nightlife Diaries
right here.

Evening One

The very first thing I do once I will an innovative new town is Bing my solution to my personal peeps—”Queer bars in…,” “Lesbian bars in…,” “Gay bars in… .” Bogotá’s results happened to be promising, with a lesbian nightclub labeled as Moza and a handful of homosexual bars—mainly within the urban area’s brand-new busy cultural center, Chapinero.

On saturday night, my personal girlfriend and that I whizzed across town in a little yellow taxi to Moza. We pulled up, strode away, and discovered that Moza was not much more. It sealed down a while ago, revealed the security guard at (hetero) bar that stands within its wake. El Mozo (Moza’s homosexual brother club) was actually just around the corner, therefore we nipped over here to acquire so it had vanished also.

We chose to recover in a non-gay club; the location was actually lively with Latin rhythms and passionately Salsa dance (straight) partners. Lone dudes, their breaths nice with aguardiente (Colombia’s nationwide alcohol; just what tequila should Mexico), came in mosquito-like droves, each on a mission to access the unclaimed dames. These people were all really polite and realized that a no implied no, nevertheless heteronormative body weight within this club was loads, specially when we might psyched our selves right up for every night of partying with countless Latin-lesbians.

We quickly left and went old-school. Switching on all of our queer-dar, we mooched around the roads trying to find the colleagues. It don’t take very long before we came across (that which we decided had been) three fellow lezzas. We contacted and tentatively enquired about Moza and “bar homosexual,” while eying up the duration of their own nails, aspiring to maybe discover a secret lesbian bar or something like that of this sort.

These people were very thinking about the convo and spoke with us for some time concerning lackluster lesbian world in their city. In a short time, the dykiest-seeming of your brand new staff (who would already been probably the most vocal on the subject) kept to attend a house celebration. We had been kept aided by the additional two that hasn’t involved with the gay cam very adamantly but were eager to hang completely around.

‘You wish women?” she requested enthusiastically.

We mentioned we did, presuming we had been on a gay-level. Off we hopped in a taxi, which whisked all of us out for a good few obstructs before winding up at an inconspicuous entrance in the middle of nowhere. The 2 security guards (whom knew the chaperones) looked at united states with utter bemusement. “Qué?” they stated continually to our guide, like she was actually attempting to get several wildebeest to the bar.

We ascended the mirror-covered stair case presuming we were proceeding around a secret queer mecca but soon realised that individuals’d been taken up a brothel. However there’s nothing completely wrong with brothels—i am all for secure places for sex staff members to accomplish their job—however, the vibe in this particular destination was actually bad; a small number of appropriate men, egos throbbing because they surveyed the space of scantily clad women. Every person provided all of us fascinated appearance. They conducted the expectation we happened to be possibly probably get or sell gender when all we really wanted was to sip a cerveza and party to Sylvester. We kept quite easily, stepped house and mulled across the impressive failure in our huge homosexual night out.

Night Two

Why don’t we take to once more. Theatron, Bogotá’s fourteen-room superclub, is actually ready to accept all, but it’s a homosexual dance club (getting exact, the biggest gay dance club within the Western Hemisphere) in your mind. At 10 p.m., we got inside the 200-people waiting line, which covered across place’s belowground carpark like an anaconda. A techno bass thumped from the threshold, and everybody jittered with enjoyment.

Once internally, we settled 55,000 pesos ($17) and received slightly plastic mug for limitless drinks forever. This is exactly one common thing in Colombian groups, and it has a very positive impact on the atmosphere in; money and trade tend to be taken from the room, and no one concerns getting plunged into an existential situation when examining their particular lender stability the second early morning.

We roamed round the location bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and figured this is simply not really a place. Its a village that offers refuge to tens of thousands of pleasure-seeking men and women each week. Team orchestrate the space meticulously; herding flocks of men and women, keeping stairways cost-free and churning out mixer-after-mixer.

You’d probably need weekly when you look at the site to really arrive at grips with-it. House music played inside the central open-air location. It really is created like a town hub, with increased DJ porches in the centre and cocktail pubs, meals shops, and bars on its outskirts. There were no less than ten DJs every night. They mixed many types in a variety of distinctive places. Reggaeton played in a chapel, enter a big amphitheater. Donna Summers played into the psychedelic disco room, Celia Cruz is found on for the salsa collection, and a DJ travelled in from Berlin to take-over the techno chamber.

From my observations that evening, it appears that different styles attract various quantities of heteronormativity. Salsa and reggaeton were exactly about the heteros dry-humping according to the church’s stained glass windows. The pop space was actually mostly youthful, jubilant homosexual guys flailing their hands while they drunkenly serenaded their unique friends. Techno appeared to attract one particular alternate lewks (piercings, died-hair, some fetish equipment). It had been the absolute most queer area, though controlled by tanked gay men whom jumped supplements and de-clothed while the night evolved.

Many people happened to be Latin American; there have been various gringos from local hostels and just a few dark people. In general, there were possibly three different queer femme partners going swimming the place. One duo had corresponding red and blue-dyed bobs. Another happened to be a Mexican couple I’d sat close to on plane to Bogotá— we clearly relocate tiny sectors.

We gravitated to your queerness associated with techno roo but kept around midnight to go to (that which we believed was actually) the ladies’s toilets: a red entrance, a safety guard out front, and word “Eve” created above the home.

We figured this is a very glam entry to a lavatory while we climbed the glittery-pink stair case. As soon as we smack the leading, we realised this particular had been no bathroom and we had inadvertently discovered a secret lesbian club. Indeed, Bogotá’s sole lesbian bar—period.

The space ended up being kitschy: fuchsia pleather sofas, a hot red bar, pop-art mural art of dykons like Ellen, Gwen, Gaga, and Ginger covered the wall space. There was clearly a pole dancing level (which was definitely getting utilised), a big dance-floor, and also the sole feminine DJ for the building.

There are about thirty of us in there. To start with we danced in a big kumbaya asexual circle, because it ended up being cool and not clear who was simply queer and who was simply simply experiencing the femme energy (in an effective way).

Since the evening advanced and the DJ began flowing a lot more passionate Latin (Reggaeton and dancehall) rhythms throughout the crowd, partners began forming remaining, correct, and centre. The space soon evolved into so what can just be called a clothed live-demo on the A-to-Z of standing lesbian intercourse roles. Couples brand-new and old happened to be positively opting for it. It had been raw, hedonistic, Sapphic magic.

Though we had been effectively encased in a massive homosexual nightclub, the deficiency of door policy, much safer room plan, or productive prioritization at place’s primary access intended this particular specified location proved a godsend for all of us lezzas. This secret lesbian bar ended up being the only set in the venue where a girl could hug a female minus the anxiety about opening a close look to a sniveling drunk guy baring his teeth with glee. We embraced the freedom of Eve, with the secret lesbian bar.

At the front end from the bar (we’d also come in the medial side door) endured a giant material door, 2 meters by 2 meters (6.5 feet by 6.5 legs), with three home females saying “solamente por chicas” on recurring. Many first got it and managed to move on, but small batches of men lurked away from entrance, lingering for five or 10 minutes, standing on their own tip-toes like naughty meerkats, trying to sneak-a-peak for the forbidden region.

Since the time clock hit 3 a.m., we pried our selves from the Eve therefore we could discover more of the venue. While performing the rounds contained in this breathtaking, sprawling village of hedonism, we came across Lotus, a “solo hombres” place (presumably meant to generate a safer area for gay guys to understand more about from the combined audience). Really safe to say, there had been no sets of women clambering to own a peek inside indeed there.

We headed right down to the techno space and invested the remaining few several hours obtaining wet with these men and women. We remaining at 5 a.m., delighted for discovered this certainly distinctive site, as well as happier to own uncovered Bogotá’s secret lesbian bar.

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