Clare Give
is actually a self-described flaming London lesbian. She is invested the past season currently talking about
queer women’s lifestyle
in her city. She files the atmosphere, music, fashions, ambiance (are you going to get put or create brand-new mates?), and people behind the evenings.

Clare
determined which won’t be directly to only document dyke nightlife within one area, thus she stuffed the woman bags and hit the road. She actually is written about the thriving moments in
Nyc
,
Bay Area
, Bogota, São Paulo, Berlin, and Dublin at this point; this list will keep expanding. Monitor her
Dyke Nightlife Diaries
here.

Night One

The first thing i really do whenever I reach a fresh town is Google my solution to my personal peeps—”Queer pubs in…,” “Lesbian bars in…,” “Gay bars in… .” Bogotá’s results happened to be promising, 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 Friday night, my personal gf and I also whizzed anywhere in somewhat yellow cab to Moza. We pulled up, strode out, and unearthed that Moza was actually you can forget. It closed down not long ago, described the safety guard from the (hetero) bar that appears within the aftermath. El Mozo (Moza’s homosexual bro club) was actually just around the corner, so we nipped over truth be told there to track down so it had vanished also.

We made a decision to recoup in a non-gay bar; the venue was alive with Latin rhythms and passionately Salsa dancing (right) lovers. Lone dudes, their unique breaths nice with aguardiente (Colombia’s nationwide liquor; exactly what tequila would be to Mexico), was available in mosquito-like droves, each on a mission to recover the unclaimed dames. They certainly were all really courteous and realized that a no created no, although heteronormative weight in this bar was a large amount, specially when we might psyched our selves upwards for a night of partying with hundreds of Latin-lesbians.

We shortly kept and moved old school. Switching on the queer-dar, we mooched round the roads wanting all of our colleagues. It did not take long before we came across (that which we decided were) three other lezzas. We approached and tentatively enquired about Moza and “bar homosexual,” while eying within the period of their particular nails, aspiring to perhaps discover a secret lesbian club or something like that associated with the sort.

These people were very interested in the convo and spoke with our team for a while in regards to the lackluster lesbian scene within area. Before long, the dykiest-seeming of our new team (who’d also been the quintessential vocal on the subject) kept to go to a house party. We had been kept with all the other two that hasn’t engaged in the gay cam therefore adamantly but had been keen to hang completely with our team.

‘You want women?” she requested enthusiastically.

We mentioned we did, presuming we had been on a gay-level. Off we hopped in a cab, which whisked you away for a great couple of obstructs before finding yourself at an inconspicuous entrance in the center of no place. The two protection protections (which knew all of our chaperones) looked at you with total bemusement. “Qué?” they stated repeatedly to the manual, just as if she was trying to simply take a few wildebeest in to the club.

We ascended the mirror-covered stairway presuming we had been proceeding to a secret queer mecca but eventually realized that people’d been taken up a brothel. Of course you’ll find nothing incorrect with brothels—I’m all for safe rooms for gender employees to-do their particular job—however, the vibe in this spot was actually bad; a small number of suited males, egos pulsating as they surveyed the space of half-clothed women. Every person provided you wondering appearance. They presented the expectation that individuals happened to be sometimes attending purchase or sell intercourse whenever all we actually desired were to sip a cerveza and party to Sylvester. We left quite rapidly, walked home and mulled on the unbelievable failure of one’s large gay date.

Evening Two

Let us take to once more. Theatron, Bogotá’s fourteen-room superclub, is actually open to all, but it’s a gay club (becoming accurate, the greatest gay pub inside Western Hemisphere) in mind. At 10 p.m., we had gotten inside 200-people queue, which covered all over venue’s underground car parking like an anaconda. A techno bass thumped from threshold, and everybody jittered with enjoyment.

Once inside, we settled 55,000 pesos ($17) and received just a little synthetic glass for limitless beverages all night long. This can be one common part of Colombian clubs, and has now an extremely positive influence on the environment in; cash and exchange tend to be taken off the area, with no any risks being plunged into an existential situation whenever checking their particular bank balance the following morning.

We roamed around the place bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and figured this is not really a location. Its a village that provides haven to several thousand pleasure-seeking individuals every week. Staff members orchestrate the room meticulously; herding flocks of people, keeping stairways free of charge and churning out mixer-after-mixer.

You would require weekly for the place to truly get to grips with it. Home songs played inside central open-air location. It’s designed like an urban area centre, with elevated DJ porches in the middle and cocktail pubs, food stores, and bars on their outskirts. There had been no less than ten DJs every night. They combined numerous styles in various distinctive rooms. Reggaeton played in a chapel, play an enormous amphitheater. Donna Summers played during the psychedelic disco space, Celia Cruz is on for the salsa suite, and a DJ travelled in from Berlin to take over the techno chamber.

From my findings that evening, it would appear that different genres attract various quantities of heteronormativity. Salsa and reggaeton were about the heteros dry-humping according to the church’s stained cup windows. The pop music area was actually mostly youthful, jubilant homosexual dudes flailing their arms while they drunkenly serenaded their unique friends. Techno seemed to attract probably the most renewable lewks (piercings, died-hair, some fetish equipment). It had been many queer space, though controlled by tanked homosexual men just who jumped capsules and de-clothed given that evening developed.

We happened to be Latin-American; there were multiple gringos from regional hostels and only a handful of Black men and women. On the whole, there were maybe three other queer femme partners floating around the place. One duo had corresponding yellow and blue-dyed bobs. Another happened to be a Mexican couple I would sat near to throughout the airplane to Bogotá— we obviously relocate small sectors.

We gravitated with the queerness of techno roo but kept at about midnight to attend (what we believed ended up being) the ladies’s commodes: a green entrance, a protection shield out top, while the word “Eve” authored above the home.

We realized this is a very glam access to a commode once we mounted the glittery-pink stairway. When we smack the very top, we realized that the was no bathroom and now we had inadvertently uncovered a secret lesbian club. In reality, Bogotá’s only lesbian bar—period.

The space 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 wall space. There was clearly a pole dance phase (that has been seriously being used), an enormous dance-floor, additionally the only female DJ inside the building.

There were around thirty of us in there. At first we all danced in a big kumbaya asexual circle, as it was cold and ambiguous who was queer and who was just experiencing the femme electricity (in a great way).

Given that night developed and DJ started pouring much more steamy Latin (Reggaeton and dancehall) rhythms within the audience, couples started building left, appropriate, and centre. The room eventually turned into exactly what can only be called a clothed live-demo of this A-to-Z of standing up lesbian intercourse positions. Couples brand-new and old were positively choosing it. It was natural, hedonistic, Sapphic miracle.

Though we were successfully encased in a huge gay nightclub, having less door policy, better area plan, or productive prioritization during the place’s major entry created this specified region showed a godsend for us lezzas. This key lesbian club was truly the only devote the venue in which a lady could kiss a woman without having the concern about beginning an eye to a sniveling intoxicated man baring their teeth with glee. We embraced the freedom of Eve, of key lesbian club.

At the front end associated with club (we would may be found in the medial side home) endured a large metal gate, 2 yards by 2 yards (6.5 feet by 6.5 foot), with three doorway women stating “unicamente por chicas” on recurring. Most started using it and managed to move on, but small batches of guys lurked outside the gate, lingering for five or 10 minutes, looking at their own tip-toes like aroused meerkats, wanting to sneak-a-peak in forbidden region.

While the clock hit 3 a.m., we pried ourselves from the Eve so we could encounter more of the location. While undertaking the rounds in this beautiful, sprawling village of hedonism, we found Lotus, a “solamente hombres” location (apparently made to produce a safer space for homosexual dudes to understand more about away from the mixed audience). It is secure to state, there had been no groups of ladies clambering to own a glance inside there.

We oriented down seriously to the techno area and spent the residual number of hours obtaining flushed with the help of our folks. We remaining at 5 a.m., pleased for discovered this genuinely distinctive venue, and also more content getting uncovered Bogotá’s secret lesbian bar.

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