The Mess is a column from journalist Richard Villegas, who has been reporting on new, exciting sounds flourishing in the Latin American underground for nearly a decade. As the host of the Songmess Podcast, his travels have intersected with fresh sounds, scene legends, ancestral traditions, and the socio-political contexts that influence your favorite artists. The Mess is about new trends and problematic faves whilst asking hard questions and shaking the table.
We’re going there. We’re talking about it. Even if things get a little messy.
I learned the meaning of community at a gay bar. Back in the early 2010s, I lived in New York City and would frequent the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood for late nights of boozing, twirling, and cruising. My party of choice was Saliva Tuesdays at The Ritz, a freaky free-for-all led by drag artists Azraea, Lea Politan, and future “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alum, Thorgy Thor. Under glinting disco balls, I watched Monet X Change and Bob The Drag Queen rise from punk divas into global glamazons, and one time I saw vegan activist Honey LaBronx shit out an apple and serve it to the audience. Despite gagging (complimentary) on a weekly basis, my devotion was sealed after a day around the city when I was called a faggot about 20 times for donning my best fashion-twink regalia. That night, the queens noticed me, crestfallen and wearing a head-to-toe printed outfit, rushing over to screech, finger-wag, and co-sign my camp sense of style. It was then I understood that community is a product of kinship, humor, and fortitude forged among people of shared fears and traumas, and to reap those rewards, you have to put skin on the line.
To call the gay bar a safe space hardly feels insightful in 2026, but it merits reaffirming at a time when historic watering holes are shutting down all over, and LGBTQ+ refuge becomes crucial under a virulent right-wing swing. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub massacre, an act of domestic terrorism that resulted in 49 queer Latine casualties in Orlando, FL. Since then, both Madonna and (Me Llamo) Sebastián produced music videos inspired by this murder on the dance floor, while a 2022 shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs added five more souls to the Pride mourning list. Add recent rollbacks on trans rights across the U.S., raids on gay men in Venezuela and Brazil, and gruesome attacks on lesbians and trans men in Argentina and Chile, and you might also reach for the strap: jock, -on, and otherwise.
“I see queer spaces closing left and right,” says Ari Kiki, New York City’s self-proclaimed “Latine Hot Mess Drag Queen” who’s worked the scene for 16 years and hosts popular events at The Stonewall Inn and GYM Sportsbar. “What makes a bar successful is friendly drag queens and bartenders building a community with patrons and giving people a reason to come back. However, between hookup apps, a lack of drinking, and an abundance of straight people, gay spaces aren’t as gay as they were pre-COVID.”
To understand the flailing state of gay bars, you have to consider why we went out in the first place and how those variables changed over time. Less than 60 years ago, when queer identities were still criminalized and underground, bars and bathhouses were hubs for revelry, sex, or simply to engage with other people like ourselves. But large, hegemonic dance clubs declined in the new millennium, with promoters transitioning to free-floating parties rather than committing to brick-and-mortar. Alcohol consumption has dropped with Gen Z, dealing a direct blow to bar revenues as older crowds phase out of the party life. And while some of us still cruise for love of the game, apps like Grindr and Sniffies can deliver sex to your doorstep faster than a hot pizza. Before clutching your pearls, remember carnality is inextricable from the gay experience, and bars by proxy, since desire and companionship are the basis by which we’re still discriminated against and the foundation of colorful gayborhoods worldwide.
“If your event introduces the component of gay sex, you can’t use it as an aesthetic or brand when it has nothing to do with those values,” says DJ and event promoter Mexican Jihaad, noting racy cooptation at a time when LGBTQ+ creators are being disproportionately censored. The co-founder of the trailblazing electronic music collective NAAFI boasts a prolific nightlife resume, also launching the Mexico City performance art party Traición, and currently spearheading CERDOS, an adult function where international DJs mix techno kicks into the sound of slapping bodies. You’ll find similarly curated and discreet environs at São Paulo’s Brutus parties, as well as Santiago de Chile’s Bar 105, where leather tradition and tenets of body positivity evidence the myopic respectability politics of those who’d jettison kink from Pride.
These sexually charged parties are finding success because, frankly, they repel straight people. Once upon a time, popular drag chains like Lips and Hamburger Mary’s operated as fun neutral zones catering to LGBTQ+ locals and tourists from other cities and sexualities. But queerness has become trendy and commercial, and now that rainbow folk are hailed as arbiters of music and drug trends, we’re being crowded out of popular Mexico City clubs like Rico and La Purísima, and even transgressive queer parties like Buenos Aires’ Hiedrah—examples cited from social media chagrin and personal experience.
When asked about the double edge of the straight dollar, Ari Kiki answers practically: “At the end of the day, the bar is a business and money has to be made,” she says, while still advocating for respect of the queer patrons. Mexican Jihaad offers a more philosophical view, saying, “When different values enter a space, others migrate to greener pastures. When the gay bar became a queer party to celebrate everyone’s individuality and expressivity, friction, flirtation, and la putivuelta went out the window. At least for gay men, we socialize our sex and sexualize our socialization. And for club owners, it’s hard to maintain that space when they’re being hustled by both the city and the narco.”
“Going out has definitely become a different animal in Rio de Janeiro,” adds Eduardo Castelo, the DJ and event promoter behind the wildly successful V de Viadão parties, which have been running since 2013. He highlights the coastal metropolis’s growing profile as a getaway destination, which, in conjunction with the pandemic upheaval, has fanned the flames of gentrification. “Independent party promoters are keeping the scene alive, but we face the challenge of rising rents and spaces being sold and renovated as Airbnb buildings. Because of the death of traditional clubs and the growing cost of living in [large cities], the public is more careful when choosing where to spend their money on a night out.”
One notable casualty of the evolving nightlife landscape is the lesbian bar, the number of which has dwindled in the U.S. from around 200 in the 1980s to just over 30 today. While also victims of rising costs and gentrification, the basic matter of capital—with women earning about 25 percent less than their male peers—directly limits investment opportunities and consumer spending. New demographics catalyzed change, as many lesbian bars rebranded into queer spaces to attract younger patrons with more diverse expressions to stay afloat. The award-winning docuseries “The Lesbian Bar Project” brought significant publicity and fundraising to historic venues like Henrietta Hudson in New York, Boycott Bar in Phoenix, and Pearl Bar in Houston. And internationally, La Caña in Mexico City and Bichotas Bar in Bogota are fostering new sapphic networks, while La Avispa paved the way for Costa Rican LGBTQ+ nightlife since opening in 1979.
So, what is the path forward? The answer is staring us in the face: community. As it stands, our identities have been fragmented and commodified into Amazon-purchasable flags and increasingly niche spaces that undercut the rainbow’s economic powers. Meanwhile, the radical separatists who criticize Pride as overly capitalist and organize counter marches forget that dissidence and uncomfortable dialogue must exist within the movement (not outside in easy-to-ignore pockets) in order to fortify it. Unity is crucial to material survival, as is intersectionality. Weeks ago, while attending Pride festivities in Guadalajara, I saw drag queens cede the stage to a representative of the Madres Buscadoras, the women activists seeking justice for Mexico’s thousands of disappeared citizens, underscoring the two-way street of allyship.
And as for the egregious lack of queer artists played on queer dance floors, the tides are finally turning. “Booking LGBTQ+ artists is a decision made possible by the local culture,” says Gabriel Orqueda, aka Orque, the DJ and promoter behind Buenos Aires’s massive monthly party, Pop Hereje. Beginning in 2012 as a series of album listening sessions, the team cultivated a loyal following during the pandemic with popular Zoom parties that helped mobilize audiences once clubs reopened, dovetailing into Argentina’s fertile pop rebirth. “When we started out, our sets were super Anglo, but now we have a local pop scene being spearheaded by queers. Having a space where those artists can come perform creates an equality of conditions where we can give the love and treatment we reserve for pop divas to our own people.”
The gay bar exists at a unique intersection of leisure, community, commerce, and politics that is not always neat when legislating and mythologizing. Pride can never be all we want it to be, and that is by design, since its purpose is to embrace and harbor people across a literal rainbow of experiences. It’s about the collective rather than the individual. But these are our flawed homes, and it’s our duty to keep those doors open and welcoming.
“Everyone who works in nightlife has to be a therapist for someone,” muses Ari Kiki. “Sometimes people just need an ear, and you have to have the patience for that.”