Lucas Hilderbrand is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of
Donde Todo es Diferente: Queer Latinx Nightlife in Los Angeles
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Published:October 2023
Dan Bustillo, 2023. "Donde Todo es Diferente: Queer Latinx Nightlife in Los Angeles", The Bars Are Ours: Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After, Lucas Hilderbrand
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Queer Latinx bars and clubs provide community sanctuaries that operate in proximity to and distance from white gay male bars in culturally specific ways. This chapter focuses on individual sites across Los Angeles that have served diverse clienteles amidst different contexts: Circus Disco as a corrective to early gay club discrimination, Club Tempo as a refuge in an era of anti-immigrant politics, Chico as a millennial venue for new urban Latino masculinities, and the New Jalisco Bar during cycles of downtown gentrification. Latinx venues often share common elements, such as Spanish-language music, performances, go-go boys, and dancing. Yet they also demonstrate a diversity of queer Latinx sensibilities and scenes that refuse a reductive or homogenized identity. First-person accounts of bar visits speak to present conditions. The subsequent interlude focuses on queer venues as vibrant and essential sanctuaries during the Trump era.
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