ladies’ night at lipstick

I had been coming regularly to Mexico City for over a year before I finally made my way to Lipstick on a Thursday night for their weekly lesbian party. I use the word lesbian here intentionally–this is not a dyke party, at least not according to my New York/San Francisco-bred sensibilities. I dare say that the word lesbian might even be too strong; this was a party for ladies.

The trick to ladies’ night at Lipstick is arriving between ten and eleven pm, during which women don’t have to pay the obscene $100 cover. Visitors should be sure to bring ID and leave enough time to wait in the long line that often stretches down the street while the not-so-friendly staff processes the patrons filing in before the clock strikes eleven.

My friends had told me that Lipstick was the party where the most “beautiful” (read: femme) lesbians and bisexual women–including closeted celebrities from Televisa–go to rendezvous, so I set off for the Zona Rosa hoping to encounter a scene reminiscent of the glamorous, imaginary bars patronized by the characters on The L Word. Not necessarily my kind of place, but definitely worth seeing.

The space itself was quite elegant, with a well dressed, if unnecessarily curt, staff. From the grand entrance on the ground floor, you climb through two stories worth of sultrily lit salons, cool almost to the point of sterility. The seating in any of these antechambers is reserved for those ordering alcohol from the waiters, so be prepared to spend some money if you want to perch on one of the low sofas. Beers are $35 and well drinks were around $50 or $60.

The best part about the space is the longest wall of the main dance floor, which is all windows. This allows you to stand at the sidelines of the dance floor without feeling like a wall flower. Instead, if you want to sit one out, you are not hovering on the margins of the party, but rather straddling the distinct energies you feel from the party in front of you and the lively Zona Rosa foot-traffic on Amberes two stories below.

Unfortunately, this view and the sort of presentness in the city that it might inspire is overshadowed by the large video screen that dominates the far wall of the dance floor. Each pop song that plays is accompanied by its music video (or a visually remixed version) looming above the crowd. At first I found this charming, something to look at while the place was filling up, but eventually I came to realize that, for me at least, these screens were too easy to stare at. I imagine for a lot of women it’s more comfortable to stare at Rhianna gyrating to “Umbrella” (which played twice in as many hours) than it is to make eyes at another woman.

The L Word it was not, but there was something decidedly “Southern California” about what I found upstairs that Thursday at Lipstick. First off, excluding the male bouncers and one half of the couple I was there with, everyone in the place had long hair, a phenomenon I had only otherwise experienced at Club Bombay in San Diego circa 1999. The dominant look among the ladies present was jeans and ponytails; it reminded me of the crowd at The Cafe in San Francisco or Henrietta Hudson’s in New York, minus the ubiquitous baseball caps. This was not a working class scene, nor was there the ironic mimicry of working class aesthetics (trucker hats, anyone?) that you might find at a hipster venue in the Condessa. The women I saw at Lipstick sent out a vibe that was decidedly, almost defensively, middle-class, and most appeared able to pass as straight if they needed or chose to in their lives outside Lipstick.

The other thing that struck me about the scene at Lipstick was how decidedly unfriendly it seemed. I was very grateful to have gone with a date and a small group of friends, and I imagined that this would be a difficult bar to go to as a single woman, hoping to meet someone friendly. The music was too loud for much talking to take place, and there was the constant distraction of the video screens as a convenient way of avoiding eye-contact.

Lipstick was getting quite crowded by the time we arrived, and people were drinking and dancing modestly in little pockets. Unfortunately, the patch of floor that my friends and I had claimed for ourselves was so sticky that it was actually interfering with our dancing. We crowded our way onto an elevated portion of the dance floor, just as the music was starting to break from the incessant pop into a more eclectic mix, including an oldies medley and a medley of songs from Grease (still very little latin music). The floor was lit up from below, which delighted me, and at around 1am, perhaps at this greater distance from the siren call of the video screen, I really started to enjoy myself. Maybe it was because people were a little bit drunker at this hour, but I felt like more of my attempts at friendly, non-lascivious smiles were getting returned.

Even still, I remember one woman at the edge of the dance floor who appeared to be there by herself. She seemed simultaneously intrigued and intimidated by the crowd, and I wish the scene had been a little warmer, so that she could have felt comfortable enough to talk or even dance with someone. As it was, the patrons of Lipstick more of less remained as cool and aloof as the lighting and decor might have promised, albeit without the ultra-chicness one might expect to accompany such an attitude.

If you like dancing to pop music and won’t be bothered by the absence of butch eye-candy, Lipstick could be a fun place to go dancing with a group of friends, or for the brave soltera contented to watch Rhianna or the action on the dance floor from the sidelines. Kudos to those who actually meet girls here.