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They chose La Colonia Doctores, a blue-collar barrio that had a reputation for crime, because it was cheap and because Gardoki had lived there for years.
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The concept for the bar, whose name means “little sugar cane,” was simple: There would be Veracruz-style ceviche and shrimp cocktails, a cash-only bar with cheap drinks and a constant stream of free cultural programming including lectures, photo exhibitions and live music. La Cañita, they decided, would be for everyone: gay, straight, transgender and those on the wide spectrum in between. In those male-dominated spaces, where buff bodies and pop music reign, bouncers have been known to turn women away. Neither ever felt welcome in what Gardoki calls the “mainstream gay” bars of Zona Rosa, Mexico City’s version of West Hollywood. She calls herself an anarchist and a prison abolitionist and once wrote a book about sex and politics titled “Pornoterrorismo.” A Spaniard who had settled in Mexico City after being invited there to give a talk, Torres is 38 and has tattoos on both sides of her partially shaved head. Gardoki, who wears her graying hair in a pompadour and favors suspenders, met Torres five years ago and fell for her immediately. She quickly found her way to the center of the city’s legendary punk scene, playing guitar for Las Ultrasonicas, a beloved all-female band in the Riot Grrrl mold, and later touring the world with another popular group, the Kumbia Queers. She was a teenager - a tomboy who lived for rock music - when she left conservative Veracruz for Mexico City in 1993. “What I love most in life is to eat, drink and dance,” said Gardoki, who is 45 and hails from the Caribbean port city of Veracruz. They just wanted a place where they could have a good time with friends. When Torres and Gardoki opened La Cañita, they weren’t trying to make a political statement. La Cañita, one of the only nightclubs run by and for queer women in this vast metropolis of 21 million people, had offered a rare safe space for the LGBTQ community since it opened in 2017. By the time they fled, six people were injured and the dance floor was covered in blood and shards of glass. Instead, they began attacking, using fists and broken beer bottles as weapons. “Let’s get a hotel room,” one of them slurred at Dianna Torres, a writer and performer who owns the bar with her wife, musician Ali Gardoki. Then two men showed up, drunk and looking for trouble. About two dozen of the club’s mostly queer clientele were crowded onto the tiny dance floor, laughing and flirting under red neon lights.
May 3 was like any other Friday night at La Cañita, a beach-themed bar and restaurant in a working-class neighborhood near downtown Mexico City.Ī generously pierced and tattooed DJ mixed electronic music as bartenders splashed mezcal into shot glasses and popped open icy bottles of Corona.