Gay travelers love Mexico City. They keep coming in spite of it all. By now, who hasn’t heard there’s pollution, crime, traffic, and flu scares? Yet those who love cities know their inconveniences are the cover charge you pay to dance in dynamic urban spaces. Mexico City is a fantastic juxtaposition of grandeur and squalor, high art and low hedonism, often in the same block, that gay guys just get instinctively.

Neighborhoods all over the city pique the imagination. The Centro Histórico, Mexico City’s grand, crumbling downtown, with relics from seven centuries of urban life, is a favorite. Then there’s the Zona Rosa, Mexico City’s recognizably “gay” neighborhood. What to say? Long ago the city’s hippest area, the glitter faded about 1980. Still, every gay guy finds himself there, sooner or later.

But there are plenty of other neighborhoods with a low-key gay vibe. Roma and Condesa neighborhoods, adjacent to Zona Rosa, are impossible to resist, with verdant parks and buzzy outdoor cafés, well-preserved architecture, interesting galleries, and kicky shops. It’s swanky, but still very Mexico City; as you sip a latte with the beautiful people, low-tech pushcart vendors amble by, hawking steamed tamales and sweet potatoes.

As for foreigner visitors, they will get as lucky as they want to; usually a smile and saying hola is enough to start the ball rolling. Out-of-towners, even past the full bloom of youth, return home giggly and exhausted from all the action they're had.

Getting here

Mexico City's Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez is the main gateway to the country. If you're taking a taxi to your hotel, buy a ticket at an official airport taxi counter, rather than from the driver. The trip downtown takes a minimum of 20 minutes. If you don’t have a lot of luggage, the subway is cheap and quick.
 

Getting around

The Metro subway system is a great way to get around, except during the morning and evening rush hours when it is crushingly crowded. Avoid hailing a taxi on the street if possible, some people are robbed this way. Much safer to pick one up at a hotel’s taxi queue, or to have your concierge call one. Making friends is the best way to have a good (and safe) time, as the locals know the ropes.

The guys at Guapo Tours can help you enjoy the size and complexity of Mexico City with their guided private tours in English or Spanish, exclusive hotels, transportation, restaurants and other services for gay men. They also do excursions to surrounding towns, landscapes, and the pyramids nearby.
 

Currency and Money

Mexico’s currency is the peso, which is divided into 100 centavos. They use the same symbol as the US dollar ($), so prices that seem high on first glance may actually come to less than a tenth of that amount in US currency. ATMs are everywhere in the capital, so there’s no need to carry a lot of cash. Check with your home bank before leaving, to find out if a Mexican partner bank can save on cash withdrawal fees.

 

Media & Resources

Anal Magazine is a local gay zine with Fag Map put out by people who love this city.

The Communidad Leather Mexico blogspot will keep you updated on everything leather and fetish in this city and beyond, including the

Boy4Me is a gay online magazine with news, events and business listings for Mexico City, and around the country.

For an expanded list of around 80 Mexico City gay clubs click the "Distrito Federal" tab at the AntrosGay website, which also lists those that have closed ("ya no existe"). GayMexicoMap is another local resource. Once you're in the city there are flyers around the clubs, and people are happy to help with the latest information.

The bar scene changes constantly. See our map & listings pages for updates on Mexico City bars, clubs, and saunas, along with some suggestions on hotels, shops, restaurants performing arts venues, and museums/galleries.

 

One man's view:
by Michael Parker-Stainback (Guide Magazine, August 2009 - updated July 2014)

"It's Babylon, it's the Tower of Babel ... it's ...." So struggles Arturo, toned and well scrubbed, to find the right metaphor for Mexico City and its immense gay life. He talks about scores of places and gay identities. Macho cantinas where urban cowboys trade mole recipes, exclusive clubs whose preening eye candy boggles the mind, places to get your sleaze on, bear lairs, twink hangouts....

Gay travelers love Mexico City. They keep coming in spite of it all. By now, who hasn't heard there's pollution, crime, traffic, and, lately, flu scares? Yet those who love cities know their inconveniences are the cover charge you pay to dance in dynamic urban spaces. Mexico City is a fantastic juxtaposition of grandeur and squalor, high art and low hedonism, often in the same block, that gay guys just get instinctively.
Neighborhoods all over the city pique the imagination. The Centro Histórico, Mexico City's grand, crumbling downtown, with relics from seven centuries of urban life, is my particular favorite. At a recent museum opening there, I started talking with Pepe, who works in fashion and music. He suggested we step over to Marrakech, a smallish bar on raffish República de Cuba Street that's bringing gays downtown in droves.
"I was here before anyone cared," boasts Pepe. "And now you need lube to get in!"
Marrakech is quite a party, presided over with love by owner Juan Carlos Batista, an artist and gay-rights pioneer. Amid décor that combines a roadhouse and your grandmother's place, Juan Carlos presents everything from lesbian burlesque to queer poetry readings to campy old Mexican movies. The fine arts program brings in bohemians who are very easy on the eyes; flirting and dancing are obligatory, too. República de Cuba Street also features venerable gay cantinas from the old school and La Perla, a drag bar whose audience might even be more intriguing than the performers.
Then there's the Zona Rosa, Mexico City's recognizably gay neighborhood. What to say? Long ago the city's hippest area, the glitter faded about 1980. Still, every gay guy finds himself there, sooner or later. There are decent hotels that aren't fussy about overnight "guests," and if the young ones are your thing, you won't want to miss the two loud, tinsel-y Cabare-Tito Fusion and Cabare-Tito Neon discos. Kinky (the former Lipstick) is a three-level club with three concept bars, La Chipocluda Neo-Cantina, La Carpita Karaoke, and the Gran Terraza with great views of Paseo de la Reforma. But be forewarned the area feels tired.
But there are plenty of other neighborhoods with a low-key gay vibe. Unlike the Zona Rosa, the adjacent neighborhoods of Roma and Condesa are impossible to resist, with verdant parks and buzzy outdoor cafés, well-preserved architecture, interesting galleries, and kicky shops. It's swanky, but still very Mexico City: while you sip a latte with the beautiful people, low- tech pushcart vendors amble by, hawking steamed tamales and sweet potatoes.
Nick and Jim, a couple from New York who've been in Mexico City for 11 years, meet me for comida, the city's late, leisurely lunch (running from about 2:30pm to 5). We toy with Covadonga, a fluorescent-lit domino parlor, now jammed with a hip young crowd.
"Naaaw..." Nick judges, in a Manhattan accent he hasn't quite lost. "That's for table-hopping, not food."
He suggests Contramar, a stylishly decorated loft-like space that is reckoned to be one of the city's finest eateries. The food is delicious, and so is the people- watching, featuring everything from hard-coiffed senoras to willowy fashionistas to power-lunching fat cats.
"I like looking at the waiters," Jim says playfully. We agree. We also agree that Mexico City is not about gay restaurants or cafés as such. Is that part of the wide acceptance of gay life everyone talks about here?

Family ties
Later, Arturo, an officer in Mexico's foreign service, and his boyfriend Paco, a professional dancer, invite me to their airy Roma apartment. Their set-up is enviable: smart furniture, some costly art, an ample balcony overlooking the area's leafy streets. They go out as often as they'd like, and run in fashionable, worldly circles. Their open displays of affection disarm you, and they seem to hide nothing about their gay life from anyone.
That said, Arturo describes a certain Mexican reticence and deference that gums up many gay men's relationships with their families. While Arturo's sophisticated relatives would never object to him taking Paco to family events, he still describes his relationship with them as "being in a closet with windows, more or less frosted." He knows his parents know, but has never told them personally.
"Maybe we have it too easy; maybe it's too comfortable not to change," says Arturo, in reference to what he calls Mexico's "complacency with the status quo."
Gilberto, an office administrator, and Hugo, a hairstylist, live in Colonia Guerrero, where junked cars and peeling paint, rather than modern art and terrace views, are common. But the couple lives its dream, too. They enjoy much of what Arturo and Paco do in gay Mexico City: freedom, social and cultural offerings, no one prying into their personal lives.
With all that, family dynamics again come up. Hugo's low-drama coming-out to his parents has morphed into a stricter "don't ask-don't tell" policy regarding intimacies that his straight siblings share as a matter of course.
"I know better than to take my nephews out for an ice cream alone, without grandma or some other female chaperone in place," he admits candidly, since there's a homophobic brother-in-law who, while supposedly cool with Hugo and Gil, is convinced gay men molest children. Most of the guys I talked to described similar relationships with family: a vague notion of injustice without much will to fight it.
This year's gay pride march, which fell on a weekend in late June, is a good metaphor for gay Mexico City. It was fascinating, fun and diverse, yet chaotic and politically unengaged. Nevertheless, it represents tremendous gains for the city's gay population. An event that started out 30 years ago with 350 intrepid marchers is now said to be the city's biggest political rally. When you're there you do feel proud, even elated. Everyone over 40 says they never thought they'd see the day when an estimated 150,000 people would advocate for gay visibility in the light of day and in the city's most iconic public spaces. The visibility, most agree, led to officially recognized same-sex civil unions in the capital, in contrast to the rest of Mexico.
We march down the city's grand, Champs Elysées-like central boulevard, Paseo de la Reforma, toward the ancient central square, the Zócalo, for drag shows and disco divas in front of the seat of the federal government and (gasp!) the massive cathedral. But throngs of merrymakers slow down and often halt the progress of the stripper-laden floats. It's more of a Mexican Mardi Gras than a political rally, obligatory not only for gays, but for teens and hipsters, people who like a show, and not least of all, those who have some costume and no place to wear it. Wigs, leather and rippling flesh abound, but so do (huh?) moments involving scary pirates, monster masks or straight women dressed up like Shirley Temple.
"Of course it's great, sexy and wide-open," Gilberto had said of the parade when we met earlier. "But are we getting anywhere?" He pointed out there is no openly gay leader in Mexico who might unite the diverse community. Indeed, no one I talked to sees the city's gay community existing in much more than theoretical terms.

Finding freedom
Community or no community, the city is undeniably sexy. Whether it was Sergio, a mild-mannered art historian, or Alex, a pierced graphic designer and unapologetic party boy, everyone mentioned libertad (freedom) as a major attraction to gay life here. That freedom includes a culture of cruising, offline hook-ups, and the kinds of public venues for anonymous and group sex that are tamer, and harder to find, in New York, San Francisco and other famously "gay" cities.
Rough rent boys can be had for the price of a hamburger beneath the cottonwood trees in the city's oldest park, the Alameda Central. Elsewhere, scruffy bathhouses like the Baños San Juan, once for real bathing, now owe their existence to working-class guys and married men, plus sundry slummers, who cram into steam rooms for hot, unabashed group gropes.
In the high-end neighborhood of Polanco there's Sodomé, an exclusive sauna that attracts knock-out talent to its Friday-to-Sunday frolics. Private sex-parties are listed on numerous local blogs, alongside bitter objections to a recent law that shuts down bars at 2am. As for foreigner visitors, they will get as lucky as they want to; usually a smile and an hola is enough to start the ball rolling. Out-of-towners, even past the full bloom of youth, return home giggly and exhausted from all the action they get.
Is there a downside to so much apparent libertad? This is a city where commercial interests regularly trump moral ones, but where a self-censoring embarrassment called pena undergirds so many social interactions. Some say the acceptance of gays is not so much a sign of progress as it is of compartmentalization.
Take the last car on the subway trains that run in and out of the Zona Rosa, colloquially known as the vagón de la felicidad, the happiness car. Boys, mostly young and working class, cluster in the rear (pardon the pun) even when seats are available. For those with boyfriends, kissing, touching, and anything up to heavy petting is permitted. Stags in the pack enjoy the show or catch a stranger's eye. The car's "civilians:" older women, commuters and families within eyeshot, act as if nothing unusual is occurring. Yet there's an unwritten rule that the randy teens never take the party to another car. They've carved out their space for libertad, but they're supposed to stay there.

Meaning in the mess
I go to Tom's, in Condesa, one of the bluest spots west of Bangkok. Along with its castle-like aesthetic, there are continuous porn videos, a dozen fully fluffed, full-monty strippers, and a roiling backroom. José Luis, nerdy-cute and in publishing, says he's "looking for a boyfriend" but figures he'll never find one here.
"All the quick sex works against long-term relationships," he says. "You get discouraged, then have another beer and hit the backroom." Maybe it's so easy to get off that there's less motivation to fight for a more publicly gay life. Or maybe I should just have another beer.
As in all great cities, people in Mexico City are obsessed with where they live. They know what they love about their city, but they can also tell you what's wrong, then live with the contradictions. Perhaps that's true sophistication, somehow finding meaning in the mess of contemporary urban life. Doing what you can to make things better while enjoying the pageant.
My friend Jorge, who runs the stylish Red Treehouse guesthouse in Condesa with his ex-pat partner, has the right idea about such things: he takes me to a nightclub called Spartacus, way out in a gritty neighborhood beyond the airport. An only-in-Mexico-City original, it unites hundreds nightly: locals, intrepid gringos, the occasional celebrity, trannies, lesbians, and gay men of every type. Table service (a classy touch) is alloyed by the waiters' uniforms, which are a male version of Hooters.
Together, everyone does his own thing: romances live and die on the dance floor, and strippers and drag queens expose themselves for the love of their art. Players head to the upper deck for quick assignations and couples canoodle or entertain friends. You'd never mistake this for Manhattan chic or Geneva tidiness. Unmistakably, this is Mexico City: elegant yet squalid, profound and superficial, tough, loving, complacent, astounding, alarming. And never, ever boring.

 

Going Out

Cabare-Tito Fusion (Londres 77, Zona Rosa), Thursday-Sunday gay dance club, student nights, stage shows including circus acts, theme parties.

Cabare-Tito Punto y Aparte (Amberes 61, Zona Rosa), young crowd, open nightly, drag show cabaret extravaganzas, karaoke.

Contramar (Calle Durango 200, Roma), high-class Mexican cuisine, fish and seafood specialities; good food, fun people- watching.

Covadonga (Puebla, 121, Roma), hip young gay-friendly crowd, retro-style cantina.

Envy (Presidente Masaryk 336, Polanco), Fridays-only gay/ mixed dance club, mostly young and well-dressed crowd.

Kinky (Amberes 1, Zona Rosa), young/upscale gay crowd, video lounge, terrace, karaoke, dark room, open late.

Guilt (Anatole France 120, Polanco) Saturdays-only 11pm-6am upscale gay-friendly mixed men/women lounge/club.

Hibrido (Londres 161, Zona Rosa), gay/lesbian dance club, sexy young hard-body stripper shows.

Kaos (Niza 19, Zona Rosa), LGBT men/women mixed dance club, go-go boys, entertainment/ shows.

La Perla (Republica de Cuba 44, Centro), Thursday-Saturday drag cabaret show bar, open 8pm-4am on weekends.

Living (Eje 1 Pte Bucareli 144, Juarez), big Friday/Saturday gay dance club, stage shows, go-go boys, theme parties.

Lolipop (Amberes 14, Zona Rosa), small, popular Thursday-Saturday dance bar, go-go boys, terrace.

Macho (Amberes 24, Zona Rosa), gay dance club, theme nights, shows.

Marrakech (República de Cuba 18, Centro), young all-night gay party crowd, cheap drinks, strippers, drag shows.

Nicho/ BearMex (Londres 182, Zona Rosa), popular dance club, bears and friends, karaoke.

Papi Fun Bar (Amberes 18, Zona Rosa), gay cocktail/video bar, weekend dancing and drag cabaret.

Spartacus (Avenida Cuauhtémoc 8, Maravillas/Nezahualcóyotl), gay/lesbian and mixed disco club, "privado" dancing, drag shows, strippers.

Tom's (Insurgentes Sur 357, Condesa), dark men's cruise bar, mixed age macho crowd, beer blasts, underwear parties, bear and leather events include Tom's Leather Fest in late May.

Touch (Amberes 11, Zona Rosa), 3-level club, live rock, disco, patio, snack foods, stage shows, bingo.

VD+ (La Viga 667/ Eje 4/5 Sur), LGBT dance club, international DJs, stage shows, hot young crowd; Circus nights here and around town.

 

 

Saunas & Sex

La Casita (Av Viaducto Miguel Aleman 72, Algarín) and La Casita II (Av Insurgentes Sur 228, Roma Norte), 18+ private men for men sex clubs, porn videos, open 24 hours, 365 days/year.

La Toalla Club (Av Alvaro Obregón 259, Roma), men's sauna and steam club, cruise and relax areas.

So Do Me (Mariano Escobedo 716, Anzures), men's steam/sauna, Jacuzzi, bar/lounge, videos, DJs, go-go dancers.

Tepoz Spa (Carretera a San Andrés de la Cal #69, Tepoztlán, Morelos), spa for gay men, an hour south of Mexico City, 15 minutes east of Cuernavaca. Indoor and outdoor hot tubs, steam room, glory holes, showers, swimming pool, garden area.

See more saunas/ bathhouses at our Mexico City map and listings pages.