Gay Guide to Buenos Aires
Argentina's Senate passed marriage equality on 15 July 2010 by thirty-three votes to twenty-seven, making it the first country in Latin America to do it. Two years later came the Gender Identity Law, which lets a person change their legal name and gender by declaration alone, with no judge, no doctor and no diagnosis required, and obliges public and private health plans to cover gender-affirming care. It remains among the furthest-reaching laws of its kind anywhere. That is a long way from where the city started: Buenos Aires police were still detaining people under municipal edicts more than a decade after the dictatorship ended.
Palermo carries most of the nightlife, spread across Soho and Hollywood rather than concentrated on one street. Peuteo and Maricafé are here, Glam is on Cabrera, and Amerika over the border in Almagro runs the big weekend nights. Club 69 at Niceto Vega is the long-running party rather than a venue in its own right.
Recoleta holds the older half. Contramano opened in the mid-1980s, not long after the dictatorship fell, and is still going, which makes it a piece of the history rather than just a bar. KM Zero is nearby, and the bathhouses cluster here and in Balvanera: Zoom, Markus, A Full, Homo Sapiens and Madison. Down in San Telmo, Pride Cafe suits daytime, and Feliza in Almagro is the bar and restaurant that doubles as a community space.
The Marcha del Orgullo runs in November rather than June, which regularly catches visitors out. It moves from Plaza de Mayo to Congreso and is one of the largest in the region.
Buenos Aires runs late even by Latin American standards. A club that opens at one in the morning will be empty until three, and dinner at ten is early. Plan the night backwards from that and the city makes far more sense.