Gay bars in BA are much like the gay bars in Atlanta

I went to a transvestite show with some of the folks here.  I should have figured the venue would be a gay bar.  The show was somewhere between "Pricilla Queen of the Desert" and "Kinky Boots".  The music played, the costumes changed and changed and as usual the Spanish beguiled me.   One performer (I don’t know whether to use he or she here) was actually a pretty talented mime.  I think she may have been famous in France.  The other was a comedian who appeared to be pretty funny to everyone else, but of course all I could follow was the physical comedy which went along with the music.  Her shtick was the over the top "I'm sexy in women's clothes" routine.

I have noticed that BA is rather like Puerto Rico when it comes to clothes- women are apt to go sexy to a more advanced age than stateside.  The women also wear their clothes tighter than in Puerto Rico.  I suppose many of you might prefer not to see camels toe on a fifty something woman, but as you might guess, I am always curious.    

I have actually only been in one gay bar in Atlanta.  -Again for a transvestite show.  There it was less about costumes and more about the gospel singing.  I guess they aren’t welcome singing in the local Baptists churches, but there were some great gospel singers there.  In BA I did have surreal conversation with a guy where 5 minutes in he said "your gay right?"  I just figured for an engineering type like myself it would be obvious I was not. 

He said he could tell right away I was American.  I figured it was the clothes.  He said no, it was the blond hair and blue eyes and angular features under pale skin.  I thought I was fitting in pretty well.  When I get to Guatemala “fitting in” will no longer be possible.  I imagine it like being black in Utah, or Colorado for that matter.  You just can’t hide in the crowd.

The pics are from my cell phone.  Not great, I wish you could see them better because it was pretty entertaining.  Sometimes I almost feel sorry for my poor little cell phone which is now just a wifi email client / web browser and a camera.  It is always "searching" and never finding.  Service that is.  Kind of like being in small town UT on your bicycle trying to find a decent panini for lunch.

I also visited the modern art museum.  This is not usually my kind of exhibit but it was close to where I am staying.  It was the best modern art exhibit I have seen.  It was very whimsical and had a number of installments on the second floor that used light and motion to good effect.  One piece had a fish tank built into it with a live fish.   Another had metal hoops that were squished and pulled against one another so that at any given moment they were in a unique state of ovality.  They had built some benches into the place where the rungs extended out over the wall and roped around like vines on the walls.  There was a whimsical dime store looking sculpture of a female mannequin being devoured by a crocodile like monster.  So that was an unexpected bit of fun.

The second pic is the mime oriented transvestite doing Lucille Ball's vitameatavegimin routine in spanish.  Very well done.  I didn't know people's faces could be that plastic.