Bad Beach
Photo by Samantha Blake
In the Zapotec language, Zipolite means “beach of the dead.” Historically a reference to the shoreline’s lethal undertow, the phrase has since slipped into double entendre: “Tbh, Zipolite has been kind of ruined by being discovered by the Instagram crowd and the ‘LA gays.’ The vibe has greatly changed over the past couple of years,” writes visualmagnitude1 on Reddit, drawing a surge of upvotes. visual claims that a proliferation of “Speedo-style swimsuits,” gym bodies, and “donkey dicks” in Zipolite heralds its shift into “a rustic PV [Puerto Vallarta].” Fair enough — as Mexico’s only official nude beach, and an unofficial LGBTQ+ haven, Zipolite has a longstanding history of celebrating body positivity — but visual himself is an American living in Mexico. Where, I don’t know (his account was banned as of this writing) but I’m guessing it’s a glass house stocked with gay stones.
To be clear, his critique doesn’t strike me as wrong so much as blunt. It flattens structural harm, interpersonal behavior, and aesthetic irritation into interchangeable sins. These concerns overlap, of course, but they aren’t identical. Treating them as such obscures more than it clarifies, especially in a place like Zipolite, where queerness, development, tourism, and ecological strain are all reshaping the coastline in real time. When Somos — an annual festival importing some of the Americas’ most compelling queer underground talent for four days of music, art, and debauchery — landed here this year, drawing an audience equal to nearly a third of Zipolite’s resident population, it struck me as less an invasion than a stress test. What does such a fragile queer ecosystem owe to the people inside it — and what do we owe each other?
Though this year’s Somos was the festival’s third iteration, it was its first in Zipolite. When I asked why Zipolite and why now, Jerren Ronald, one of Somos’ two founders (and of Por Detroit, a techno rave that bounces between LA and Mexico City) told me the festival needed time to foment. “We knew the event would attract a lot of circuit gays and artsy queers, and we didn’t think that convergence would work [in Zipolite] initially. The previous two built a core nucleus of attendees that we knew would help keep the culture intact.” How Jerren squares this with Somos’ first iteration having taken place in Puerto Vallarta — the Americas’ citadel of gay circuit — remains beyond me. Maybe it doesn’t matter. In my experience, most circuit gays sow their seed and bolt before you’ve finished wiping your ass, let alone assessed their personality. While such encounters don’t flush me with post-coital glow, the sex isn’t necessarily bad. In fact, acute, fleeting degradation tends to leave me wanting more. As I’d come to learn over the weekend, such was the case with Somos.
Continue Reading: https://www.them.us/story/bad-beach-somos-festival-mexico-lgbtq-travel-music-photo-essay
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