Cinema Río, Mexico City

About Cinema Río

Cinema Río is one of the last working adult cinemas in Mexico City's Centro Histórico, on República de Cuba — the same downtown strip that now anchors the area's gay bars. It belongs to the city's small, dwindling roster of legendary XXX cinemas (Chilango groups it with the Savoy and the old Teresa and Venus), a holdover from an era when downtown movie houses doubled as the city's underground cruising spaces. In practice it functions as a men's cruising venue: one of its rooms draws a gay male crowd with modified seating and active cruising, the other is geared toward heterosexual couples. Admission is a few dozen pesos, cash only, with ID required at the door. It's an unvarnished corner of the city's queer history that still operates more or less as it always has — worth knowing about for the cultural curiosity as much as anything else.