Man: What do you do on a Monday night?

You watch "Gossip Girl," and you got to Mustache Monday.

Man: Mustache was a party that reignited Downtown L.A. Man: Creative people all around L.A. came to us.

Woman: The best party in L.A. Man: Safe space to dress up or dress down, take things off.

Man: A whole generation has come up through Mustache.

Man: So many different people that would come through our doors that have all since then blown up.

Man: And that really speaks to the power of that party.

[Cheers and applause] Announcer: This program was made possible in part by City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Frida Berlinski Foundation.

Man: Mainstream gay nightlife has always been very homogenized and primarily geared towards gay white men.

But for those of us that want more than just what that box has to offer, there were very limited options.

I got my start DJing back in high school.

Really what it came from was just a lifelong obsession with music.

I started off DJing in straight bars and doing straight clubs because all the DJs I hung out with were straight.

And then once I started going to gay events, and then from there, it was like, OK, well, how do I get into here?

Places like Circus and Arena and 7969 in West Hollywood, those were some of the first places that I got to play at in L.A. And it was during that time that I met Nacho.

Danny: I was friends with Nacho for a long time.

He had two roommates already and they were both moving out.

I told him to save me a spot in the loft, and I would rent it.

A month later, I moved in.

Downtown wasn't as popular as it is.

It still felt kind of raw and new.

And also, Nacho always was the type of person that had just a lot of visitors, friends, artists, choreographers.

Josh: In gay nightlife, especially in West Hollywood at the time, musically, you really could only kind of hear one style of music, which was house and dance-pop remixes, and it's still very prevalent in that particular scene.

But, you know, if you're gay and you don't listen to that kind of music, then where do you go?

Danny: We would try to go to so-called Latino nights here and there, and it was just not our vibe.

It's not our music, you know?

Sure, it was dance music and some of it was in Spanish, but that's not how we would categorize ourselves.

We were much broader.

And we were just in search of a good time.

Josh: Nacho had a friend who was managing Crash Mansion at the time, and he offered Nacho the opportunity to come and do a Monday night event.

They were trying to fill out their calendar, their roster for the week at the venue, and he basically said, "We've got a Monday night open and would you guys be interested in throwing a party?"

When we first started, it was myself, Danny, and Nacho because we were living together.

So, it was, you know, the 3 of us.

But Dino was also brought in to be part of the team.

Dino: Downtown has always been this sort of palimpsest for cultural and social things.

And at the time, it seemed like throwing a queer party downtown was kind of a necessity, just to have a laugh and to get something going.

So I was all for it.

Singer: ♪ Uno, dos, tres ♪ Danny: The mustache part was just kind of like a nod to masculinity, gay masculinity, so those fans of people who like mustaches would come.

Josh: Nacho would do everything ahead of time, all the curating and the planning and getting the artwork done and working, you know, hiring photographers.

We really just wanted to have something of our own where we played the music that we wanted to play.

It didn't really matter that it was a gay event, you know.

We could sort of break the rules of what gay nightlife was really all about at the time.

Man: With the decriminalization of places like the gay bar, we still saw the rise of racism, discrimination, prejudice, sexism, transphobia throughout the seventies and the eighties, and this is like in Los Angeles, this is nationally.

Bradford: When Mustache came out, it was a really odd moment in L.A. culture and especially L.A. nightlife culture.

But L.A. is a pretty segregated space.

You didn't really get as much mixing as you did at Mustache.

Anita: At that time being like a Latino or Latina, you know, wasn't as accepted as it is now.

It was very challenging.

Man on TV: They keep coming.

Two million illegals in California.

The federal government won't stop them at the border, yet requires us to pay billions to take care of them.

Danny: When I was growing up, there was a stereotype for male Latinos.

Sometimes you're viewed as the hot, steamy Latin lover, and other times you're viewed as a threat to people.

Tony: Say hello to my little friend!

[Gunfire] Franc: My full name is Francisco Fernandez, which is a very Latino name.

Like, in early high school when I was trying to get a job, I remember changing it to Franc with a "C" because I wasn't getting any callbacks.

Then suddenly, I got like callbacks from like the Gap or Banana Republic or whatever I was trying to get in.

I know I can walk in a room and code switch and be the whitest person or the straightest person.

I mean, I'm a white Latino, but I wasn't like an American white person.

So I think I always kind of felt slightly on the outskirts of things.

Rafa: Growing up in a very traditional, kind of like Mexican household, I definitely, like, suppressed, like, any, like, queer performativity, or better yet, I was made to suppress it.

Miss Barbie Q: I was one of those kids that was just feminine from the get-go, but I didn't understand my own divine femininity.

And so, I was called sissy and homo from like, you know, 8 or 9 years old until I understood what that meant.

Gabriela: I don't think there really was a community for myself growing up.

I was just around my siblings and my parents until I got to like high school and I made friends.

I feel like I connected with them so much because we were so different from other people.

Dino: I always felt like I was a cube and the world was a sphere.

I didn't have the language or the sophistication to kind of figure out why I didn't really feel completely right in the normal world.

To put a name on it, made it official, and that was terrifying to me.

Man: When you think about L.A., you think about West Hollywood and the buff gay guys and these big clubs there.

And that was something that we were never interested in.

I was never interested in.

When we found out about Mustache Mondays, it was just such an exciting place.

It was different because it was so diverse.

You know, you walked in and there would be like all kinds of people.

There wasn't any stereotypes.

And it was a gender-free zone.

Like, you could just be anything there, and it was sexy.

Bradford: A bar like Akbar portends to be a queer space, but it's really a white male gay space that accepts other people.

But it is not for those people.

So I think when you think about a queer party, you're thinking about like a nexus of the people that are not being catered to.

And, you know, Nacho really just grabbed that mantle and ran.

Josh: At that time, I was DJing In West Hollywood and doing a lesbian hip-hop night called Fuse.

And the venue was having issues with fights breaking out.

And the people in charge were trying to blame the fights on the fact that we were playing a lot of hip-hop.

Miss Barbie Q: The LGBTQ acronym does not exclude us from the isms.

And I think that's a fallacy that a lot of people mistake.

I know I did when I first came out going to the gay clubs in West Hollywood.

I thought, I'm out.

I'm proud.

Everyone's going to accept me.

And that was not the case.

Josh: I don't believe that any of the problems that they were having had anything to do with the music or the people that were attending.

I wrote a letter, and I explained my perspective on the matter.

"Despite the fact that Here Lounge's patrons are wholly encouraged to drink as much liquor as they can, management feels it's appropriate to blame any fights on the music that I am playing.

I didn't realize that the simple act of playing a song with rap lyrics and/or hip-hop beats automatically drew in an unruly and violent crowd.

Assuming someone is violent because they listen to hip-hop is the music equivalent of racial profiling.

It's no different from a white police officer pulling over a Black man just because he's black, and therefore, assumed to be up to no good.

Musically, I don't see the distinction between hip-hop, house, electro, pop, et cetera.

It's all the same to me, just different tempos, and I consider dance music to be anything with a good beat that makes me want to dance.

If you dance to it, it is dance music.

And if it makes me want to dance, I'm going to play it."

Maluca: ♪ Tengo todo papi Tengo todo papi Tengo fly, tengo party Tengo una sabrosura Tengo todo papi Tengo todo papi Tengo fly, tengo party Tengo una sabrosura Ay, Mama Papi Usted me oye ay no no tengo Numero usted esta loco Ay por dios mira esa baina Mira esa baina Ah, no, no, no, no, no, no Me mata el novio I went around your way I went around your way I went to 182nd and Audubon Just the other day Got my do at the salon Looking good like always Went to the bodega for a loose And you saw me you had El tigereso in the air ♪ Josh: When we started this event, this was the first time that any of us had really thrown a weekly party and learning the ins and outs and working through the sort of trial and error of figuring out how to do that and also how to negotiate with bars and venues about, you know, money, getting our fair cut.

We're bringing all these people to the space, obviously, you know, we're able to charge a cover at the door, but there was a lot of push and pull about trying to get a percentage of bar sales, which is normally how it works.

But when we started, it wasn't presented to us as an option like that.

As the night is continuing to grow and expand and we're seeing a lot more bodies coming through, we weren't seeing the revenue.

It would get to a point where Nacho would be feeling taken advantage of, and we all would really.

When he felt that he was being taken advantage of or disrespected, we would make a move.

Danny: We had Crash Mansion, then we moved over to Charlie Os.

And there was a lot of fun to be had there.

That's when we really started engaging our artist friends, our choreographer friends to come and try out whatever projects they were working on with us as an audience.

We realized after the first night, that we had a bomb, you know.

We had a really good product.

Josh: Eventually Nacho really kind of stepped up and said, "I'm going to leave this now.

This is my vision, and I need to see this through."

And that was a big step for him.

Man: Aw, now.

[Laughter] Woman: Growing up, Nacho was the sweetest, kindest, most sensitive soul.

Outgoing and fun and witty, creative, super funny, very compassionate.

Abel: He was a really good friend, always supportive, very honest and transparent with me.

Nacho was always into art.

We liked weird movies and bands and stuff like that.

Carina: He gave me my first cassette when I was 8 years old.

It was CeCe Peniston.

Diana: For a lot of years, it was just him and I.

And he was a very loving kid, so it made it really easy to love him, to be with him all the time.

He was just so gentle in spirit and in all his actions.

Danny: Nacho was the hub of communication for us.

He did all the blasting and promoting.

It was him that had the list of people that would follow him because he did parties before I ever partnered up with him.

If he didn't throw a party, he knew where the parties were.

Bradford: What Nacho's strength was was an intuitive approach towards what we would call curating.

When Nacho did the event that we did together for On Location, I was able to watch the flow of how he worked, and it was very like this, this, this, "OK, let's go."

But that comes out of a life of living in your community and practicing what you preach.

Joseph: Mustache was a party that reignited Downtown L.A. And I think what makes it unique was this legendary lineups of DJs and artists, performers.

Also, just the ethos of care and community that was birthed from that party continues to today, and you see it ripple through art, film, music, and that really speaks to the power of that party.

Josh: Miss Barbie Q is someone who I've known for 25 years now.

At the time, she had retired from drag and from nightlife in general.

Miss Barbie Q: I had gotten a boyfriend, I was taking care of my mom.

She was sick.

And drag wasn't really fulfilling me anymore.

Josh: Once the ball got rolling with Mustache, and I saw that it was definitely going to be something that was going to last and I kind of realized that we needed someone to be on the mic and someone to kind of just sort of be the ringleader, I called Miss Barbie Q, and I said, "Hey, you know, we're doing this night, and I just think that we need you."

Miss Barbie Q: And so I said, "Well, if I'm gonna come and do drag, I'm going to do it what feels right."

I came to Mustache and I met Nacho, and then Nacho immediately gave me a hug.

And I talked to my boyfriend and I said, "I think I really need to do this."

Josh: To me, it just seemed like a no-brainer.

Like, she seemed like the perfect fit, and I was right.

Miss Barbie Q: I don't know who that was.

Josh: She came on board, and that's when things really started to take off.

Miss Barbie Q: My ritual always started off with taking a nap.

I would get up around 7:00, put on some music, light some incense, and figure out what I'm gonna wear that night.

Sometimes it was sixties night, sometimes it was seventies night, sometimes it was modern.

And then I would walk to the club.

I would wear my tennis shoes.

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but walking in high heels is hard.

So I would put my heels in my bag and my purse and my makeup and walk to Mustache.

I was living in downtown at the time.

Joshua always said I looked like a downtown secretary.

And then as the night would go on, letting people in, telling people to wait, hugging people, a lot of hugs, a lot of hugs, a lot of air kisses.

Mwah mwah.

Usually around 1:30, Nacho would come up to the front and he would go, "Go in and dance."

And then I would go on the dance floor, and all the people that came through, I got to see them all.

[Dance music playing] [Cheers and applause] Man: I started DJing accidentally and slowly, mostly just from collecting records from a young age and making compilation tapes of things I loved and finding ways to make them work together that complemented each other.

And that led to DJing.

I went to like an arts production high school, and they had like a radio station, and I worked there and, like, kind of like started learning about DJ stuff there.

A friend of mine had invited me to go to Mustache, and I think Mustache had just started, and I was like, "That name is weird, but I'll go."

I got there, it was like, the vibe was just very cute and felt familiar to me.

And I was like, "God, I just love it here.

I need to be involved in this."

And that night, I was like, "Who runs this party?

I'm gonna trick them into letting me DJ.

I'm gonna do it."

And I guess I met Nacho that night.

Man: I love you, Nacho!

Ashland: I told him I wanted to DJ.

And he was like, "Oh, well, do you have like a mix tape?"

And I was like, "Ooh, mix tape.

Yes."

So I like went home and just made a cassette mix tape.

Josh: So I went my storage unit and got my tape deck, and we brought it home and listened to the tape.

Ashland: Oh, my god.

Josh: I was surprised because Nacho was ranting and raving so hard about what he heard from you before the tape came in that when we heard the tape and I was like, "That's interesting.

OK." Ashland: Josh is such a ridiculously talented DJ, such a crazy hard worker, has been DJing non-stop every night at like the biggest clubs since he was like 16.

It was a very cool situation to be allowed to like play with Josh because I just learned what a DJ is supposed to do, actually, you know, like what the real job actually is.

Definitely helped me like polish my messy noise thing into like a more like palatable sound.

And also Nacho's almost like violent support, where he just, like, really believes in, like, all of his, like, friends and all of his, like, collaborators, you know, and, like, being everyone's champion, giving a platform to, like, almost anybody who was interested.

That level of support was definitely, like, an inspiration to just do better, you know.

Rafa: There's a couple of things that I could say about, like, how Mustache and Nacho, like, really inspired my work.

I think Mustache was this really, like, multidisciplinary, like, queer platform that created, like, a fun, safe space for people to gather once a week for, like, nearly 10 years.

That in and of itself is, like, bonkers, like, to think of.

I love Los Angeles.

It's an incredible source of inspiration for my work.

It's always a beautiful city to come back to.

I've always known that I was queer.

I remember, like, always wanting to just be in the kitchen with my tias and sit around while they, like, cooked or, like, just, like, gossiped.

It was, like, my favorite place to be in.

While the boys were out, like, playing football, basketball, or whatever sports, I was always, like, indoors.

I loved to be around that energy.

I think art has the power to open up a portal into a world, into ways of thinking that no other kind of field of inquiry could do.

I feel like that's an incredible offering that art has a capacity to do.

So, "al Tempo" is a collage image of photographs that I found, and it's painted on an adobe surface.

So adobe's this material that my father used to work with to make other way bricks.

And it's a practice that he taught me how to work with.

It feels like a material that has so much in it already because it's land and because it's so fraught with a history of violence and colonization and displacement.

And so it being the foundation or the basis or a surface that I could build other conversations on top of feels very rich.

Building an image onto another surface, it can kind of like match that kind of precarity and care that I wanted to bring attention to, but is also very celebratory.

It just felt very empowering to kind of like show up in this space with an image of queer joy.

Woman: Estas parada.

Thank you for your beautiful work.

[Singing in Spanish] Rafa: I've worked with San Cha before.

She's a queer musician who's singing, like, traditional, regional, like, Mexican music.

She's singing nortenas.

I feel like she was, like, singing in front of the painting, but I feel like San Cha's presence was an artwork in and of itself.

San Cha: [Singing in Spanish] San Cha: My friend Javi said, "I know Nacho."

And I was like, "Oh, who's Nacho?"

He's like, "Oh, I can get you a gig," and eventually he did.

He sent him a video that I did, and Nacho's response was, "Get this."

In 2015, I moved to L.A. Nacho would send me messages being like, "Oh, it's your birthday.

Come, you plus 4," and he would put me on the guest list.

So he like embraced me immediately as soon as I got here.

[Continues singing in Spanish] Rafa: The ways in which, like, Mustache brought in musicians, visual artists, performance artists, dancers, and really, like, incorporated all of these different talents into the making of queer nightclub, from like the designing of the flyer, what the space looked like, all of these skills were integrated into creating, like, a place of joy that was so carefully curated to, like, a queer community that maybe doesn't feel they could have fun in West Hollywood.

Franc: I moved downtown at the end of '07, and Nacho was always outside.

Like, we lived in the buildings right in front of each other, and he was always just like sitting outside.

It was just kind of like a Sesame Street character.

Josh: I used to call him the mayor of downtown because we would just leave our loft to go and get coffee and walk around, and he was just saying hi to everybody walking down the street.

"Hey, guys.

Hey, guys, how you doing?

Hey, what's up?"

You know, and that was just him.

Franc: My job was across the street.

So I would go from my job to my loft, back and forth, and then he just kind of wave once in a while.

I'd wave back, because we'd see each other so much.

And then eventually he added me on MySpace.

We shared two words on MySpace.

And then, finally, I saw him at Akbar when he was handing out flyers for Mustache, like one of the first Mustache, and he was like, "I was wondering if you were gay."

And then he gave me the flyer.

And I went to the that Mustache.

I think I was like enthusiastic about helping because it was the only club I'd ever been in where I was like, "Oh, my God, they're playing exactly the music I like.

Everyone's super nice."

So, I was just like, "How can I help in any way?"

I think he'd pay me like 25 bucks a flyer in the beginning.

You know, in my head, I was like making an extra hundred dollars a month doing these flyers.

So I was excited, you know.

A lot of those flyers, in the beginning specifically, were me taking fashion magazines and cutting pieces out, scanning them, redoing them on-- putting them on the flyers.

Then Nacho would send me the artists that are playing or all the copy that should be on it.

I copied and pasted and would design it, and then send it back, and he always misspelled things, so, I'd have to, like, redo it all the time, which he knows, like, I hated, but it's funny now.

I mean, my job now is referencing, right.

So, like, a creative director is really just saying, like, "I want the lighting to look like this one image.

I want the styling to be similar to this."

Like, you kind of always have to find references or sketch them.

And at the time, I didn't realize that really I was pulling references that I loved.

And that sensibility of constantly looking for a reference or an image that excites me is still the same.

Dino: Part of the ethos of Mustache was to nurture all kinds of creative expression.

We weren't interested in things that have been seen before or commercial work.

Nacho and Mustache in part existed as a platform to not only present new performative work, but also to encourage people to make performative work.

Ryan: There's something that's just so immediate about being almost face-to-face with someone.

[Indistinct music playing] Ryan: And I always thought that being face-to-face with someone and knowing what we did as performers, you always kind of had to be on your guard, because you don't know if we're going to jump on you or spit on you or make out with you.

So, like, people didn't have time to judge what was happening.

You had to take it for what it was in the moment.

When I became, like, more mainstream, I was being hired to do what I did.

And what I did was performed in clubs for a long time.

So that, like, kind of raw, energetic sensibility when I was creating, I think that's what's carried over to my current-day work.

It's very human and performative in a way, but it's from a different school than people that went to college.

You can tell immediately.

It was like being educated in clubs.

You know, learning how to perform drunk, learning how to dance for drunk people, you're more sensitive and aware over creating something so beautiful and important and people can sit down and watch it.

You're like, yeah, yeah, great, but I don't--there's something else to it that I think helped me develop who I was as an artist.

Sia: ♪ 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 3... ♪ Ryan: You know, I think the breakout piece was "Chandelier," and I remember my friend and I were like driving on the freeway.

We rolled down the windows and like screaming "Chandelier" when it came on the radio.

It was just like, "Ahh!"

It was so [bleep] exciting, and it's kind of like this, like, wild ride.

Sia: ♪ Home for tonight ♪ Ryan: Being an artist and being well-known in the world at this point, it's always very important for me to keep my foot in the underground, allowing that to be the, like, stronghold to my work.

Maluca: My two best friends in L.A. were living downtown at the time, and they were like, "You have to come to this party at Charlie Os.

It's the best party in L.A., hands down.

It's right up your alley.

It's the best."

So we got into the club, and it was what I wanted to do with my music, but like in a club on a dance floor, and it was weird, and it was Latino.

And Danny and Justo were in their underwears, you know, pumping it.

I remember one time I was performing at La Cita, and I decided to have like a spa theme, and I had wrapped my head in a toalla, in a towel, just like the act of just like whipping that towel off my head and people went crazy.

I mean, they really loved a performance.

[Cheering] Rush: When I first came to Mustache, I went to a rehearsal that Kiki "Jason" Xtravaganza and Louis Xtravaganza were having at Fatima Robinson Studio, which was all like, pfft, for me.

One day, I'm like Fatima Robinson, Aaliyah, like all that.

My brain was just exploding.

So I'm in this space, and they're like, "We have a performance at Mustache," and I had never heard of this place.

They created this beautiful performance, and then we met up at Nacho's apartment.

It was the first time I ever met Nacho.

At the time, he was living with Danny and Josh, and so they were all in there and they were just looking at music videos, things I'd never seen before, like Santigold and Yelle, and like, just sounds that I was drawn to immediately but would have never known existed.

So we were in there, they're playing all these records.

My mind is being blown just minute after minute after minute.

It was quite an experience.

[Laughs] [Indistinct rapping] ♪ To keep it real, sometimes you got to fake it ♪ It's easy to perform in front of people you don't know.

But those people saw me every Monday for years.

And stepping into the form I was becoming, you know, as a musician and as an artist was a little hard in front of people that like I look up to and people that shaped my taste in a lot of ways.

So I think I learned how to step over my fear of showing up and performing and also knowing that whatever I do in that moment, it's about the moment and whatever I can bring to it.

And I think that's one thing that Nacho taught me is just not to think so much about the results, just like to do the work.

[Crowd cheering] Thank you, what's up?

Ryan: I think what was great about Mustache being weekly is that if you talked to Nacho early enough, we always had a venue to create.

So if we wanted to experiment or had an idea, like, there was never a no.

A lot of times in the performance world, you have to get a theater, you have to do this, you have to like work out the logistics of it, where it's just like, this was ask Nacho, more than likely, he would say yes, and you're onstage in a week.

You know, like that was I think such a positive thing as an artist in Los Angeles is that we had a theater.

It was dark, it was small and loud, and, you know, wild, but that's kind of like what we were drawn to, you know.

And so we're so thankful that it was always there.

Austin: I grew up in Reno, Nevada.

It was pretty oppressive for me.

So I became super interested in pop culture and especially punk rock and people who were kind of living outside of mainstream society, 'cause I thought that must be where I fit in.

Francine: Well, I won't stand for this, Elmer.

I want a divorce and a big fat settlement to go along with it.

Elmer: You'll never get a penny out of me, you fat hunk of cellulite.

I only support the women I love.

Austin: We would get films like "Pink Flamingos" and "Polyester" would come to a local art theater.

So I sort of knew that this was my calling somewhere in this world.

When I was younger, I felt that mainstream culture had rejected me.

And so I was clear that I would be subverting mainstream culture and not being a part of it in my artwork at a young age.

And so I became super interested in drag queens and performers who were also sort of anti-establishment.

I love people.

And I wanted to celebrate these people.

So I started doing their portraits.

In the 2000s, the dot-coms were really taking over San Francisco and literally pushing people out of the city.

And it had such a long history of bohemian culture.

So artists had to move out, and a bunch of us came to Los Angeles, and we moved to Silver Lake and Echo Park.

You know, shortly thereafter, 9/11 happened in 2001, and I think a lot of interesting people kind of migrated from New York as well.

L.A. just to me was getting more and more interesting.

And New York had always been considered the center of the art world, but we began to feel like, you know what, we're going to create the center of the art world here in Los Angeles.

Squeaky Blonde and Fade-dra and I started Tranimal Workshop in 2008.

The idea was is that we would invite our artist friends to come and kind of form a conveyor belt around tables at a gallery.

And then the visitor to the gallery sort of starts at the beginning and is transformed into a tranimal we called it.

And then I would take formal pictures of the final results.

And the idea was to have this chaotic freedom to create anything, but also I was very interested in subverting gender.

It's like you couldn't tell what gender somebody is, and also the idea of beauty is like kind of tossed on its head.

It was really exciting for us to do, and it just kind of took off.

And Fade-dra was hosting Mustache Mondays for 4 years.

So a lot of the outfits that would show up at Mustache would be something that we had workshopped at Tranimal Workshop.

Josh: Mustache was the hub, a centralized place that creative people all around L.A. and even around the world came to us because they knew of it and they knew that it was a place to go and meet other creatives and be around other creatives.

And so there were a lot of artists and variety of creative people, designers and producers and singers and dancers and so many different people that would come through our doors that have all since then blown up.

I can't say that Mustache is credited with, you know, launching any one particular artist, but we definitely played a part.

Diana: He was about 26 years old, and he had invited his stepdad and I out to dinner one night.

And we were taking him back home, and he was sitting in the backseat, and I was driving.

So I parked the car and I turned around to face him so that we could talk, you know, eye-to-eye contact, and he goes, "No, Mom, I need you to turn around."

So I turned around and I looked straight ahead, and he proceeded to tell us, you know, that he was gay and he just felt that it was time to share it with the family.

And I remember, I did an about-face and turned and looked at him and I'm like, "What?"

You know, it wasn't a disapproving "What," it was just like I couldn't believe it, you know, because of all the boys in the family, he was the one that had the most girls around him all the time and went to so many proms.

You know, everybody wanted him to be their date, and I had no clue.

Vee: It was kind of sad because I know that he didn't come out because he was like ready to.

He was like almost forced to by someone in our family.

Fortunately, he was the only one who had a problem with it.

Everyone else was open and accepting.

So then that kind of paved the way for me.

I ended up coming out like two and a half years later.

I remember he was one of the first people I wanted to tell, because I was like, "We're the same."

It brought us closer together.

Diana: He put me in charge of telling the rest of the family.

You know, he's like, "I don't want to tell Grandma and Grandpa or auntie or uncle."

When I shared his story with everybody, they were like, "We know that.

We knew."

And I was like, "How did you know?

I didn't know."

Carina: It was really hard for him to come out, even though to many it was obvious, including my mother and my sister and my father.

They're like, "What do you mean you didn't know?"

He wasn't a man that hid who he was.

Even after he came out, he was still Nacho.

He still spoke the same, pretty much dressed the same.

The only thing that changed is that he lost his hair and he went bald.

It wasn't anything that changed his journey in life.

If anything, it enhanced it, and he was just free and open to be who he was.

Diana: I remember I cried for 3 days straight.

AIDS was a big thing back then, and I was so fearful that he might be taken from us because of that disease that we didn't know anything about.

Reporter: The American family is now threatened by the AIDS epidemic.

Man: I was fired from my job.

I have been refused housing.

Reporter 2: It's been estimated that 80% of the gay population could be carriers of the virus.

Woman: We had healthcare personnel refusing to care, morticians refusing to bury our people.

I mean, we've run the gamut of dealing with a panicked response.

Diana: After talking with him and then I started reading and doing some research myself, I came to realize, you know, that doesn't have to be a death sentence for everybody.

Katie Couric: Matthew Shepard was beaten last weekend, tied to a wooden fence by two men who met Shepherd in a bar in Laramie, Wyoming.

18 hours later, a passing bicyclist summoned help after almost mistaking Shepherd's bloody body for a scarecrow.

Bradford: The nineties, 2000s are like a watershed period for LGBTQ+ culture because it's like you've got people like Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena, figures who are these tragic figures who then become catalysts for policy change.

Terry: All too often today in America, being or just seeming to be gay can be dangerous.

A recent report showed a spike of 13% last year in violent crimes against people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The victim in the case we're about to show you was a boy who liked to dress as a girl.

Dino: In Oxnard, California, there was a boy named Lawrence King who was shot by another student.

And Nacho and our friend Rigo and I went to the funeral.

It was a very strange experience because it was in a large church, and pretty much everything that was said about Lawrence King glossed over the fact that he was queer.

Not once did Lawrence's identity get acknowledged.

That was really disappointing.

Danny: This was a hate crime against a gay youth.

I think that's what resonated with Nacho.

He was very taken by it.

Dino: I suggested to Nacho that we do a memorial for Lawrence.

So we did.

We collected pictures of Lawrence and broadcast them on the monitors of the bar.

And Lawrence's favorite eye shadow color was blue, so we asked people to wear blue eye shadow and did a moment of silence in honor of Lawrence King and of other queer people who have been killed.

It's a lot to ask to shut down a party right in the swing of things when people have been drinking for hours.

And we explained why we're doing the minute of silence, and it was like--it's a poor choice of words, but it was dead quiet for a full minute.

And that to me was really moving that people would actually just take a minute of their lives when they're like, right, in the middle of a party to acknowledge someone they probably didn't know.

Danny: This is why we all remember Nacho to be such a good person.

Just out of nowhere, he decided to take some of our door money and donate it to the family to lend them support and let their family know that there was a whole community out here that is willing to accept, you know, gay youth.

Josh: I think for most people, they look at nightlife and clubbing as just something to go and do that's fun.

But this was so much deeper than any of that.

Anita: It was really about building community.

And I think that's something that people never really understood or still really don't understand about nightlife because it has such a negative stigma around it.

Josh: Mustache was a church for many of us.

You know, this was our weekly congregating space where we came to be with our people.

And Nacho is the reason that we all connected together in the way that we did.

Franc: The last one Mustache I remember going to was in Hollywood.

I just remember it feeling like a complete departure from where we started.

Ashland: Towards the end, it was like, "What is this exactly?"

Rafa: There was like this question of, what is it going to feel like in this new space after I had been here in downtown?

And what does it mean for this like party to be in Hollywood?

And everyone showed up, all of our friends, and new people came.

Miss Barbie Q: I remember dancing that night a lot.

I remember taking my shoes off and putting on my tennis shoes to dance and just hugging Nacho and him whispering in my ear that I love you.

I remember that.

Rafa: Maybe what made it memorable was that, like, it felt like what Nacho had built, it could happen like wherever, like, Nacho went.

It wasn't pinned down to, like, a building.

Abel: Mustache started off as a small thing, and it kind of became this institution in a way.

Woman: I think Nacho was aware of the cultural impact that Mustache had.

He really put a lot of his heart and soul into the party.

Rush: When I was talking to Nacho, he was thinking about moving in a different direction with Mustache, but hadn't really figured out where to take it yet.

Rafa: He was like thinking of ways to kind of like turn it into something that was more sustainable for him.

Carina: And he was ready to do more.

Like, he was ready to go to Mexico City and live it up and do some creative things there.

He manifested what he wanted to do.

Rush: I first realized Nacho needed help because I could just see the stress on him.

I could tell that there was a bit of exhaustion in him.

Danny: We kind of found out we were positive at the same time.

And it was a tough weekend for me finding out that I was HIV-positive.

But the next following week, I had lunch with Nacho and he was trying to skirt and bring up the topic around the issue of Ongina and "Drag Race" and how she came out HIV-positive.

>> Congratulations, girl.

Ongina: I just wanted to say, and I've been always so afraid to say it, that I've been living with HIV for the last two years of my life.

And this means so much to me.

Danny: "I am, too," he said.

He started to kind of like get emotional, and I just kept on eating my beef stew, like if it wasn't not a thing.

So I just ate my soup, had my beef stew.

I was like, "Oh, yeah, me, too.

It's gonna be fine."

Ha ha ha.

You know, we just get on our meds, which I already was.

And then, you know, I could see that his stress level came down.

Carina: On one of my drives home from work, he told me.

I was upset.

I wanted to know where it came from.

And he's just like, "That's besides the point.

I'm OK.

I'm going to take care of myself."

Miss Barbie Q: I didn't know he was HIV-positive, and it made me very angry that he felt he couldn't tell us that.

Vee: I questioned why he kept it a secret.

I'll never understand why he didn't include us in that part of his life.

Ashland: We had intended to do a party together.

At some point, he just, like, canceled it and kind of like didn't, like, give me, like, an explanation why.

And I was, like, texting him a lot and he wasn't, like, getting back to me.

Rafa: Called him a few times, he didn't answer the phone, which is really weird.

But then I found out that he had been sick.

And maybe it was, like, knowing that he was positive, but for whatever reason, I felt alarmed.

He was very ill.

He was tired.

He was exhausted.

And then we took him to the hospital.

Diana: And I walk into his room and first thing, he says, was "Mom, don't cry.

You're gonna make me cry."

Then he told me that he was HIV-positive.

A couple days later, they had found that he had transitioned from HIV to full-blown AIDS and that he hadn't taken any medication in 3 years.

His insurance had expired.

And I was like, "Well, you should have told me.

You know I would have given you the money to buy it."

Josh: Nacho and I came up in the nineties at the height of the AIDS epidemic in this country.

To make it through all of that, and then, you know, for this to happen, it was devastating.

It was beyond devastating, you know.

We're not supposed to lose people like this anymore.

Gabriela: I feel like Nacho impacted the people he touched, like, greatly.

Diana: There were so many people who came to his funeral from New York and from England and from Mexico and Africa, and I was like, "My god.

You know, this is all for my son?"

Maluca: He left a major legacy, and he was very much wanted a celebration.

He was very much in the room, his energy was in the room.

And we really danced for our lives and his life and for Mustache.

And it was like everything he could want.

Carina: I'm so proud and so grateful to have been able to share a seat in the concert of his life.

It was beautiful.

Dino: Nacho gave so much emotionally, and he made time for you.

Nacho made all of his friends feel special.

Franc: He understood people and what they would want to be next to.

I think he was just constantly fascinated with people.

Abel: Like, this thing that he created gave him the freedom and the liberty to plant seeds and let them blossom.

Rush: He curated an entire community.

Ryan: He held it.

You know, he held it for all of us.

Gabriela: And the way he curated us connecting.

Joseph: I think Nacho was tremendously creative and knew how to connect people and see potential in a lot of people.

In that way, as a curator, someone who studied curating, going to the root word of what a curator is, is one who cares.

And I think that Nacho was certainly someone who cared a lot about the people in his community.

Rafa: So many of us, like so many parties are indebted to, like, the work that he's done.

The Los Angeles queer nightlife scene is, like, so much, like, more bombastic and fun because of Mustache.

But I do really miss him.

Rush: The biggest legacy of Mustache Mondays is the community that it left and the responsibility that it gave all of us to be there for each other.

Anita: Just so many things came out of Mustache Mondays that it's not fair to just label it as a party.

Miss Barbie Q: People were not just coming there to drink and dance and party, but they were also there to make connections.

Ryan: It kind of just defined like one of the best environments for an artist to really thrive in.

Safety and freedom, support, all these things were Mustache.

Josh: I think the legacy is what we have now.

We have actual gay bars in downtown again.

Downtown has its own DTLA Proud Festival now.

I feel like all of that is cut from the legacy that we started here.

Dino: Mustache was somewhat of a success story because it lasted for over 10 years.

Something that was built from the ground up just with a couple of friends sitting around saying, "Let's do this," and we did this.

Singer: ♪ You should stay Another night with me A one-night stand Is all I need You should stay another night With me A one-night stand is all I need You should stay another night With me ♪ Singer: ♪ It's not over It's not over It's not over It's not over It's not over It's not over, over It's not over ♪ Announcer: This program was made possible in part by City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Frida Berlinski Foundation.