Lido's Nightclub

About

To call Lido’s eccentric is an understatement. With a Latin bar on the bottom and Asian disco up top, goth drag one night and Spanish-pop lip-sync battles the next, it could very well be the South Bay’s strangest nightclub. Though not an official LGBT bar, Club Lido has long catered to Silicon Valley’s subcultures. It’s hard to think of another place within a day’s drive where Mexican cowboys mingle with Vietnamese ballroom dancers and cross-dressers and knock back shots of a saccharine house special called the Mother Fucker. The décor—sombreros and Buddha statues—reflects the club’s confounding cultural mash-up. Yeah, it’s a tad shady, with overpriced drinks and a cover charge most nights, but a night at Lido’s will give you a story to tell.

While Lido's gravity still pulls in the occasional drag queen, this San Jose dance club and bar primarily caters to the Latino and Vietnamese communities, and everyone else who happens to drop in.

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In the days of yore, Lido was a pretty popular gay club, but when it changed to become both a Vietnamese nightclub and Mexican dive bar, no one told the drag queens. So, what we have now is something you have to see to believe: a well-heeled Vietnamese dance club upstairs, a Mexican dive bar downstairs and a random collection of dolled-up, multicultural drag queens that flock in for karaoke when the mood strikes and give it all some serious spunk. The upstairs portion books some of the best Vietnamese live music acts in San Jose, and downstairs has a solid collection of working-class regulars who sip cold beers and listen to banda.