Escape

Escape

Escape

Location: Calle Gravina 13, Chueca, Madrid, Spain

Opened: ?

Closed: Became "mixed" sometime around 2010 or so?

Here's how GayCities described Escape, apparently when she was still in her younger days:

Girl bar with hip hop and dance music
The DJ at Escape draws in the crowd with a drop-it-like-it's-hot playlist. There's typically a line to get in at peak hours

And from TripOut Travel:

A hugely popular lesbian nightclub, throwing down hip-hop or sultry dance sounds, and cranking ’til the wee hours.

From Time Out Madrid:

This cavernous dance hall draped in bullfighter red is one of the most popular destinations for women and is filled to the brim with the sexiest chicas in the city at the weekends. In fact, its popularity has spiralled to the extent that it's now one of the more boisterous clubs around Plaza de Chueca.

Hmm. All those senoritas enjoying buenos tiempos without any hombres around? Can't have that! So...POOF! Like so many lesbian places, Escape wasn't lesbian anymore. It was gay men, it was straights. It was "any type of person." But not lesbianas.

We see evidence of the transition at Gay-ville:

Dance club. Good atmosphere. Open from Wed-Sun. For men & women.

A July 2011 blog entry clarifies the details. As you suspected, Escape is now no longer "exclusively lesbian":

One of the most popular nightclubs in Chueca is Escape in Calle Gravina 13. Although it started as an exclusively lesbian club, nowadays you will find gays and straights having fun and enjoying the relaxed atmosphere as well as the dance music and all the latest Spanish hits.

And finally, we see additional confirmation of the same from egotour:

This gay nightclub offers a relaxed environment with music ranging from dance to Spanish. The place started as a lesbian club but is frequented today by any type of person. Open Thursday to Saturday from midnight on.

In fact, notice that we're soon seeing NO SPECIFIC MENTION of lesbians--or even of straight women!--at all. All the "sexiest chicas" have apparently been "disappeared."  Now just the "cute guys" mysteriously remain. From GayMadrid4U:

A gay club mixed ages relaxed and friendly playing Spanish to dance music lots of cute guys open Thursday to Saturday.

So even though gay male/straight places outnumber lesbian ones at a ratio of...what? At least 20:1? 50:1? 100:1? A zillion to one? Doesn't matter in the end. They just had to colonize and take command over this space, too.

Unfortunately, my Spanish language reading comprehension skills are pretty much non-existent at this point, so I'm unable to sift through the Spanish websites for any of the sordid details. Maybe it's just as well.