On a recent Friday night, Leslie Ortiz walked from table to table at Mi Corazón in Silver Lake, asking customers if they were having a good time. She’s not a manager or server at the restaurant — she’s DJ Les, the creator of Toxica Fridays, a weekly Latin dance party for lesbians.
Adelina Moncada drove from Oceanside to ring in her 40th birthday with friends at the restaurant, adding that she was drawn there after seeing Ortiz’s TikTok inviting her followers to Los Angeles’ hottest “noche latina” and dance.
“I’ve gone to other places where she would DJ and it’s always just a good time,” she said. “She’s very personable, very sweet. She got me a whiskey shot for my birthday!”
Ortiz has been hosting parties for years at venues across L.A., but this is her first recurring weekly event. She says she created Toxica Fridays so that women could get together in a safe environment and listen to Latin music. The event’s name makes light of the stereotype that lesbians have toxic reputations.
But her parties are anything but noxious.
Tricia Lu and Anneka Bunnag, both 31, met Ortiz in their 20s when she did a Latin night in West Hollywood.
Bunnag said that before Ortiz, the lesbian club scene felt isolating, which made it hard for her to fit in.
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“Sometimes when you go into lesbian clubs, it gets intimidating,” she said. “I think Les really opens that up. You can feel comfortable here.”
Lu and Bunnag followed Ortiz to gigs all over L.A. County and credit her for diversifying the music played in West Hollywood venues.
“You’d go to clubs and they would be playing music you’d hear on the radio and it wasn’t what I think was too culturally diverse,” Lu said. “But then with Les, you could always count on her playing Latin music. Sometimes that’s all you want to hear.”
Ortiz, 36, began spinning records as a teenager in the San Fernando Valley. Her family moved from Guadalajara, Mexico, when she was 6, staying in a relative’s garage before moving into a one-bedroom house across the street from San Fernando Park, where Ortiz would play basketball.
By 13, she had a job coaching a team of younger kids and running the scoreboard during games. She used the money she earned to buy records, CDs and other DJ equipment. By 17, Ortiz was spinning at parties and quinceañeras.
“I didn’t even really know what I was doing,” she said.
After high school, Ortiz played point guard on the College of the Canyons women’s basketball team and excelled. She was inducted into the California Community College Women’s Basketball Coaches Assn. Hall of Fame in 2017. She thought about turning pro but decided her height 5-foot-2 made the prospect unlikely.
State Sen. Caroline Menjivar (D-San Fernando Valley) swears she first came across Ortiz on the basketball court, playing against her in high school. The two officially met five years ago. Menjivar, who is LGBTQ+, says discovering Ortiz’s parties was a revelation for her.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God! She’s Latina, a Latina lesbian from the Valley, 818. I love it!’ ” she said. “And then I just saw her career take off.”
Menjivar says Ortiz’s loving personality makes her partygoers feel safe.
“It means a lot when, as a woman, as a woman of color and a queer woman, you enter a space where you don’t have to be like, ‘What’s gonna be said to me today that could bring my day down?’ Those spaces aren’t always there,” she said.
Concerned with the LGBTQ+ community feeling isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic, Menjivar worked with Ortiz and others to organize the San Fernando Valley Pride car parade in 2021. She credits Ortiz for being instrumental in getting the word out about the event.
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Her ability to bring the community together, her activism and her success as a businesswoman are why Menjivar is naming Ortiz as her LGBTQ+ person of the year — the DJ will be recognized at a ceremony at the state capitol in Sacramento on Monday, and again during this year’s San Fernando Valley Pride March & Block Party, which will be take place June 29.
For Ortiz, her sexual orientation is front and center. When asked about her pronouns via text, she replied with “she/her/lesbian.” Her DJ laptop has a prominent sticker that reads “Let’s go Lesbians.” When she was trying to decide what to call the Sunday brunch she recently launched in San Diego, she came up with “The Lesbian Brunch.”
“So it’s like, how much clearer can that get?” she said. “If I’m going into a whole new city, how can I make this as easy as possible for me to market? People thought I was crazy, ‘That’s what you’re going call it?’ ”
Jeremy Swan, who co-owns Mi Corazón with his wife, Vanessa, first met Ortiz last year when she walked into his Hyperion Boulevard restaurant unsolicited and pitched turning the space into a dance party. He says Toxica Fridays has become a popular event that’s a confluence of Ortiz’s many followers and people in the neighborhood who stay after dinner.
“She honestly is such a professional partier,” Swan said.
Ortiz’s popularity extends beyond Los Angeles. This weekend, she’ll DJ multiple events at the Girls in Wonderland festival in Orlando and throughout June will perform at Pride festivals across California.
“I love when people feel welcomed in what I do. I can’t say that everyone has the same story I did,” she said, referencing the support she received from her family after coming out in high school.
“A lot of people in the community, they weren’t supported by their families. They still aren’t, they still struggle and I like to be the person where it’s like, ‘It’s OK, you’re welcome here. Just be yourself here.’”
Yvonne Condes is a freelance writer and contributing editor to Picturing Mexican America, a project that works to uncover the whitewashed history of Mexican Los Angeles. You can find her on Instagram: @yvonneinla.
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