A nightclub in Mexico City has announced an eye-opening, budget-busting cover charge for U.S. citizens—and only U.S. citizens.
In a provocative Instagram post, the club, which is called Japan, makes known that its general entry fee is now 5,000 pesos. That comes out to about $290.
But the business offers discounts to those who need them, according to the post, which is written in Spanish.
People from Mexico and Latin America (including Puerto Rico, even though it's part of the U.S.) will get a 95% discount, the post explains, making their cover charge 250 pesos, or about $14.
Clubgoers from anywhere else in the world, meanwhile, must pay 350 pesos (about $20), a discount of 93%.
Citizens from the U.S., however, don't get a discount, putting them on the hook for the nearly $300 cover charge.
“This is a response to a year of insults directed at us—as a country—by the United States,” club owner Federico Crespo told The Guardian. “It’s very much a response to the many attacks against Mexico from Trump.”
Still, the U.S. president's treatment of the country's southern neighbor isn't the only factor at play here, as Crespo acknowledged.
In his remarks to The Guardian, he also noted the "gentrification and touristification” of Mexico City.
That places his club's lopsided system of tiered entry fees amid a more general backlash against outsiders that has been building in the city for a while.
Last year, angry protests broke out among Mexico City residents objecting to an influx of foreigners who have brought in their wake higher rents and a proliferation of vacation rentals that limits affordable permanent housing.
At one point, demonstrators grew violent, the BBC reported in August, attacking "coffee shops and boutique stores aimed at tourists, smashing windows, intimidating customers, spraying graffiti and chanting 'Fuera Gringo!', meaning 'Gringos Out!'"
The issue of gentrification continues to be a tense one in Mexico City, particularly in neighborhoods popular with international visitors.
One of those districts, Roma Norte, is where Crespo's club is located. That the club is named Japan suggests the place isn't averse to every foreign thing.
Local residents getting fed up with tourists has become a worldwide phenomenon. Mexico City joins similarly frustrated hot spots such as Venice, Italy, many places in Spain, and, now that you mention it, the most heavily touristed destinations in Japan.
Oftentimes, residents' chief concern, as in Mexico City, isn't the overcrowding caused by tourism (as troublesome as that must be) but the pinch on affordable housing caused by an unregulated explosion of Airbnb offerings and by landlords jacking up rents.
Talk about an unaffordable cover charge.