LA nightlife figure and Mustache Monday cofounder Nacho Nava dies

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  • Looking back on the life of Ignacio Nava Jr. A celebration of the influential promoter will happen at Resident in LA this Sunday.
  • LA nightlife figure and Mustache Monday cofounder Nacho Nava dies image
  • Ignacio Nava Jr., AKA Nacho Nava, the innovative Los Angeles-born nightlife promoter, died on Saturday, January 19th. Nava is best-known for Mustache Mondays, a weekly event launched with Danny Gonzales and Josh Peace in fall of 2007. The party started at Downtown LA's Crash Mansion before moving to Club 740, La Cita and eventually, The Lash. It was at La Cita that Mustache Mondays developed into a globally recognized force in queer underground and experimental club culture. At its inception, downtown LA wasn't known for its nightlife. Mustache offered a queer-focused environment far different from the prevailing West Hollywood gay scene and became an incubator for artists like Total Freedom and Asmara (one-half of Nguzunguzu), who were both resident DJs, as well as the likes of Kelela, Kingdom and Mexico City's NAAFI collective. Over the years, the small weekly hosted the likes of Arca, DJ Rashad and Diplo. In recent years, Mustache had transformed from a weekly to a monthly event. Last summer, Nava collaborated with the performance artist Ron Athey on an experimental theater piece called Dolores: Our Lady Of The Sorrows. Mustache Mondays cofounder Josh Peace tells Resident Advisor Nacho was, "focusing on his new endeavor, casting and consulting for film and commercial," at the time of his death. Nava died of pneumonia after battling the illness for several days. He was 42. "Intersectionality and inclusivity were what inspired Nacho the most. He was a true visionary and thrived on creating spaces for artists he loved to shine, especially queer people of color," Peace recalls. "Even though we were the same age, he always felt like a big brother, someone I wanted to make proud because I knew he believed in me. He made many people feel that same kind of love and encouragement. It was exactly the kind of person he was and why he is now being missed by a huge community he built himself." A GoFundMe page has launched in Nacho's name. At the time of publishing, $17,000 had been raised to throw an event celebrating Nava's life and establish a scholarship and/or memorial fund to benefit the nonprofit causes and communities he devoted his life to serving: homelessness, the LGBTQI community and the progressive arts. Funeral services for Nava will be held at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana at 1:30 PM on Saturday February 2nd. A Celebration Of Life party will run the next day from 2 to 10 PM at Resident.

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