Tag Archive | "Drag Queens"

Wet, Plump and Freshly Glossed The Ladies of Lips Restaurant & Nightclub are Dragalicious!

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By Richard Hack

Photo: The showgirls of Lips: (top row) Twat, Velvet, Alexis, April, Chocolatta, Jennifer
(middle row) Nicolette, Diva, Misty, (bottom row) Nicole, Charlize, Deja, and Franchesque.

To enter the queendom of Lips, the restaurant, nightclub and show palace, is to enter a place that lavishes enchantment right along with its signature knock-you-on your-ass frozen cosmos. It’s not just the chandeliers shaped like stiletto pumps or the gauzy drapes in fuchsias and limes and the occasional tangerine. Nor is it the stage no larger than a postage stamp decked out with more tinsel than the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. It’s not even the food, though the menu, heavy on large portions and sauced dishes, is quite good.

No. This queendom is special because of its royalty – the multi-talented assortment of drag stars and their transsexual equivalents who perform Tuesday through Sunday in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of feathers, sequins, push-up bras, and wigs the size of Cincinnati. With names like Velvet, Deja, Franchesque, Charlize, Nicole, April, Chocolatta, Jennifer, Charity, Martina and Champagne, they sweep, wiggle, and saunter their way through numbers that are bawdy, brazen, and cosmically comic mixing generations, genders and polite bodily movements in a ratatouille of wit and wisdom, all girdled in bustiers.

This mélange of crowns, tiaras and rhinestone excess is the responsibility of Yvonne Lamé – the Southern Belle who created the concept over thirteen years ago in New York, where all things are apparently possible, opening the first Lips in Greenwich Village.

Several years later, an off-spring sprouted like a wild orchid in San Diego, to equal critical acclaim. Four years ago next month, Lips Fort Lauderdale was born.

In a city where drag is as common as seashells, the unique collection of talent at Lips brought gays, straights, and other unidentified lifestyles and whipped them into a fricassee of excitement, themed to various nights of the week. Each has a hostess who reigns over their evening, shedding joy like confetti on New Year’s Eve. And it is to these four super-drags, if you will, that we pay homage with a curtsey and bow. After all, royalty they are and royalty they shall always be.

DIVA

The Queen Bee of the bunch reigning supreme on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings is the blonde and bejeweled Diva – no last name necessary.

“I started out as a window dresser at Marshall Field’s in Chicago in the 80s,” Diva remembers. “It was really the dream job for a budding drag queen, having access to every department in this enormous department store that had a little of everything. The drag part came as the result of a dare – when friends coaxed me into entering a talent contest at a Chicago bar called Off Broadway. It wasn’t a drag talent contest per se, but I dolled up in full ensemble, and ended up winning the show!

“I’ve never been good at reading the fine print, but as it turned out, in order to collect my $100 prize money, I had to make a second appearance at the place the following week. For some reason, the hostess for the evening was a no-show. The club’s owner asked me to fill in, and I had such a good time, I stayed on for the next two years – hosting the event every Monday night!

“When Marshall Field’s got bought out by Macy’s, I got transferred to Florida to do the windows in a new store being built at Broward Mall in Plantation, and ended up supplementing my income by doing drag at the old Boardwalk in North Miami Beach. At the time, I never thought of it as a career. That happened the moment I realized that I was earning more money doing drag on the weekends than I was Monday-Friday at my day job,” Diva reveals.

There were pit stops in Miami, Opa-Locka, and Hialeah, before Diva became a Fort Lauderdale fixture at the original Trannie Shack show at Elements, housed in the building where the current Scandals bar is located.

“The owners of Lips saw me at Elements, offered me a job at their club—then under construction and I’ve been working the room ever since.”

Friday and Saturday nights, birthday and bachelorette parties abound with audiences that get so enthusiastic that the word “wild” becomes a p.s. for the night. A third show on Saturday night called “Taboo” is Diva’s favorite since it allows the girls to reveal a bit more skin and push the envelope to just this side of naughty.

“During the week, we’re the Disney of Drag,” says Diva. “The late show on Saturday night is where we get sexual. We even have a different menu.” And the way she says it, you just know Diva is licking her lips.

MISTY EYEZ
The always upbeat Misty Eyez is a big woman with a big story. She was raised to be a pastor and graduated from Oklahoma’s Oral Roberts University.  But it wasn’t the pulpit that turned out to be her eventual calling. All that changed on one fateful Halloween, when Misty dressed in drag to celebrate the holiday.

“Anything is possible on Halloween, and since I was struggling to come out of the closet while living with my very conservative Christian family, I dressed up as this gorgeous woman for a contest, which I was absolutely convinced I would win. Looking back at the pictures now, I was a hideous mess, but at the time I thought I looked gorgeous. While I didn’t win, it did make me more comfortable with myself and my sexuality, and eventually I just began to dress up more… and well, one thing led to another,” she says, fluttering lashes that seem poised to fly right off of her eyelids and across the room.

“My drag career began in 2003 at a bar called Trixies in Hollywood, but it wasn’t until two years later, when I moved to Elements, that my drag career really exploded. It’s funny, ‘cause I’m really very sweet,” she says, flashing a grin as sly as it is witty. “They called me  the South Florida Sweetheart. I’m just nice by nature,” she says.

Hard to believe that this is the woman chosen to host Lips’ Wednesday night Bitchy Bingo, where cattiness is queen right along with

Misty Eyez. “It’s really funny,” she says, “but sometimes I’m half-way through the show and I have to remind myself to be nastier. It really doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m all about peace and harmony.”

It’s easy to feel the love from this drag star whose chosen career has caused a seeming unmendable rift with her family. “Oh, they think of me as a backsliding homosexual who’s going to burn in hell. Now, I still think of myself as a good Christian. Yet, they won’t even consider talking to me until I return to Jesus.”

And that’s not the only struggle that keeps Misty Eyez busy, separating the personas while hoping to heal what she sees as segregation within the gay and lesbian community itself. “Here we all are fighting for equality, and we can’t get along among ourselves. Gays don’t talk to lesbians who don’t talk to trannies. The circuit boys don’t talk to the bears who don’t talk to the twinks.

The leather queens don’t talk to anyone. We need to respect ourselves, before we can expect the rest of the world to respect who we are. I will never give up my fight to bring us all together. Never,” she says. And she means it.

NICOLETTE

Nicolette is a tiny bundle of talent known for her ability to transform into famous superstars, Reba McEntire among them. Hosting Lips on Thursday nights’ Dinner with the Divas, Nicolette rotates the spotlight between Barbra, Judy, Lisa, Tina, and Marilyn among
others.

“Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined doing drag for a living,” she says. “The first time I tried it, I was 22-years-old in Monroe, Louisiana, and entered a drag contest in a club called Hot Shots. I had never seen a drag show, so needless to say, I didn’t win. However,” she pauses, hoisting a well-manicured finger into the air, “two months later, I returned with a new look, a new song, and a new attitude about the whole business. This time, I won, I’m happy to say.”

At the time, the bar didn’t have a regular drag night, but the events proved so popular that they turned their Tuesday nights into an all-drag event with Nicolette getting her first regular paid engagement.

“I worked there for several years before moving on to Nashville, where I worked for several more years. Then about 10 years ago, I moved to Florida and began working at the old Madame’s Restaurant & Cabaret in Sunny Isles with Franchesque and Nicole. When Lips opened, we all moved here, and each of us developed our own celebrity impressions.”

Diana Ross, Cher, Madonna, Bette Midler – all get their moments on stage most Thursday nights as the lookalikes threaten to outdo the originals with costumes and creativity.

Nicolette returns on Sunday afternoons for Gospel Brunch, leading the always-irreverent Sisters of Sequins to raise their voices in joyful song. It’s the only standing ovation where the audience is on its knees.

“My mother is so supportive of what I do,” Nicolette smiles in appreciation. “My twelve-year-old sister too,” she adds. “My father… well, not so much. He knows what I do, and once he saw  me on television. Never said whether he liked it, but… maybe some day,” she says still smiling. Talent has a way of making the impossible happen.

TWAT LaROUGE

Tuesday nights at Lips is Dragalicious, the new game show evening when strangers become the best of friends in impromptu contests that involve gags, props, and prizes galore. The game show night is the creation of Twat LaRouge, and it’s only fitting that this multi-talented costume and jewelry designer-turned-showgirl should keep the fun rolling with a $16.95 prix fixe menu and $5.00 frozen cosmos.

“I got dressed in drag for the very first time in 1999 in Kansas City Missouri, at a club called Cabaret,” she says. I was getting my BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and created this character for my senior thesis. She was a mother figure, with no breasts, no hips, a flattened face – downtrodden and emotionally abused by her family.

“During the show, the woman makes a trip to a store and comes out transformed! She went from brunette to blonde, had a huge head, huge eyes, and these giant hips that have since become my signature look. It was like nothing anyone had ever seen… and it’s still unique today,” Twat says.

The following year, on January 2, 2000, Twat, now a regular at the Cabaret, met a kindergarten teacher named Johnny, a graduate of Marymount Manhattan College, a theater and dance school in New York City. It was one of those love-at-first-sight kind of things, and the pair have been together ever since. (They were officially married a few years back.)

Since Johnny moonlighted as an actor in an underground drag show called Late Night Theater, it took only a small leap of networking before Twat was designing their costumes and sets. And when both of these lovebirds lost their jobs unexpectedly, a leap of faith (and Twat’s ailing step-mother) brought the pair to South Florida where fame (and Lips) awaited.

Both Twat and her Johnny, now working in drag as Chocolatta, were hired by Her Majesty Yvonne. And the rest, as they say, is history.  The pair have this remarkable ability to finish each other’s sentences. Such is the stuff of true love. And they can often been seen together on stage in Lips.

For Dragalicious, while Twat runs the show, Game Show Johnny is out of drag and by her side. It’s a one-two punch not to be missed.
“We’re together for the long haul,” says Twat, who Chocolatta happily announces is the “creative one.” “We’ve had so many great times together it more than makes up for the occasional bitchy drag queen we’ve come across.

“We’ve had cigarette holes burned in our costumes, and drinks poured into our suitcases,” says Chocolatta. “But for the most part, drag queens are sweet. That’s how we always try to be, welcoming the scared newcomers and extending a helping hand.”

But that’s hardly the only thing that sets this team apart. “We sew all our own costumes, make our own jewelry, mix our own music,”says Twat. “Nothing in our acts are ever duplicated anywhere. We always give a positive, embracing, creative show.”

As a way of giving back, Twat and Chocolatta volunteer at Drag It  Out, a not-for-profit organization that teaches drag to both men and women. “From ages 19 to over 50, they just want to have fun.” Sign us up for some of that.

 

Dinner with the Divas A Special Benefit for Neighbors4Neighbors

The Ladies of Lips bring their  special divas to life in support of Neighbors4Neighbors to help South Florida children and families in need. Hosted by Diva and CBS4 News Anchor George Estevez, the evening showcases songs by Madonna, Cher, Diana Ross, Tina Turner and illusions newly created for the show. Michael Goodman and  Jen Klaassens co-chair the event, Wednesday, November 9, starting a 6 p.m. with a VIP reception. Dinner and show follow at 7 p.m. Tickets are $50 per person. VIP tickets are $75, including a champagne reception and premium seating. To purchase tickets, call 305-597-4404 or www.neighbors4neighbors.org.

Lips is located at 1421 E Oakland Park Blvd. in Oakland Park, FL. For information or reservations, please call 954-567-0987.

Let Them Entertain Us

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ALEX VAUGHN

 

Last week, I was invited to a fantastic show at Tropics with Joe Posa as Joan Rivers (hilarious) and Scott Townsend as Cher who sang live just like the lady herself. The show was a riot; viper tongued one-liners, classic songs and a great atmosphere. After the show, I was chatting with my friend who happened to be the producer, Christopher L. Gjertsen, about how much I had enjoyed it and he explained he wanted to create an intimate cabaret feel. It worked, and it dawned on me for all the issues we have and the various concerns that could better the community, the one thing that we have down pat is entertainment!

Since I have been in Florida, I have seen some of the most fantastic shows and, remarkably, what makes them special is, regardless of venue, each and every performer I have seen treat their audiences like Broadway theatre-goers each and every time. Without a doubt, the cabaret shows here – from both drag queens to the lovely ladies and gentleman such as Debra Hampton, Jennifer McClain and Tony and Gloria, just off the top of my head – are far from amateur; they are incredibly talented professionals who have stayed and stuck by the community because of the incredible vibe that exists here in terms of appreciating their talent and entertainment.

If I were to list all of the fun cabaret acts I have seen in my time in Florida, I would undoubtedly forget someone and, for all my enjoyment, I don’t think I would want to be up against one of our beloved 6ft 5 drag queens in a dark alley! I will say this, though: South Florida has achieved a love and understanding for classic and contemporary shows that is worth celebrating.

The vision I always had of the kind of shows you see in bars was a tragic one. Someone on stage trying their best to engage with an audience that just doesn’t care … you know a lot like that Elkie Brook’s song Pearl’s a Singer, singing songs for the lost and the lonely at a beer stained table. Amazingly, that isn’t the case here. The audience may not pay directly to see the entertainer but, without a doubt, you can tell people have come to see them, to encourage them and I have no doubt that is why we have so many acts that have played and stayed with us here.

I have had the privilege of interviewing a few of our beloved cabaret entertainers and asking them why they hadn’t gone on to make CD’s or tour or try out for a reality show and they all shrugged in a generally semi-interested way, saying basically they were happy where they were. I had always thought this a bit odd, as they are all remarkably talented. Doesn’t the fame fortune and bright lights call them? Then I made a real mistake and decided it must be a case of a big fish in a small pond – they could be stars here as it’s a relatively small area of the world, but the critique of millions would be a daunting prospect for anyone. I remember interviewing one of our resident entertainers who thought the idea of a reality show was absurd. I remember her saying, basically we get judged and scrutinized everyday why go on TV to have it done by millions!

Watching the American Idol final the other day, I suddenly thought about the appeal of what I have seen here. Their shows are not just a four minute song belted out to shock America (though many of them have some pipes!), but a delight in jokes, songs and anecdotes, something you couldn’t convey to millions on a talent show and, quite frankly, wouldn’t want to. This is all the more special because their acts – their stories – are what make them so respected here. The simple fact is what they offer is either naturally suited to the community or tweaked to do so. If you have ever seen one of our entertainers, and I say ‘our’ because they are ours, then you can agree that the connection they ALL make with their audience is magical. I have heard many performers, local, national and global, say when they are on stage they come alive. The most magical thing I have seen here with the community is we support that, we revel in it as much as they do. More so than anywhere I have been, we appreciate what they do, not just with tips, but with requests, applause and, more importantly, with the love we show by making sure we go to their shows.

This week I urge you to see someone. They are all incredible and pretty much any night of the week there is someone there to listen to, watch and be entertained by. I often say one of the things I miss most about London is the culture, namely the theatre, and only recently have I come to realize that we have here a different kind of theatre, one that is just a little bit more special. Intimate venues with talented performers who I genuinely believe come to entertain us because they want to. They respect, appreciate and enjoy being their most spectacular selves night after night within an arena in which they feel safe, understood and loved. We all want that ultimately, so go, get a cocktail, sit back and enjoy! Let them entertain you. Trust me, it’ll be as good for you as it is for them!

 

Alex Vaughn is the Editor-in-Chief of the Florida Agenda. He can be reached at editor@FloridaAgenda.com

Community Profile: Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

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Local Chapter Puts the “Fun” Back into Fundraising

(Photo: Provided by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence)

They can now be seen at almost every community gathering. They stand their stoically, usually quiet and very “nun-like”. They are dressed as nuns but are often adorned with large amounts of jewelry with white faces, campy makeup which can include glitter. They are the local chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, known as the South Florida Sisters of the Rising Sun.

The South Florida Sisters were founded by Sister Penny Trater and they made their first public appearance in the March 2009 at the annual PrideFest. Though someone might have looked upon them as being a strange oddity at that time, the Sisters have become well known and respected.

The national Sister of Perpetual Indulgence was founded by a group of four gay men in 1979 San Francisco — the Harvey Milk era. This was at the time when the city’s Castro District was just coming into its own as a gay community. The men wanted to bring attention to the rapidly growing gay presence in the city and fight for their equal rights. The first time men marched along the beach wearing nun costumes they rented, which resembled those worn in The Sound of Music, and they were carrying guns.

One of the sisters wore white clown makeup on his face along with black lipstick. He happened to have been a well-known male escort in the San Francisco area and did not want to be recognized. After several appearances in the community, the sisters noticed that most of the photographs printed in the newspaper about their antics were of the white-faced member which gave them the idea of all wearing the white makeup.

Their membership increased and as members moved out of San Francisco to other areas of the county, and they formed their own orders of the Sister of Perpetual Indulgence. Today, there are over 600 orders of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence worldwide, each with its roots from the original order (“Mother House”) in San Francisco, except one, the local Fort Lauderdale order.

“I was in Portland, Oregon on vacation,” said Sister Penny. “When I saw the Sisters there I was struck by their amazing makeup and their presence. I had never heard about them before and I read up on them and I loved what they did and the work they did and decided to start a chapter.” She then got in contact and visited the nearest chapter to South Florida which is in Tampa. The Sisters are all volunteers and locally there are 9 solid members.

“We’re queer nuns for the gay community,” said Sister Sophia St. Michaels. “When people see us, they see the fun and activities we have with all the makeup and outfits and glamour, but it does take a lot of work and commitment. We put the fun back into fun raising. It really is a calling.”

“Commitment?” said Sister Psycho Analeyez. “It takes a lot of commitment. It takes two hours alone just to do the makeup. Sometimes getting ready can be a drag.”

The Sisters are also committed to the community holding fundraisers for charities and being present at various events.

They describe the international Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to being a combination of a large national fraternity and a nun missionary. Each chapter must be approved by the international organization. There are international conclaves alternating annually between San Francisco and Amsterdam on Easter weekend. Each month, all the orders participate in a huge international conference to discuss plans and what each order had done over the last month. The United Nun Privy Council (UNPC), is the headquarters organization.

Each order can be distinguished by the headpiece worn by the Sisters. The South Florida Sisters of the Rising Sun’s headpiece has a large platter shape to it indicating the sun. The Tampa order’s headpiece resembles a pirate’s hat and the Orlando order’s headpiece resembles Mickey Mouse ears.

Each order answers to its Mother Sister order but since Sisters of the Rising Sun is not an offspring of another order, the UPC started a new program just for them. “It’s an amazing experience for us not having a sister from a Mother order,” said Sister Sophia. “It’s kind of a good thing and it’s not such a good thing because we’ve had to learn by ourselves with calling someone for help.”

“Fundraising can be very tedious,” said Sister Penny, “but it okay in a nun’s outfit.” They do realize that some people are startled the first time people see the sisters. “Any time you see us, don’t be afraid to approach us. Come to us and give us a kiss or ask us questions. We don’t bite … unless you ask us to bit. We even give hand-on blessings. It’s not above us to get down and dirty. We’re not shy.”

The South Florida Sisters of the Rising Sun is open to anyone. For more information, email sisterpenny@southfloridasisters.org

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