San Francisco's Humblingly Epic Drag Queens

It’s not all “Yas queen” and shade throwing. When it comes to the drag community, the emphasis is on community.

San Francisco loves drag queens. That’s no surprise. What many people don’t realize, however, is just how much they love their city right back. Despite years of inequality, price-outs, and constant hustle, no town in America has let their freak flag fly as proudly or for as long as San Francisco. We’ve been a hotbed for genderbending drag performers for decades, and though San Francisco wasn’t always easy on them, their bottom line always seems to come back to one thing: community.

The Battery is proud to say that over the years, the club has showcased some of the best drag queens in San Francisco, like Bay Area native and drag icon Juanita MORE!. “The San Francisco drag community is really eclectic. It’s different from LA and New York, and it has its own flavor,” says MORE!. “San Francisco is the one city in the U.S. that you can run away to and be yourself, or be the person that you want to be, and no one really cares. You’re always accepted. I’m proud to be a San Francisco drag queen, that’s for sure!”

In the grand tradition of philanthropist queens before them like the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence — who have been working with the queer community and beyond since 1979 — San Francisco’s drag stars serve much more than just looks. MORE!, who has been a staple on the drag scene for nearly three decades, is perhaps best known in San Francisco for her wildly popular Pride weekend parties, which raise money for various LGBTQ organizations. She’s also well known for the Queer Agenda Voting Guide that she tirelessly researches. In the city’s recent mayoral race, MORE! campaigned alongside Mark Leno. She says it was his focus on the city’s homelessness epidemic — something she understands all too well from her own civic work — that won her vote.

“When I look back, it used to be possible to run away here with $500 in your pocket and figure it out and survive. Kids think that’s still possible, but they don’t survive. I would see kids coming every day to Larkin Street Youth Services and some of them were queer, and it was painful for me to see them every day checking in and then suddenly not checking in ... and I’d find them hustling. That pattern really broke my heart,” says MORE!.

MORE! is far from alone in her work. Dulce De Leche, her drag daughter (a term for the student/mentor relationship between budding and established queens), says that it was both the artistic and philanthropic aspects of drag that really made her fall in love with it. “Before I worked in drag, I was working on the Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) study for HIV Prevention Trials Network [a study that tested the use of antiretroviral drugs to prevent HIV, which is a new usage, as these drugs were previously used only in treatment]. I was heavily involved in community work, but this was another level, where I could do art and be creative. It was a way to serve the community in a different way,” says De Leche.

Of course, the generous drag scene is still far from immune to San Francisco’s constantly changing landscape. When longtime Latinx gay bar Esta Noche closed down in 2014, it sent a shock through the queer community. De Leche calls that moment “the killer of the Latino community” but is finding hope in the events by former Esta fixtures like Persia, a queen who regularly works with Drag Queen Story Hour — reading to children and building acceptance in the process.

“I got my start at Esta Noche and I was performing there for six years straight,” says Persia, who noted the need for safe spaces like Esta Noche in the LGBTQ community. “It was my drag home. All my worlds were in one spot: I have my Latinx side, my queer side, all my worlds were in one. There are Latinx nights and parties that pop up here and there, but it’s kind of sad to see that it’s a night instead of a place.”

Even drag legend Heklina has felt San Francisco’s squeeze. That’s why she helped found the aptly named Oasis, a gay club and performance space in SOMA.

“It’s important to have a place like Oasis, because the city is rapidly gentrifying. It’s lost some of the magic it had when I first got here — a lot of artists had to leave. The Castro used to have performance venues, but gradually they were lost. Every time someone would build a new venue, they’d say ‘Yeah, we’re building a stage,’ but then you’d see it would be the size of a postage stamp,” says Heklina, who in 1996 also founded Trannyshack (since renamed Mother), a much-loved drag variety show.

In the past decade, drag has sashayed into the cultural zeitgeist like never before, largely due to the reality-TV competition RuPaul’s Drag Race. While the popularity is good for business, these queens all agree that it’s time to acknowledge the work they do both on and off the stage.

“We’re not just these clowns who can’t wait to go perform for five dollars somewhere. It is an effort to get dressed up like this. It’s not frivolous. It’s an art form. We’re there to entertain you, but we ask you to have some respect for the art form of drag,” says Heklina.

Heklina

On getting started:

I was kind of a lost teenager. Definitely a club kid. It was a different world then. Everyone around me was dying of AIDS and I didn't really think about the future. Everyone was trying to stay present and live for today. When I moved to SF, I started doing underground theater with a troupe called the Sick & Twisted Players. Gradually, I started doing male and female roles and had fun with it. At the same time, I was working at The Stud bar and they asked me if I wanted to try throwing a party. They knew that I knew a lot of people, so I opened a Tuesday night party called Trannyshack, and it just took off. I wasn't planning to make drag my career, but it was just my calling. It happened organically.

On the best part of Oasis:

You can tell that Oasis was opened by drag queens when you go into the dressing room. I have worked in so many dumps over the years that don't have a bathroom in the dressing rooms, no mirror, no lighting. We designed Oasis for performance. The dressing room has a bathroom, it has mirrors, a dressing area – and the best thing is that it opens directly from the dressing room onto the stage. I hate leaving a dressing room and having to walk through an audience to get to the stage. It drains all the magic out of it.

On hosting a Hillary Clinton fundraiser with Cher:

We scrubbed that dressing room top to bottom. We got flowers. We bought a new rug. It was so surreal talking to her in the dressing room. Over the years, I've done so many tributes to Cher and here was Cher talking to me with that Cher voice and I was like, “It's really her!”

Dulce De Leche

On meeting Juanita MORE!

I met Mr. David (Juanita’s drag mother) first. We were out at dinner one night and he looked at me, looked at Juanita, and said, “Juanita, that’s your drag daughter right there.” We kind of laughed about it, but a week or two later I asked her if she’d be my drag mother. Juanita doesn’t do anything without putting some thought into it, so she asked why out of all the queens in the city it should be her. I told her how much I love everything she does for the community. I love that she’s a Latina drag queen and she’s holding that space.

On the future of drag:

The biggest thing I see is acceptance in mainstream America. That television show Pose did a great job of showing what the AIDS epidemic did to the New York gay community and how it changed everyday life. That’s real, and to bring it into the homes of America is fantastic.

On drag misconceptions:

I wish people understood how hard it is to be a drag queen. Some people see the performance and they’ll see the makeup and they’ll think that that’s it, but there’s so much more to being a drag queen. You’re a philanthropist, you’re accounts payable, you’re a video editor, you’re a promoter, you’re a producer, you are whatever you need to be in that moment.

By Laura Marie Braun