Havana Bar & Grill is one of my favorite spots in the neighborhood. They’ve made a nightclub atmosphere work during the pandemic with table service, food that you can actually order, and amazing drag.
Havana Bar & Grill is one of my favorite spots in the neighborhood. They’ve made a nightclub atmosphere work during the pandemic with table service, food that you can actually order, and amazing drag.
Havana Lounge recently reopened on Cedar Springs Road with weekend drag shows. The lines for the bar have been insane, so Sunday’s afternoon drag show was our first time back.
I am continually surprised by how poorly LGBT events (and drag shows in particular) are promoted.
However, instead of reading people to filth complaining on Facebook, I realized that the marketing basics may not be common knowledge to everyone.
So, in the interest of helping all LGBT events succeed, here are the the basics of promoting a local drag show, according to me:
Overview — there are the three main components of promoting most drag shows:
Drag Race has been my favorite TV show for over a decade and marked important parts of my life so far.
For the last two years, Nellie’s Sports Bar hosted the most diverse drag show in the D.C.-Baltimore area. “Snatched Wednesdays” celebrated its two year anniversary last week, which was also the last show.
Hosted by Baltimore’s Brooklyn Heights, this show featured a strong core cast that was augmented by talented queens from across the metro. The Snatched Wednesdays audience also reflected the diversity of the performers: you could find all ages, races, genders and orientations.
One of the closest LGBT spaces near my apartment is a gay-owned brewery called Red Bear Brewing Co.
I went to a fabulous drag brunch on Sunday in Baltimore. The brunch was at Points South Latin Kitchen and there were flips, kicks, and a whole lot of food.
The show featured some of the best drag queens that I normally see in Washington DC such as Brooklyn Heights and Iyana Deschanel. There were also a few new faces, including Ariel Von Quinn, who did some crazy backflips in heels.
The event happened to be during the Fell’s Point Festival. This made parking a nightmare, but post-show sightseeing was worth it.
Here are some pictures!
I made it to the RuPaul’s Drag Race Hater’s Roast, which was at the Warner Theatre near Chinatown. Although I am used to seeing one-off Drag Race contestants at the bar, this is my first real Drag Race touring event.
The Hater’s Roast was hilarious, although there were an uncomfortable number of HIV and Holocaust jokes, (and at least a few Sahara Davenport digs). I was actually clutching my pearls during Mimi Imfurst’s set. I also was thrilled to see Miz Cracker, who looks as amazing in person as she does on TV.
Manila looked good, and Thorgy had her signature Muppet hair.
My last-minute ticket happened to be in the third row of the theater, so I got to make awkward eye contact with the performers. Maybe procrastination isn’t always such a bad thing…
Moving to The Dallas Morning News was a dramatic change for me.
Back in Minnesota, I worked on a 7,000-person suburban corporate campus. The Thomson Reuters campus was so huge that I had law school classmates who worked there for years before I ran into them. It was also common not to recognize anyone in the hallways if you didn’t work in that part of the building.
Since moving to Dallas, I worked from home and didn’t see coworkers in-person unless I was visiting a client’s office.
Now, I go to a downtown office every day. It’s nice being back in a real office because working from home started feeling like being under house arrest. I also had clients in every time zone, so there wasn’t a clear end to the work day.
We started the week with a drag pageant, and we ended the week with one too!
Yesterday, the Rose Room hosted the Miss Dallas FFI drag pageant and it was… colorful.
A contestant for Miss Dallas FFI at Large.
A very yellow look for the Dallas FFI “creative” drag competition.
I have attended many gay bar employee drag shows, but this was by far the most entertaining. The event was hosted by Anesta Roches and one of our favorite bartender as “Peaches.”
There were inventive costumes, high-glamour, a bearded queen, and a lot of surprisingly good live singing by the employees who normally host the Round-Up’s karaoke nights.
All of the contestants at the 2016 Round-up Saloon employee drag pageant.
As a charity pageant, the expectations were very low – most employee pageants are half-assed comedy events featuring a lot of burly guys in Goodwill dresses. That is why we were pleasantly surprised by the effort that everyone put into their looks and acts.
The Toast of the Townhouse Pageant was …interesting. About half of the contestants took it seriously and Mercedes Iman won!
It is Minneapolis Gay Pride season again. We started the hilarity off yesterday at the Gay 90’s Miss City of the Lakes Pageant, which was bizarre combination of experienced performers and extremely green queens.
The regular girls are hard to top:
