The Gay Super Bowl was last night
The bars in the gayborhood were packed on Monday night for the season finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
We watched the finale at Alexandre’s while sitting between an underweight boy who kept screaming “YASSS COME THROUGH!” and an overweight man who kept asking whether every drink he ordered “had carbs.” (The bartender lied to him, of course.)
After much anxiety, tweeting, and YAS!, we learned that Bob the Drag Queen won the title of America’s Next Drag Super Star.
Thank god!
The top 3 contestants were very similar to last year’s finalists – two younger Instagram-famous queens and a slightly older queen who prioritized comedy over glamour.
Finalists Bob the Drag Queen, Kim Chi, and Naomi Smalls.
Last year, one of the pretty girls won.
This year, RuPaul made the right choice.
We live in an age where models aren’t bookable unless they have at least 10,000 Instagram followers. I think RuPaul has learned that this metric doesn’t quite work for drag queens.
Most of the best-looking Drag Race contestants have faded into obscurity, even after placing in the top 3 or winning the competition. This is because it is easy to replicate even the best drag looks, and booking fees for standard lip sync performances probably drop dramatically a few months after the finale.
Continued bookings depend on fans that will actually pay to see you perform and strong relationships with drag show directors. Your 22-year-old Instagram-famous queen is unlikely to have both for very long after the show ends.
The most successful queens use Drag Race as a springboard to launch careers which do not solely depend on RuPaul’s patronage – for example, Willam and Alyssa Edwards have independent followings due to highly successful web series, and Bianca Del Rio has her comedy tours.
Bob the Drag Queen also has the talent, wit, and drive to launch a career that will transcend her time on the show, which is why she was the right choice.
By the way, we actually got see Bob perform live in Dallas this weekend!
The show was at The Brick – a club that is very aggressive about booking celebrity talent because it is not on Cedar Springs Road (the street with the most gay bars.) The Brick routinely has guest appearances from Drag Race contestants, the Real Housewives of Dallas, and also hosted Erika Jayne a few months ago.
Erika Jayne performing at Brick Nightclub in Dallas, Texas.
We were squeamish about the $30 cover for Bob’s show, but ultimately paid it because we strongly suspected that she was going to win Drag Race.
Bob’s show was interesting because she took song suggestions directly from the audience and then performed a medley of everyone’s requests – which is why she’s truly a “drag queen for the people.”
The one annoying thing about seeing an event at The Brick is that the schedule is designed to maximize your time at the bar. For example, the opening acts did not start until around midnight for this show, and Bob came on around 1 a.m.
Bob the Drag Queen appearing at Brick Nightclub – purse first.
An opening act at Brick nightclub’s Bob the Drag Queen event.
This means that we did not really have time to bar hop on Cedar Springs afterward. I’m sure this is intentional (and a smart business move) but I hate feeling “stranded” at a bar away from the strip.
Despite the feeling of being stranded (only 3 blocks) from the strip, the event was fun and it was a privilege to see one of Bob’s last performances before he officially became America’s Next Drag Super Star!
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