Drag Queen Justice: A Castro Revolution
Originally published on The Bold Italic.
Behind the boarded-up bars and nightclubs in the Castro — the epicenter of LGBTQ+ life in San Francisco — tectonic plates are colliding. Stiletto heels have drilled deep into long-simmering fault lines, triggering monumental queer earthquakes. A revolution is underway.
Sparked by the Black Lives Matter protests in early July, BIPOC drag queens helped launch a movement to investigate racism, a lack of inclusivity, safety, and toxic environments in San Francisco’s queer nightlife scene. It has been spearheaded by a new collective: the Bay Area Queer Nightlife Coalition (BAQNC).
To kick things off, the group surveyed roughly 300 people through an open call for participants, asking them to rank 27 bars and nightclubs on safety and inclusion on a scale of zero to four. These were mostly bars and clubs in San Francisco, particularly the Castro District, but the survey also included a few in the East Bay.
The survey results showed that many “women and femmes, Black and Indigenous folks, and Trans and Nonbinary folks didn’t feel safe or included in most nightlife spaces.” This response came up 45 times, representing approximately one-sixth of those surveyed. It also showed many participants felt nightlife spaces prioritized and centered “cis gay white men” over other patrons; failed to have marginalized groups adequately represented in staffing, management, and performances; and had a “culture of touching without consent and instances of sexual harassment.”
The BAQNC then scheduled the first must-see-Twitch-TV of Covid-19 on July 30: a virtual town hall to discuss the survey findings. The four lowest-scoring bars — Badlands/Toad Hall, The Edge, The Eagle, and Jolene’s — as well as the highest-scoring one — The Stud — agreed to answer questions about programming and staffing diversity. However, Jolene Linsangan, owner of Jolene’s in the Mission, didn’t show up. She currently faces a lawsuit from a former co-owner and accusations from former employees regarding racism and abuse.
Also on the morning of the town hall, Les Natali — the prolific Castro bar owner who has been dinged by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission for discriminating against Black people — announced via Badlands’ Facebook page that he was selling the historical gay club. It has been in operation for 45 years.
When it was time for the public forum to start, I logged in — along with more than 900 other viewers — and saw a side chatroom full of the who’s who of San Francisco’s drag luminaries. Nothing like this had ever been attempted before.
Drag queens Militia Scunt Towers and Afrika America co-hosted the event, first introducing the bar owners (or their representatives), then presenting them with the results of the survey and asked how they plan to improve. To me personally, what was most unexpected and incredulous was that the owners and management agreed to speak before a live audience (and recorded for posterity) with employees, entertainers, and patrons who have had harmful experiences at their establishments.
BamBam, a former bartender at The Edge, recounted being called the n-word three times while working at the bar. He then shared text messages from a current employee that read, “If we keep every single customer out of the bar that treats us like that, we could have five left.”
Michael Schauf, a representative of The Edge management, apologized. He said that was not okay. “I have 86’d a bunch of people that were not okay to you, and I’ll do it a million times more,” he added.
When asked by Afrika America how he felt after the exchange, BamBam replied, “I don’t really like talking because… it makes me feel uncomfortable. When I try to talk about my feelings, I’ve always been told that I’m just being sensitive. It’s a little hard because not a lot of people understand what it’s like to deal with racism in the Castro as a gay man.”
At one point, Schauf did not realize his Zoom was still on and muttered: “The thing is I knew there was going to be a lot of personal attacks from Roxy and Militia [San Francisco drag queens]… and not a lot of truths (inaudible),” he said.
I could hear the collective gay gasps of everyone watching, including my own, as the hot mic caught his private conversations off-screen. He just got caught bad-mouthing the premiere drag power couple in San Francisco.
A few days later, The Monster Show at The Edge — which, after 16 years, is the longest-running drag show in San Francisco (and which has gallantly produced a weekly online show throughout much of the pandemic) — announced they were ceasing productions to “listen” and “radically restructure.” I reached out to the creative team behind the show, but they declined.
Overnight, restorative social justice became the driving force in San Francisco’s queer nightlife scene.
“How did you ever convince the bar owners to participate in such a format?” I asked KaiKai Bee Michaels, the titular star of the smash hit Drag Hamilton and a BAQNC founder.
“For the most part, the owners seemed at least ideologically receptive,” KaiKai explained. “They want to do better. Folks here in San Francisco are smart enough to understand it’s inevitable — might as well get on board right now. Or at least try to pretend you are.”
Afrika America, the matriarch of BAQNC, spilled a more scalding cup of tea.
“Girl, I was horrified by how unprepared all the bars were,” she told me. “Everyone had seen the survey results. Fact. No one was ambushed. If I had read data like that, I would’ve shown up with an actionable plan that you can message on.”
Personally, it was my first time seeing what the owners who I gave my weekend dollars to looked like and what they had to say in response to these heartfelt complaints. A veil was lifted.
I was happy to see the discussion and debate take place but sad that The Monster Show was ending. I knew the original founder, Cookie Dough, before she passed away unexpectedly years ago and was touched when the drag community stepped up to the plate to keep Cookie’s legacy alive. It was a place where KaiKai and many other queens I interviewed began their drag careers. Even after 16 years, it still packed a crowd most Thursday nights in a tight, small space that wasn’t really built for performing — a notable boost for the Castro nightlife scene that has been in decline in recent years. It seemed unfair to me that the reason most people believe it was voluntarily ending was because the three hosts and the booker are cisgender white men.
When I expressed this sentiment to KaiKai, they nodded in sympathy but noted that their understanding was that the team wanted to find a more diverse cast to lead the show.
“We’re seeing such a lack of POC being able to access these leadership positions in our community,” they said. “There’s a level of prominence to be a host of the longest-running show. I can see how they want to find someone like that before they continue on.”
AsI pondered over these rapid changes in queer nightlife, I found myself fascinated with the particular dynamics of this movement and how it compares to the reckoning going on in other industries. BAQNC isn’t pursuing litigation or seeking executive/legislative intervention from the city that I know of. Their powers of persuasion, of being listened to, is based purely upon a shared way of life. This is an alternative sisterhood that embraces every marginalized voice seeking the spotlight.
It’s drag queen justice. They have a tacit understanding with each other: We will write our own oaths of honor, our own codes and understandings as to what is fair and what is right.
“So… what’s going on with the state of drag?” I asked Afrika America after that gagging town hall.
“It’s on hiatus and online,” she replied. “This is the perfect time to do the work because there are no performances going on.”
I reached out to The Edge to follow up on what’s happened since the meeting, and they did not respond. I will say that after Schauf’s gaffe against Roxy and Militia, the microphone caught his last utterance before his Zoom was shut off, and he admitted, “I have a lot of work to do.” I wanted to know: Did he really mean it?
As a patron who dreams of a revitalized Castro, one where people come out to play even when there isn’t a pandemic quarantine, I and all of us need to know that the owners who I give my money to share my values. That they are willing to do the work to be better.
And so I asked Afrika America, what would a better Castro look like?
“I would like to see more Black- and Brown-owned businesses,” she said. “I would like to see more LGBT-owned businesses in general. Less formula retail. The Castro like it used to be, late ’70s or early ’80s. It was a very quick moment of harmony — right after Harvey Milk’s assassination, when Dan White was going to trial. It was artists and freak shows and the disenfranchised. The Castro was a sanctuary.”
I asked KaiKai the same question.
“I think there are lots of people who at least consider themselves the good guys in the Castro — whether they’re gentrifiers or not,” they said. “I have some hope that we can fix some of these problems by just letting people who didn’t have access to our voice hear us. We will at least make some small (hopefully structural) changes that will culminate to create a bigger change.”
“So I can totally see the Castro being a place to actually model what gay nightlife (and daytime life) should be,” KaiKai continued. “It’s possible.”
