I hate the Russian. We get one in every season of every iteration around the globe, and I don’t think I have ever enjoyed one of the songs, laughed at one of the jokes, or really been bowled over by any of the performances. It often seems like this franchise has a set rotation of stock challenges, some good (Snatch Game) and some that are more tired than Michelle Visage (the Rusical, make a dress out of something weird, improv, girl group). For me, the best part of every episode is when we get to see the girls walk down the runway in killer looks that they have preplanned. That’s why the ball challenge (three looks in one night!) is always my favorite. What we haven’t had in seasons is a new, exciting, iconic challenge that not only will challenge the queens in a way they can’t prepare for but also will excite the audience. Without that, we have what seems like a game show that is stuck on autopilot.

This episode starts with another iconic and beloved challenge, the reading challenge. Ru says, “The British Library is open,” and I worry which poor country will be colonized and looted to fill it up this time. Each of the queens gets up, puts on a ridiculous pair of glasses, and pokes loving fun at all of her companions. This time, the ladies seem to go a little light on one another and don’t hit the punch lines as well as in the past. The only snaps go to Pixie, who says, “Baby? No thanks, I’m pro choice.” Who doesn’t love an abortion joke? Pixie, of course, is the winner.

That means she gets the task of assigning the roles. I love that they chose the shadiest queen to dole out the parts because the process nearly always leads to bickering. Putting the nastiest queen in charge almost ensures it. But pixie is a little too, well, polite and basically lets all the girls select their own roles. Even when Cheddar and Dakota face off over the role of Rochelle, a slutty cockroach, the rest of the crew votes and gives it to Cheddar based on the quality of her French accent.

This leaves Pixie with the lead role of Lairy Poppins, Mary Poppins’s demonic twin sister who wants to get the kids drunk on bin juice. (For the Americans in the room, a “bin” is a trash can, and the juice is what leaks out of it, a very specific substance we don’t entirely have a name for in America, but anyone who has ever taken out the trash at a restaurant job knows exactly what it is and what it smells like. Pixie’s only problem is that, when learning her role, she realizes, like Michelle wriggling into Carson Kressley’s Skimms, it’s not really a good fit. Pixie goes to Danny and asks if she’s willing to switch roles and give Pixie the part of the chimney sweep. This seems to be setting up a friendship between the two but also an ongoing rivalry. Did Pixie shoot herself in the foot by taking the worse part, or even worse, did she shoot herself in the foot by giving Danny the bigger part and once again being outshone by her?

We go through the usual paces of the Russian. The girls learn to sing with Michelle Visage and then learn how to dance with Giovanni Pernice from Strictly Come Dancing. (Or Dancing With the Stars if you only speak America.) Gio is giving us Dance: 10; Hot Daddy Who Can Move His Hips Like Shakira Twerking in an Earthquake: 3 million. Danny says he hopes the Strictly Curse (a tabloid phenomenon where stars on the show cheat on their spouses with their dance partners) carries over to Drag Race. “I don’t know if Giovanni is a chubby chaser, but if he is, I’m running,” Danny says, a line a million times funnier than anything in the Russian.

Throughout this process, it’s hard to tell who’s in trouble. Cheddar can’t dance, and neither can Danny. Baby can’t sing, and Dakota, well, she can’t do either because all she can do is be the most gorgeous thing you ever saw in your life.

We get to the final performance and, uh, I’ve forgotten almost everything that happened, and I was taking notes so I could write this here recap. I loved that Pixie paints her mouth on crooked as the Cockney chimney sweep, but that’s the only memorable thing about her performance. Baby does well in a patter song as a rich mother. Dakota and Peppa are serviceable as bratty kids, but Peppa is way better than Dakota, who is channeling Meryl Streep’s wax figure at Madame Tussauds. JB (the queen formerly known as Jonbers) does a ridiculous (in a good way) pigeon prostitute or something. Not to kink-shame, but not my fetish. Cheddar is a sexy cockroach and, once again, not my fetish.

The one standout is Danny Beard. She comes out as the acid-tipped Lairy Poppins with an even thicker accent than usual and just gives us Beetlejuice fractured insanity and it is absolutely amazing. When everyone takes the runway, Danny wows yet again. The category is West End Wonders (the West End is England’s Broadway), and he comes out as Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors and it is one of the best things we’ve ever seen on this stage. It looks like an actual Broadway (okay, maybe a little Off Broadway) costume complete with a plant puppet on the head. Of course, she wins, for the second week in a row. She may be this year’s Lawrence Chaney, just destined to take the trophy back to the north. (“Queen of the North!” they chant, like it’s Game of Thrones.)

I was a little confused about the judging in this episode. Pixie Polite, as an amazing Tracy Turnblad from Hairspray complete with a full-costume reveal, had a great runway, but I thought she got lost in the mix during the Rusical. The judges, however, loved her. As for Baby, who was repping for the pop musical & Juliet, I thought she was far stronger performing than they gave her credit for. The same goes for Le Fil, who I thought gave the Mary Poppins character some priggy peaks and slutty valleys. The judges thought she wasn’t that great but loved her King & I robes, complete with bedazzled abs, which were worth their own crown.

I agreed with the judges when it came to JB, who was finally in the top, but I hated how Michelle thought her outfit was poorly constructed. In an ode to Singin’ in the Rain (which is a movie musical, but let us not quibble), she had a high-end slicker with poofy cages underneath. I loved it. Dakota, naturally, was on the bottom, and she gave us Funny Girl realness. This, once again, is my problem with Dakota, who is the most beautiful queen of the season. She’s giving us something a little too close to the original; there’s no interpretation or exaggeration to turn it into drag. What we have instead is just a pretty girl. With no subversion, it’s just a good costume, not drag.

The final lip sync is between Baby and Dakota. They are evenly matched doing “No Way” from the musical Six, though it seems Baby may have an edge until Dakota leaves the stage when the singer says she’s leaving, and then pops right back around the corner. It made Ru laugh, and the key to winning this competition is always to make Ru laugh.

I was on the edge of the sofa waiting to see who would get kicked off and then Baby pipes up and self-eliminates. The whole episode Baby talks about her struggles with her mental health in the competition and how it’s giving her anxiety. She always thought she would be so good at this, and the fact that she’s struggling is giving her a sort of cognitive dissonance. I’m all for taking care of one’s mental health, but why do it after the lip sync? Why not do it on stage? If this was really about mental health, why not do it in the middle of the week? When Adore Delano needed to leave for her mental health, she didn’t wait until she was a loser on the runway; she just packed her bags and went home. BenDeLaCreme self-eliminated when she had the power to eliminate someone else — when she was on top. This is altogether different.

Instead, baby waited, and we’ll never know if she was actually going to be sent home. This spares her from the torture of being eliminated but will never let Dakota know if she won or not. Is she here because she bested Baby, or is she here because Baby quit? So, Baby says, if she had stayed, it would have been over for everyone. But would she have stayed? What Ru about to give her walking papers? This seems like a way for a very fractured ego to take a little bit of control back from the process, a way for her to say, “I was never eliminated.” Sorry baby, I don’t think that’s fair. And I still hate the Russian.

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D’Arcy Drollinger’s livelihood is about bringing people together. When the coronavirus pandemic forced the actor, writer, and director to shut down Oasis – his San Francisco cabaret and nightclub that has been home to more than 100 drag queens and kings since it opened in 2015 – he had to get creative.

Drollinger has launched a YouTube channel and produced a weekly drag parody show that turns his club into a soundstage. And he’s been crowdfunding to support some of his part-time workers.

But perhaps its greatest success story from a strenuous stretch is “Meals on Heels”, where customers are offered dinner and drinks for delivery or pickup with a lip-synchronous performance of a drag queen or a king.

“Some days I feel like the biggest idiot and other days I feel like the last person standing and holding this space open for the community when it’s the last thing I do,” Drollinger said in one Telephone interview. “It was intense, but every day feels exciting and rewarding when you feel like you are influencing other people’s lives.”

Meals on Heels was supposed to be a one-time deal, a fun way to give some of the club’s regular artists who have been out of work since March a chance to make money. When the drag-on-demand service became popular, so many people called to request a performance that Meals on Heel became a weekly offer.

Drollinger contacted his good friend and fellow actress and director Cindy Goldfield. Goldfield felt useless after the shows she had planned for the summer were canceled. After buying far too much groceries on a frenzied trip to Costco, Goldfield started a grocery prep and cooked meal service in April with her partner, Chef Willi Nordby, Martha Avenue Home.

“I’m a person who needs a sense of use and this has given me a real sense of connectedness with our community and a sense of purpose,” said Goldfield, who also works as an event planner.

The special menu “Meals on Heels”, which Nordby and Goldfield created for Drollinger on Fridays, offers everything from Mediterranean barbecues and Provencal cuisine to Mediterranean and Pan-Asian products.

“It’s about eating … something that feels comfortable and grounded,” Nordby said during this chaotic time, referring to the wildfires that struck northern California this month. “I think fresh pasta and ragu give people a little hope gives me hope to make it anyway.”

While meals are almost always secondary for customers paying around $ 100 for the experience, Drollinger says the quality of the food contributed to the service’s regular customers. Every Friday since Meals on Heels started in June, around four or five artists have made more than a dozen stops in town to deliver meals and give three- or four-minute performances.

Actor and dance instructor Paul Renolis, whose drag name is Juhnay Arabesque, met Drollinger shortly after the Oasis opened and has played drag there ever since. Renolis auditioned for various roles through Zoom and recently booked a commercial, but said drag was its biggest source of income prior to the pandemic. He has delivered twice for “Meals on Heels”.

“It felt exhilarating,” said Renolis of his first socially aloof performance. “You could tell from the faces of the guests like, ‘Oh my god, I haven’t seen a drag queen in a long time. ‘It was great to share that energy with each of them. We have a lot of regulars at Oasis so I saw some familiar faces which was great. “

Renolis, who lip-synced Janet Jackson’s “Made for Now” and Beyoncé’s “Love on Top,” said the performance was “an interesting design challenge” on some of San Francisco’s particularly hilly sidewalks.

The delivery service tends to draw a crowd, Drollinger said.

“Often the neighbors stick their heads out the window to watch,” he said. “Once a driver stopped in the street, got out, tipped the queen, and then got back in the car.”

Oasis opened its roof of limited capacity for socially distant food and drink this month. Drollinger said it will likely take a while for the club’s entertainment schedule to return to its pre-pandemic shape. In the meantime, he plans to continue Meals on Heels for the foreseeable future and is even considering increasing service to two days a week.

“It’s not a gigantic moneymaker,” said Drollinger. “If I can only pay the rent and my employees now, I’ll be happy to weather the storm. … The joy for people to see live performances, even far away and on the street, really moved them. “

Drag performer Renolis added, “People know that artists are resilient. Oasis really blew it out of the park and I’m really glad they are trying to support the artists. “

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The legendary drag queen, activist, philanthropist and mother hen Juanita from San Francisco MORE! is ready to try a new role in the city: Empress.

After a long year of no parties and only a few opportunities to get into the air at all – most of them virtual – Ms. MORE! would like to bring notoriety and fundraising skills to the oldest nonprofit LGTBQ + in the country and possibly the world, the Imperial Council of San Francisco. The Imperial Council that founded the “mother-court” of today’s international organization began as a kind of joke – in which local drag queen and activist Jose Sarria addressed Empress I, the Widow Norton (a reference to the Kook Emperor of San Francisco from the 19th century) explained Norton).

The founding story of the Imperial Council was founded in 1965 and is told in the documentary 50 Years of Fabulous from 2018. The group continues its fundraising and charity work. And Juanita MORE !, who walked in circles a bit away from the imperial court during her four decades in San Francisco, now wants to be her Empress LVI – the reigning Empress LV, Mimi Osa, will pass the crown on in a virtual coronation ceremony on April 24th . Long-time friend and stylist of MORE !, Mr. David Glamamore, is also running for Emperor.

The vote will take place on Saturday 17th April in three places: The Cinch on Polk Street (11 a.m. to 4 p.m.), Castro Muni Station (12 p.m. to 6 p.m.), and The Powerhouse on SoMa (1 p.m. to 5 p.m.) – and Juanita says Supervisor Aaron Peskin and Supervisor Matt Haney promised to come You and cast the first ballot papers in the Cinch or Powerhouse.

Below is a pre-election conversation that SFist had with Juanita this week.

SFist: Tell me about your pandemic year – what else did you cook besides a lot?

Juanita: It’s been a long year. And of course I miss dinner parties, among other things. For entertaining myself at home – I cook so much, I cook every day as part of my artistic release – when people are around it’s just a combination of all the things mothers do. I think that’s what I miss the most. Of course, I’ve had moments with all the other things, with depression, with anger, with frustration – you know all the other things that go with it [the pandemic]. The trauma from this still exists. As exciting as it is that San Francisco is doing so well and we are opening up, there is still trauma associated with it. I wasn’t shy about asking people how they were feeling, and there are still a lot of people who say, “I’m still scared! I still want to wear my mask! ‘It’s still there.

Oh yeah, I think that kind of tension is going to last at least until the end of the year as people are not entirely comfortable in public spaces. But on the other hand, give them some alcohol and they’ll be fine in no time.

There are people who are ready in many ways and I salute them. I will get there!

What else did you do? I know you did Art Mart.

Yeah, I did the Noe Art Mart – Chris Hastings from The Lookout asked me to be a part of it. I was very excited to be a part of it, especially at the beginning, because the first time I did it was the first time in over a year that I’d seen a lot of people. It was emotional for a lot of people. I saw tears in people’s eyes when they talked to me – and they could be tears of happiness or tears of fear, I don’t know. [laughs] It felt great and it felt like something new was going to happen. Also, this space gives artists – I’ve always been a master of local artists – the chance to see some of them able to sell things they create when they didn’t have another point of sale to sell their work. It is great. There are people who sell things there who have never sold their work or who have never met the people they consider their customers. They sold things online but they have never met any of the people.

What was your first encounter with the Imperial Court of San Francisco?

It goes so far back. It goes back to when I first moved to San Francisco in the early 1980s. I moved from Nob Hill to Castro in 1983, so when the AIDS epidemic began, I lived in Castro, on the corner of Beaver and Noe until 1987. One of my roommates had moved to New York and I visited him there about twice a year. And in 1987 I started thinking about taking the plunge and moving there myself – you have to understand that I was born in the Bay Area, grew up in the East Bay, and came out as a teenager, so I decided to go to New Moving York really was like really leaving the nest. But even in 1987 I felt that if I moved to New York I would escape the AIDS epidemic and the 24/7 darkness that surrounded me where I lived.

That was of course not true. I moved to New York and ended up in the West Village, one block from Christopher Street and one block from the West Side Highway. It was around this time that the Court began to reach its peak in its goals – to raise money, and at that point it was raising money for people who were HIV positive and had AIDS and whose rent had to be paid. That was the culmination of their triumph for me. I remember hearing about it for the first time at this point.

Perhaps you can explain it to those who do not know what the imperial court is and how it came about.

The Imperial Council started with Jose Sarria, who was a forerunner and pioneer in doing what I think is the best of everything he has done in his life: he understood how to fellowship brings together. I did and I continue to do so.

In the late 1950s, when Jose returned to town from worship, it was illegal to be gay or lesbian. They could be arrested or have a lobotomy – it was that simple. Jose Sarria began to fight for the right that gay people exist as themselves and gather in this city, and he created a community. That really was the beginning and the heart of Jose’s vision. There were of course events like the Beaux Arts Ball – my hairdresser and others told me about it – and because they took place on Halloween, people were allowed to wear drag or costume until midnight without being arrested. [Ed. Note: The Beaux Arts Ball was an annual event thrown by the SF gay bar association The Tavern Guild, and it became the locus of a seminal protest on Halloween 1969 with hundreds of non-attendees protesting the idea that cross-dressing was only allowed one day a year.]

The Beaux Arts Ball decided on one of their evenings [in 1965] Jose to crown Queen of the Ball in recognition of all his work in the community. And he said, “I am already a queen. I will be your empress now.” From there he began laying the foundation for the imperial council. We are the mother court here in San Francisco, and there are courts all over the world now, and millions of dollars have been raised.

Did you know Jose Sarria well personally?

No. I met Jose in 2005 when he received the Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal Award from SF Pride, and that year I was the Community Grand Marshal. When I first met him it was definitely like meeting kings. He sat like that. He demanded that respect, and I was all for it. He really looked me up and down and I was kind of in awe. I loved it when he looked me up and down – because it wasn’t just about checking my outfit. He looked a little deeper if you know what I mean.

Empress I Jose Sarria attends Juanita MORE’s first Pride party in 2005! In the Phoenix Hotel, Juanita on the right. Photo by Dan Nicoletta

How long did you think about running for Empress?

Can’t say I’ve always considered running for Empress, but I can say that I’ve been asked to run for Empress a few times. It wasn’t until last year when I saw 50 Years of Fabulous that I started to think, “It’s time.” The film shows the beginnings of the Imperial Council, its peak in the 80s and its slow decline, and by the end I felt like we can’t lose this. It’s the world’s LGBTQ nonprofit organization after 55+ years, and that’s a big deal. It’s a huge piece of LGBTQ history, and my concern is to keep and perpetuate this strange story. I just felt like it was my time to do this and I have a lot of supporters and a lot of family members here and a lot of friends and I thought maybe I could shed a brighter light on this organization and maybe keep it going a little longer hold .

What has the organization been doing lately?

The organization is still doing what its goals were in the beginning – it is still raising money and distributing it back to the community. It’s a very similar model to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. When I look at the way I’ve always got things done in this town, the court and I work in different ways. I’m super forward-thinking, I’m a doer, and I get things done and I have a great team of people to help me with that. I hope to bring some of that energy to the judicial system. It’s time to take them in an exciting new direction.

I also heard about the LGBTQ asylum project and the Court of Justice has given this organization excellent support. But the part that I was missing is the speaker – you don’t hear about the work of the court outside of very small circles so I think I can bring that into the organization. Help get the word out.

Why do you think the San Francisco drag scene has been largely a separate world from the Imperial Court over the past few decades?

I think the San Francisco drag scene in general has always had a lot of unique pieces. It was never just one thing, it is broken down into many things. It’s always been that way, and it’s one of the things that makes San Francisco drag so interesting, diverse, and much more creative. This is a great thing for me.

What do you hope to do during your reign and will there be bakery sales?

I think there must be something right? If I get elected and get in there, I want to look back on some of the super creative, brilliant ideas from past empresses and maybe revive some of them. Like the queen riding an elephant down Polk Street! [Ed. Note: That was Empress X Doris, who rode an elephant in San Francisco’s Pride Parade down Polk Street in 1975.] It could be really fun!

Connected: Pioneering gay activist Jose Sarria dies at the age of 90 [2013]

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