San Diego lips Advertising to advertising as “the ultimate in the dining room of the trail”. But cross its double doors and you enter another dimension.
“Once you have entered here, it seems that a Drag Queen vomited here,” said Tootie, coordinator of the lip show.
“Whatever, I love it”, “Lolita von enthusiastic teasing, sitting near a wall adorned with what looks like a line of chorus of downgled cane girlfriend surrounded by brightly colored petticoats.” It is Chuck E. Cheese for adults. “
But the general manager Sean MacArthur simply said: “Lips are an escape. You can leave everything outside once you have crossed our double doors and simply give you to the place.”
Giving you lips means recovering to your sensory overload and its magnificent drag queens. The place vibrates to the music played at 11 and is covered with glitter that the term “cry” pales under the lights in bright colors bouncing on several disco balls. Tootie is booming in this environment since the start of the lips, serving both as an interpreter and coordinator of the show.
“For me, 25 years old means an incredible amount of fun and fabulous work,” said Tootie. “It means an incredible wealth of good will between the public and my cast. It means that we have created something that we can all be proud of.”
Lips was born from the culture of the club in the late 1980s and the early 90s. Its first location was in new YorkFollowed by San Diego, where he first opened in Bankers Hill.
“San Diego at that time, it was a small town playing a release,” said Tootie with a smile.
But the lips lifted the bar, finally moving to his current house on Boulevard El Cajon.
“The lips are what I consider to be one of the jewelry on the boulevard,” added Tootie. “We have lines outside every night. We have limousines that stop here. It was not this neighborhood before. The lips therefore transformed this part of the boulevard.”
Tootie remembers having obtained the keys to the Boulevard El Cajon building and leaving the former Bankers Hill site after his last show at 2 am. Called a photographer for a photo shoot before dawn.
“But that was all hands on the bridge,” added Tootie on the renovation of an old restaurant in a Drag palace. “Everyone had a job. The girls, we were going to be unemployed for eight weeks, so the girls were all part of the transformation of the place. I want someone to leave this big boy of Bob because I I always wanted to put a wig him and put him in front.
Last month, Mayor Todd Gloria attended the lip birthday party and paid tribute both to the establishment and what it represents.
“Let me put a little context,” said Gloria by presenting a lip proclamation. “We all know that at the moment, our Dragsters community is in the reticle of those who do not like our community too much. I know why they do it. Because they know that our movement was launched by Drag Queens and Drag Kings at the Stonewall Auberge many years ago.
This is because Lips offers more than a simple dinner and a drag show.
“It’s a bit of a bridge in each person who comes here and sits on the chair and opens up to experience,” said MacArthur. “It’s a celebration every day. It is a bit of an adventure. But it is a mixture of my two passions that I had in my life, and it is customer service and hospitality, and Make a show.
And it is because the Drag Queens know how to entertain.
“We are doing a lot of comedy here in Lips,” said Tootie. “And so I think people drop a lot of their walls and barriers because of comedy.”
Lolita accepted. “I think it’s a good way for people to interact and come to visit and have a taste of queer or trans experience.”
Lolita has been performing in lips for 10 years. She came for the first time as a 16 -year -old customer who discovered the trail for the first time.
“I am very lucky to work in a place where when I go to work, I know that I will feel better in my skin and everything that is happening in my life,” said Lolita.
Paris Sukomi Max has been with lips for 18 years and is famous for its spectacular costumes, one of which had a carousel that surrounded it. Like many other drag queens, it is very active in the community.
“We have always been at the forefront of our movement towards equality,” said Paris. “But also, we have always been so visually queer that this has become our activism in itself. I am not trying to remove my members from the Queer family more present, but daily day by day for us.”
Paris always ends its brunch show with a question.
“I just ask that if you enjoyed our program this morning, please remain an ally to our community all year round,” said Paris. “At the end of the day, we are right there to entertain you, give you a little latitude to be a little silly and a little inappropriate. And each time I say that, everyone gets up in applause for IT. Reaffirm that things will be fine. “
Tootie has agreed that trail itself is a form of activism.
“Getting out of the house that looks like this is activism,” said Tootie, wearing a mini-velvet robe crushed on the shoulder. “I am confronted immediately and the public is immediately confronted with whom I am inside. We live openly and honestly and authentic, and it is activism.”
And that is part of the history of the lips.
“Simple visibility as a business in itself is activism and shows people in the end, we are only artists who do our thing and represented for our community,” added Paris. “It’s not as scandalous as people think.”
So, do a duty to stop lips – not only to celebrate a quarter of entertainment, but also its inheritance of activism.