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Sasha Velour on 4/20, The Postmen Move to Bushwick, and More Performance Picks

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THURSDAY

(image via Sasha Velour / Facebook)

Sasha Velour’s Nightgowns
Thursday, April 20 at National Sawdust, 8:30 pm doors, 10 pm show: $18 advance, $22 doors

If you live in Brooklyn and are watching this season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, there’s probably a pretty good chance you’re only a degree or two of separation from some of the queens competing. One of these hometown heroes is Sasha Velour, who has continued to host the unique drag variety show Nightgowns on a regular basis. The show is typically at Bizarre Bushwick, but is making the move to dear old Williamsburg and its funky, classy music hall National Sawdust.

Given that they’re moving to a bigger, swankier space, the lineup is pretty big too. You can see shows after fabulous show from Francesca, Hystée Lauder, Kandy Muse, Olive d’Nightlife, Pearl Harbor, Severely Mame, Scarlet Envy, Untitled Queen, and Vigor Mortis. And hey, it’s 4/20, so there’ll probably be some sort of relevant performance themes going on. More →

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Winter Festivals, A Play On 4Chan, Gay Shows For All, and More Performance Picks

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FESTIVALS

Under the Radar
Wednesday January 4 through Sunday January 15, various showtimes at The Public Theater and other spaces: $20 and up

Ah yes, it’s that time again, when the slew of January performance festivals sail in every winter to overwhelm you with a seemingly endless supply of shows. One of these is The Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival, which presents a wide variety of music, performance, and more from artists based across the U.S. and all over the world.

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Christmas Spectaculars, Gay Horses, and Other Seasonal Performance Picks

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WEDNESDAY

(flyer via Andrew Ayres / Facebook)

(flyer via Andrew Ayres / Facebook)

Sexxxplosion!
Wednesday, December 14 at The Rosemont, 9 pm: FREE 

This event is for the later crowd, especially if you like to experience a show and a party all at the same time, in the same place. Queers, colorful folk, and nightlife crawlers alike will gather in jazzy Bushwick cocktail bar The Rosemont (opened by Trash Bar’s Aaron Pierce) for a night of lip-sync and general debauchery. The lineup, hosted by Andrew Ayres, includes ultra-flexible burlesque babe Apathy Angel, “vegan goddess” Slater G. String, photographer and performer Gypsy Hill, and “part dandy part showgirl” Nellee Dii. Rounding out the evening is Neon Music, spinning tunes all night. Performances begin at 11 pm, which is late enough to feel mysterious and nightlife-y but early enough for people to actually be conscious for them. Grab one of the Rosemont’s bespoke cocktails (or a beer and a shot) and prepare for a “Sexxxplosion.”

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Photos: This Year’s Bushwig Festival Was So Not a Drag

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The Internet has been quietly aflutter lately with a sort of drag debate: drag kings rallying for their place in the scene after RuPaul recently said kings and queens “don’t really mix”; “faux queens” or “bio-queens” asserting that their drag is as valid and subversive as other drag queens only to garner an entire response essay picking apart their argument. Though drag is indeed replete with layers and a multifaceted history, including its ongoing relationship with trans and gender non-conforming folk, Ru did classically say, “We’re all born naked, and the rest is drag.” However, one could look to the ever-growing medium of Internet Thinkpieces and get a sense that the scene is much more fragmented than that.

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Performance Picks: Womanhood, Rihanna, Cake, and Fashion

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WEDNESDAY

(image via Housing Works)

(image via Housing Works / Facebook)

Womanhood Live!
At Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, 7 pm: FREE. 

If you’re not the type to sit around watching short-form video clips all day, this is the show for you. Impressively funny ladies Jo Firestone and Aparna Nancherla are bringing their Refinery29 web series, “Womanhood,” to a real, live venue. No more straining your eyes staring at bright screens to get your laugh on– these are 100% in-person joke-tellers, which is probably a lot more fun than 100% in-person bank tellers. Firestone and Nancherla have graciously assembled a group of nice folk to help them teach you all about the complex terrain of women’s bodies and lives, including Dylan Marron, Naomi Ekperegin, Marlena Rodriguez, and Diana Kolsky (who will truly contain multitudes as “The Haters.”) You might wanna take your headphones off for this one.

THURSDAY

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A Safe Space to Swap VHS Tapes, Share Banana Spit, and Get Brunch-Level Ripped

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(image via Horror Boobs / Tumblr)

(image via Horror Boobs / Tumblr)

Some of us have the distinct memory of weaving up and down the aisles of Kim’s Video– or really, any old-school place of a similar disposition with B-film and cult-movie analogue tapes galore– while an endless stream of campy horror flicks played on the junky old TV set. Did you ever feel a burning desire to run your fingers up and down the spines of those dusty VHS tapes? Then use those same gritty fingers to grab handfuls of mushy bananas and stuff them into your face?

If somehow the answer to this twisted fantasy is “yes,” then you best get over to Terra Firma tonight, because believe it or not all these things will be available to you there, coz lord knows the days of the video store (it’s kind of like Netflix, only IRL) are over and done with. This is where your people are now.

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At The Cans Film Festival, Movies That Are Seminal to Queens and Creatives

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"Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" screening tomorrow night at the Cans Film Festival

“Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” screening tomorrow night at the Cans Film Festival

Film “festival” might not be exactly the right word to describe this brand new monthly queer film series at Williamsburg’s Macri Park, but clearly the curators, Daniel Kessel and Ben Miller, are willing to bend things slightly for a solid pun. The Cans Film Festival pops off tomorrow night with the 1962 cult classic Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? 

The organizers are hoping to give people access to classic, nostalgic, and just straight-up weird films that have inspired local drag queens and other queer artists. “For queens, these films really shape your aesthetic– and not just queens but every person really, especially artists,” Daniel explained. “Everyone has their own set of films that they particularly love and that have shaped them, especially when they were younger and were coming into their own as people and artists.”

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Berlin Drag Scene Back in Williamsburg, Party by Ostbahnhof to Rage On

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Marcus Likesit and Audrey Ropeburn at the first Party by Ostbahnhof (Photo by Nicole Disser)

(Photo by Nicole Disser)

I had high expectations when the Party by Ostbahnhof, the performance-centric circuit rager inspired by Berlin’s “trash drag” scene, kicked off in December at Verboten. Derek Marshall, ex-pat owner of The Club in Kreuzberg, was infectiously giddy upon his return to the States. And the Party was bound to be a hit if it was any bit as raucous as Olympia Bukkakis, a regular drag performer at Marshall’s underground hot spot for the arty queer scene in the Bushwick of Berlin. Which is why I’m not at all surprised to see the Party’s return to Verboten on January 15.

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Sasha Velour Talks Vym, a Magazine Spotlighting the ‘Revolutionary’ Art of Drag

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An excerpt from Vym (credit: © VYM Magazine and Kinzie Ferguson, Becca Kacanda, Ben Bascom & Veronica Bleaus)

An excerpt from Vym (credit: © VYM Magazine and Kinzie Ferguson, Becca Kacanda, Ben Bascom & Veronica Bleaus)

Bushwick’s gay scene is thriving by almost any measure. Happy Fun Hideaway is constantly packed to the gills. Bottoms is one of the hottest bands in New York. Rashaad Newsome, the artist bringing the fine art of vogue to the fine art world, has moved to the neighborhood. The annual drag fest Bushwig popped off for its fourth year in a row this fall, and drag king performances are seeing their biggest comeback in the city since the ’90s. And which Brooklyn neighborhood can claim its own glossy culture magazine dedicated to all things drag?

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Berlin's 'Trash Drag' Scene Invades Brooklyn Tonight

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From left, Taylor

From left, Taylor di Pasquale (aka Olympia kkakkkakis) and Derek Marshall (Photo by Nicole Disser)

“It resonated with me, completely,” said Derek Marshall, owner of the underground queer bar The Club. He was recalling the first time he’d seen his friend Taylor di Pasquale perform as his “trash drag” persona, Olympia Bukkakis. “Here is this person who gets up there and is in a position of great power, but decides to empower people with collective weirdness– by telling your own, authentic story it normalizes the experience of everyone else who’s in the audience.” More →

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