New drag laureate should offer voice

If any city deserves to have its own drag laureate, it’s San Francisco. When was the last time there was a civic event that didn’t include queens like Juanita More, Donna Sachet, Peaches Christ, D’Arcy Drollinger, Sister Roma or other members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence?

While local proposals for a drag laureate have been mentioned at least since 2019, and have also been in the works in New York City and West Hollywood (the latter of which has approved the role but not yet filled it), San Francisco is a major step closer to making it a reality.

In Mayor London Breed’s two-year city budget released June 2, $35,000 a year is set aside to fund a drag laureate, which, like the city’s poet laureate, would be overseen by the San Francisco Public Library. Specifics on the role’s duties are still in the works, as is how the person will be selected, according to Michael Nguyen, a member of the city’s Human Rights Commission LGBTQI+ Advisory Committee, who also performs as drag queen Juicy Liu.

So far, Nguyen said the only requirement he is aware of for the position is that a drag performer live or work in San Francisco, and that there are no specifications for the types of drag performers who will be considered. The full range of the city’s drag talent — drag queens, kings, queens assigned female at birth, nonbinary performers and others — is encouraged to apply once the process is finalized. The goal is to name the city’s first official drag laureate in October, LGBTQ History Month.

“It’s been a tough couple years because of the pandemic,” Breed told me at the recent unveiling of the mural “Showtime” at the South of Market drag venue Oasis. “In this budget I wanted to do things that would put a smile on people’s faces, make people happy and would also challenge the norms of what people think is supposed to be.”

Breed has had an up-and-down relationship with the LGBTQ community in recent days, after an announcement that she would not march in this year’s Pride Parade over San Francisco Pride’s plan to prohibit members of the police force from marching in uniform. The organization has since agreed to allow no more than 10 uniformed police officers to march in the parade, and Breed will again participate.

Mayor Breed mentioned the late drag queen and transgender activist Felicia Elizondo, better known as Felicia Flames, as a favorite performer of hers, which encouraged me. Flames was key in gaining official recognition of 1966’s Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in the Tenderloin, in which trans and gender-nonconforming patrons fought back against a pattern of police harassment. Breed said she hopes the laureate position will allow the artistry of the city’s longtime drag traditions to be highlighted and that it will also be seen as a celebration of San Francisco’s diversity.

I agree that the artistry and diversity of our local performers deserve to be celebrated. But my hope for the San Francisco drag laureate is that the role is about more than just cutting ribbons at Pride Month celebrations. We don’t need a fixture or a figurehead: We need a voice that can use their art to bring attention to issues that matter. Among those issues would be the historic and ongoing marginalization many of our community members have felt in encounters with law enforcement.

As far back as José Sarria’s reign as the first drag empress of the Imperial Court in the 1960s, San Francisco’s best drag values have included a commitment to community service and political activism. I would hate to see San Francisco’s first drag laureate muzzled from speaking truth to power and, when necessary, throwing shade.

Drag artists are not so different from poets in that respect. When shaping the role of San Francisco’s drag laureate, I don’t just want the city to honor the past: I want it to include this artist in the shaping of the city’s future.

We need a voice that can use their art to bring attention to issues that matter.