San Francisco Names Nation's First Drag Laureate

Anti-trans legislation is roiling the nation. Bills prohibiting drag performances are cropping up in statehouses. Violence and vitriol are turning children’s drag story hour events into headline-news protests.

That’s part of why San Francisco is fighting back by naming the nation’s first drag laureate, an ambassador-style position designed to represent the city’s famous LGBTQ+ community at a time when rights are under attack.

In a city known for its support of LGBTQ+ rights, Mayor London Breed says it was a natural step to create a position, announced Thursday, that not only embraces drag culture but puts government resources toward it. D’Arcy Drollinger, a well-known drag performer and nightclub owner, will receive a $55,000 stipend in her 18-month role as the city’s inaugural drag laureate.

“My goals are to make San Francisco sparkle. I think drag performers bring a lot of sparkle and humor and glamour and silliness to the world. I think that is part of why drag is so successful,” said Drollinger, a man who uses feminine pronouns when in drag. She expects to be in drag for the entirety of her role. “I’m going to be in drag pretty much 24/7 for the next 18 months.”

She noted San Francisco’s drag community is already politically engaged and active.

“There’s a lot of power for the drag community in San Francisco,” she said. “I feel very honored to be able to take that one more step.”

“San Francisco initiated this new position well before all this rhetoric was going on,” she said in an additional interview with KQED. “It really does speak volumes about how San Francisco cares for the drag community and how it acknowledges our impact on the city.”

West Hollywood is on the verge of appointing its own drag laureate later this month, though at a much lower salary and with limited engagements. In New York, where the Stonewall riots marked a major turning point in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, a 2021 effort to create a similar position has languished in a committee, reflecting the challenges of creating such jobs even in liberal cities.

In San Francisco, Drollinger begins the role three weeks before the start of Pride month. Her duties will span producing and participating in drag events to serving as a spokesperson for San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ community to helping ensure the city’s drag history is “shared, honored and preserved.” The job posting sought someone who will “embody San Francisco’s historic, diverse and inclusive drag culture, elevating the entire community on the national and international stage.”

Breed called Drollinger a “bright star in San Francisco″ for her advocacy and elevation of the city’s drag community. Drollinger owns the Oasis nightclub, which hosted “Meals on Heels” during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, where drag performers brought food, cocktails and socially distant lip-synching performances to homebound customers.

“Whether it’s through a tragedy or to celebrate an occasion, she really has been a leader in this community and supporter of so many others,” Breed told The Associated Press.

Drollinger said she felt both nervous and honored when she was told the job was hers, given the recent violence targeting drag performers, even in the Bay Area.

“I know that there are a lot of anti-drag folks out there, and they are very loud, right? But I also don’t want to live my life under the shadow of fear. I don’t want to have intimidation stop me from growing,” she said. “So, yes, I am a little nervous. But I got a lot of fabulous people and fabulousness behind me.”

“Drag is entertainment. Drag goes all the way back to Shakespeare’s times. It really is how we’re clothing ourselves, how we’re dressing up. It is a celebration. It is sparkle. It is joy. It’s the larger than life aspect,” she told KQED. “Maybe it does scare people a little bit, but I will say most of those people probably have never gone to a drag show or know a trans person.”

Members of neofascist white nationalist group the Proud Boys sparked a hate crimes investigation when they protested and shouted slurs outside a San Lorenzo library hosting Drag Queen Story Hour, where drag queens read to kids, last June. In Oregon last year, demonstrators — some of them armed — threw rocks and smoke grenades at each other outside a drag event.

In November, a shooter at a Colorado Springs nightclub turned a drag queen’s birthday party into a massacre, killing five people and injuring 17 more. The suspect was charged with hate crimes and murder.

The American Civil Liberties Union is currently tracking 482 anti-LGBTQ+ pieces of legislation, including Tennessee’s first-in-the-nation law that essentially bans drag from public property or in the presence of minors. A federal judge temporarily blocked the measure hours before it was set to go into effect in late March.

Jonathan Hamilt, executive director of Drag Story Hour, a global nonprofit event network that began in San Francisco in 2015, said he hopes other cities across the country will enact their own drag laureate programs.

“It’s just having that visibility and having that personal human connection — having that social story of someone from your community that looks like you or someone that you see or interact with on a regular basis,” Hamilt said.

West Hollywood, which was founded in part by LGBTQ+ activists in 1984, is expected to name its drag laureate in the coming weeks after a 2021 attempt failed over a pay dispute. Officials originally advertised the position with a $5,000 stipend, nearly double what the city’s poet laureate gets. Pushback prompted the council to raise it to $15,000 annually for the two-year term that begins July 16 — International Drag Day.

“I hope that the drag laureate position telegraphs to the rest of the country that drag is not something to be scared of,” Drollinger said. “Drag is something to celebrate.”

Additional reporting by Juan Carlos Lara at KQED.