The Best Performers At Bushwig Were Philly Queens
The thriving Philly drag scene has enchanted New York
By Eric Shorey
Bushwig, the annual drag festival helmed by a pantheon of legendary figures in Brooklyn nightlife, has once again come and gone. The festivities this year took on a slightly more somber tone following the unexpected passing of Babes Trust, a Bushwig founder and local icon, whose spiritual presence could be felt throughout the joyful (and sometimes tearful) celebrations. But despite or because of the lachrymose mood, Bushwig remained a hub for exuberant transgression, proud displays of gender non-conformity, explosions of color and body parts, and — as corny as it may be to say this — radical queer joy.
Maybe the most surprising feature of this year’s Bushwig was the standout performances from the Philadelphia drag scene, who seem to have captured the hearts of Brooklynites across nightlife generations. Seemingly out of nowhere, these Philly queens have stumbled upon a unique style of deconstructed drag that’s taking on a bizarre life of its own.
Perhaps we could have seen this coming since last year, when a bizarre rant from Philly-based Little Piece went ultra-viral on gay Twitter, eventually spawning an ear-wormy bitch track:
Whether or not Piece can be considered patient zero for this surreal style of drag is not something I can determine without more research, but nevertheless, her success marked when I started seeing Philly queens appearing in Brooklyn clubs and bars, often at STR8 TO DVD. And their performances were certainly memorable, representing a new ethos of drag that’s quite frankly hard to describe.
Little Piece and Pi, for example, often take pretty conventional drag tracks, songs from Natalie Imbruglia or Rihanna, and cut them up, rearranging the vocals or looping certain words, then mixing in instrumentals from the same song at random intervals, creating a kind of semi-schizophrenic jumble out of otherwise predictable numbers. At Bushwig, Pi “lip synced” to the repeated lyric “Just gunna stand there” from Rihanna’s segment of “Love The Way You Lie” — while doing exactly that, just standing there. The rest of the song was just instrumentals.
Moon Baby, with her haunting Klaus Nomi-esque operatic singing voice, has appeared at Bushwig before, rendering me speechless with a rendition of her original track “Yours Truly”:
This year, Moon Baby was back with something a little spicier, the electroclash-adjacent song “50 Things I Can’t Live Without” — and audiences ate her up.
I don’t mean to sound arrogant by insisting these performers were inspired by some of the stars of my very own Mx. Nobody Pageant, but I can’t help observing the similarities. In a casual conversation with Pi, she did gleefully profess that Philly queens were clearly inspired by Brooklyn’s unconventional drag, and now have come back with their own style (reminding me of the ways that Baltimore club music inspired Jersey club music, but the two aren’t really the same thing, despite similarities).
Indeed, the sort of genre-bending, post-gender, totally irreverent, goofily meta-modern take on drag a la Mx. Nobody winners Pinwheel Pinwheel, Brenda, and Cuntyham — and Mx. Nobody all stars like Isaac Miss Isaac, Sherry Poppins, Lindsay Blowhan, and Emi Grate (who once performed a drag version of John Cage’s “4’33” in which she sat in a chair and fanned herself for the entirety of the silent track) — is a veritable Brooklyn staple.
And we’ve now come full circle: the night before Bushwig, at Mx Nobody VI Round 3, Diva Baby, the daughter of the aforementioned Moon Baby, didn’t quite secure a victory with a deconstructed interpretation of “It’s All Coming Back To Me” by Celine Dion, but she did snag her spot in the finale as a wild card pick.
When I asked Pi if any of the Philly girlies planned on eventually migrating to Brooklyn more permanently, her answer was an emphatic “Fuck no.” The reason being: Why would she ever give up her cheap Philly rent?! Hey, fair enough! That being said, Little Piece and the Brooklyn-based queen Venus now have a weekly show at C’mon Everybody, billed as an endless drag roulette — so, we’ll see!
Now, as Philly queen Avery Goodname goes viral for her absurdist interpretation of drag on the YouTube series Camp Wannakiki, it seems likely that the Brooklyn-to-Philly drag pipeline is set to explode in the near future.
Anyway, here’s some shots of my fav looks I saw at Bushwig:
By the way: has anyone ever figured out if the Bushwig dark room is real? Inquiring minds need to know.