Beyond the Stage: Uncovering Drag Culture in Los Angeles
Cindy Olnick 00:00
Today on Save As…
Jesús Barba Bonilla 00:01
Drag is not new. I think it’s important for people to understand this and for people to know that there’s a lot more to uncover. And then there is a culture and there’s a whole history that helped drag become what it is today.
Cindy Olnick 00:25
Welcome to Save As: NextGen Heritage Conservation, an award-winning podcast that glimpses the future of the field with graduate students at the University of Southern California. I’m Cindy Olnick.
Trudi Sandmeier 00:37
And I’m Trudi Sandmeier. So Cindy.
Cindy Olnick 00:41
Yes, Trudi.
Trudi Sandmeier 00:43
So we’re here today with another episode that features one of our fantastic students. Jesús Barbra Bonilla, who we all know and love as Chuy. So we are chatting with him about some really interesting research that he did about his thesis topic.
Cindy Olnick 01:08
Which is?
Trudi Sandmeier 01:09
Chuy kind of casually threw out as a sort of alternative thesis topic, the idea that he wanted to explore drag culture in Los Angeles as an aspect of heritage conservation. And he wasn’t super sure that that could be a thesis topic. And it turns out that of all the things he proposed, it was the thing that everybody thought was the most interesting, and work that hadn’t been done. This is just original work that he was interested in doing. And it turned out to be just a fascinating journey into an underrecognized community here in Los Angeles.
Cindy Olnick 01:54
And, you know, a lot of historic places that we all know and love, for certain reasons have this layer of drag history too that is not part of their story. So we’re hoping, well, not in the mainstream, of course, and maybe even some of the people in the culture don’t know about the history.
Trudi Sandmeier 02:10
I think sometimes people within our own communities don’t know our own history. So it’s kind of great to take a look back and he goes back into the 20s, 30s, and 40s to talk about what was going on and drag culture in Los Angeles, which is like who knew? It’s amazing.
Trudi Sandmeier 02:26
RuPaul Are you listening? Maybe he’ll return our calls now. Okay, well, we are we are so excited. We’re so grateful to Chuy for delving into this topic. We’re grateful to Willa, our fantastic amazing producer slash guest slash graduate for bringing this to you, the home viewer and let’s take a listen to Willa Seidenberg’s interview with Chuy Barba Bonilla.
Willa Seidenberg 02:50
Okay, Chuy. Welcome to Save As.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 02:58
Hello.
Willa Seidenberg 02:59
This is actually your second time on the podcast.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 03:03
Yes.
Willa Seidenberg 03:03
You were in the Neutra Reunion House episode.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 03:08
Correct.
Willa Seidenberg 03:08
So, welcome back. The name of your thesis is Drag Culture of Los Angeles: Intangible Heritage Through Ephemeral Places. I thought this thesis was so fascinating. It was really interesting to read about this culture, and especially this culture in L.A. Why were you interested in writing about drag culture?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 03:35
When I started thinking about what I wanted to do for my master’s thesis for Heritage Conservation, I had a lot of places that I wanted to look into. But then I thought maybe I could also do something different. Something that not a lot of people have talked about before, and something that is very close to me, as part of the LGBT community. I always think that most of the stories are really difficult to find. Most of them are erased stories. And I do feel that there is a need for these stories to be uncovered and for people to know that the community has been present through time and is part of our society. I
Willa Seidenberg 04:34
I recently heard an interview with RuPaul and he was talking about how drag has been a part of mainstream entertainment for a long time and he was actually bringing up Flip Wilson, who is an entertainer from my childhood, who it’s true used to dress up as a woman. Jack Benny used to do it. We think of it as something that’s very out of the mainstream, but it actually is kind of mainstream in a lot of ways.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 05:02
Yes. So, drag has been around from the beginning of time, it’s been present in our culture. And through the time it has had this sort of like fluctuation where it goes up, and then it goes down depending on what’s going on around the world. It was very well seen in Europe during the 14th Century. During the Victorian era in England, most places showcased drag, mostly because women were not allowed to perform. But most of the characters also did drag as part of this culture of being funny, doing interpretation, dressing up in the gender that is not yours, and portraying these completely different persona, as part of a culture.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 06:04
And right now, it’s something that most people consider mainstream, it’s getting very popular. But drag is not new. I think it’s important for people to understand this. And for the people that is interested in drag to know that there’s a lot more to uncover. And then there is a culture and there’s a whole history that helped drag become what it is today.
Willa Seidenberg 06:30
How would you describe drag to somebody who has never seen a drag performance.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 06:37
Drag is in its most simple form, is dressing in clothes that are for the opposite gender, like this heteronormative idea that clothes have gender, which is something that I do not agree with. But that is drag in its purest form. But being in drag comes with a lot of other different nuances. It’s a performance and it’s a whole world in its own. So a drag performer needs to know how to do makeup, needs to have some sort of fashion style or something that differentiates from the others. It could be singing, it could be dancing, lip synching makeup, couture fashion, comedic acts, it just a super wide array of different talents that come with the drag persona.
Willa Seidenberg 07:49
And it almost seems like it’s way more creative than just normal acting, or performing. Because you get to try different things, you get to experiment, you get to be as wacky as you want to be. There’s no rules, really.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 08:05
There’s no rules, and there are no scripts either. So every time you go to see a drag performer, it’s all impromptu. Everything happens in there in the moment, like they have to be ready. And they have to be very, very smart to take over and to captivate their audiences. And that till this day, I have not been to a drag show where everyone is just completely having the best time of their lives.
Willa Seidenberg 08:55
How did drag get its name?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 08:57
So nobody really knows how drag came to be. There’s a lot of theories. And this is something that I actually talked about with Sister Unity during one of the interviews that I did during my research. She is part of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and she was telling me that drag came on this kind of secret language in England, where gay people would invent this sort of slang so other people couldn’t understand what they were talking about. And so drag meant long dresses, clothing that belongs to the other gender.
Willa Seidenberg 09:41
So it would be costumes that would be long and would drag on the floor.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 09:46
Yes, basically, clothing that was not gender appropriate.
Willa Seidenberg 09:51
Okay. So drag is very associated with the LGBTQ+ community. How would you do describe that part of the culture?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 10:03
So drag is a subculture that is mostly associated with the LGBTQ plus community, mostly for the transgender community. When they transition, they use clothing and they started going into drag just to portray their real identities. It’s a very important part of the LGBTQ+ community. But it’s a very open community that welcomes mostly everyone. One of the shows that is the same as RuPaul Drag Race in Mexico, it’s called La Mas Draga, one of the seasons, a heterosexual girl won the contest as the best drag.
Willa Seidenberg 10:50
Well, and we often think about drag queens, but there are drag kings as well.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 10:56
Exactly. So there’s drag queens, which are men that dress as women and there are drag kings, which are women that dress up as men. Through time drag kings have been very, very important because during the Pansy Craze, there were a lot of drag kings doing a lot of performances that advanced the culture. And they were very active in terms of advocacy for rights of gender identity.
Willa Seidenberg 11:37
When was the Pansy era?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 11:39
So the Pansy Craze is a period during Prohibition, so early 1920s, when a lot of speakeasies started coming up. And this is one of the moments where I start linking the culture of drag with the history of Los Angeles. So there was a boom in Los Angeles during Prohibition, because of the entertainment industry, and a lot of drag queens and kings came to Los Angeles as part of entertainment industry. So at some point, there was a drag queen that was the best paid performer in the United States. And all of this was going on the circles underground, on speakeasies, and on film. This is the Pansy Craze, because everything was so open, the film industry was just starting, people just wanted to film everything. And then comes this ethics code for for the film industry that completely shut everything down. So all of these performers that were doing cross dressing on films and performance, they all of the sudden got shut down. And it comes this period in the 20s, 1930s, in L.A. where like, everything goes obscure. And then comes this series of regulations called Rule Nine, where people that were not dressing in gender appropriate clothing, were being prosecuted.
Willa Seidenberg 13:26
And this was just the Los Angeles rule?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 13:28
Rule Nine was part of the Los Angeles ordinance, municipal code. So that made a lot of things really, really difficult for the transgender community, and also drag queens and kings. So there started to be a lot of parties in hidden circles, where people could dress up and be themselves, go in drag.
Willa Seidenberg 13:31
But it was more underground.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 13:32
At that point, it was more underground because people will get incarcerated. And actually John Rechy in his book City of Night, talks about this uprising that happened at Cooper Do-nuts in Downtown L.A. And this is one of the first uprisings against the police as part of the LGBTQ community. It’s not very well documented.
Willa Seidenberg 14:28
What year was that?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 14:29
1959. And so Cooper’s Do-nuts was part of this network of places in the downtown area that was known as The Run. And during this time where people were trying to hide from the police, a lot of establishment owners would let the LGBTQ community come in and do business with them, because they would get in trouble as well. So most of these places are gone. And I’m talking about like Pershing Square, it was part of it before its renovation, where it was a well-known cruising spot. And there were a lot of different bars at the Biltmore Hotel, the Alexandria Hotel where people would just like, get together and meet other people in the community. And so there was a raid by the police. And the people in the cafe just didn’t take it. And they started, according to John Rechy, throwing doughnuts and coffee and cups to the police. And there were a couple of arrests. But there’s not a lot of records to back this story up. But it is something that I do believe happened.
Willa Seidenberg 15:48
And that was probably a problem for you in researching this because there isn’t a lot of documentation.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 15:56
Yes, that was one of the biggest roadblocks that I encountered during my research. The biggest LGBTQ+ archives is the One Archives at USC. But it was under remodulation during the time.
Willa Seidenberg 16:16
Oh that’s right.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 16:17
So I couldn’t go there and explore the boxes. But I just had to keep digging on whatever I could find online. But there was not a lot of opportunity there. And, so most of the stories and research, I did it online and talking to people trying to collect oral histories and trying to match up stories in different websites and people that have written about them, and just making sure that there’s some sort of backup so I can legitimize the …
Willa Seidenberg 16:55
Right, so that you can actually document what the source of it was. I was really interested in how you describe the different drag scenes, especially between New York and L.A., could you talk a little bit about that?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 17:08
It was very interesting, because one of the main things that I wanted to do when I started my research was to find out what was the family tree of the Los Angeles drag diaspora. And I totally thought that there was one because that is part of the drag culture of New York City. So in New York City, you have drag houses and a drag mother adopts their children. And this is something very important part of the ball culture of New York during the 80s and early 90s. And so there’s some sort of genealogy that can be traced in New York. People that go through houses, then they become mothers, and then they bring more children in. But this didn’t happen in L.A. I tried to find out and there’s a couple of houses here in Los Angeles. But they’re fairly recent, and I couldn’t find much traces. So what happened here in Los Angeles, was still part of the drag culture, but it’s completely different to what happened in New York.
Willa Seidenberg 18:22
One of the things that you mentioned is that, because LA is so spread out, that there wasn’t sort of a central meeting place where people would go, whereas New York is much more compact. And probably there were places that people went because everybody knew.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 18:40
Correct. And, this is something that I had to come up with in my research, clustering, where events were happening. So I came up with some different eras that are very intertwined with Los Angeles history of development. For example, in the early 90s, the Pansy Craze, and then we have the Run era. And then there’s the War era. So all of these drag culture, significant events were happening at different times in different clusters. And so they’re all spread out through the Los Angeles metro area. And they’re very linked to specific events.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 19:31
One of the clusters that I liked the most is during the Civil Rights Movement. A lot of places became safe havens for people to fight for their human rights and gender identity rights. And this is what I mean by ephemeral places because most of the places where drag happened, they’re not here anymore. But that does not mean that they’re not significant. And I think that some measures could have been taken to save them. We need at least to uncover and make sure that people know that history happened there. There is this place that closed not so long ago called circus disco and it was very well-known during the 80s. And this place used to have drag shows. And it’s a disco that catered mostly to the Latino community of Los Angeles. And Cesar Chavez, even when he was trying to teach people how to unionize.
Willa Seidenberg 20:47
Really, did he want the drag performers to unionize?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 20:51
He talked to the LGBT Latino community there to help them organize and to get their rights. Wow. And so all of these very significant events that are significant, not only for the drag community, or the LGBTQ+ community, but for the whole society, it happened, and not a lot of people know about it. Because the places are there for a little moment. And that is the very nature of these places is because drag happens in bars. It happens in nightclubs, it’s part of the show business. So it’s part of the nature of these places to come and go. But the stories are meant to remain. And what happened to Circus is that it got bought. And for new development, they did some housing apartments.
Willa Seidenberg 21:52
And where was that?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 21:53
That place is in Hollywood. And were there places in the city that maybe there were more clusters than others, it was really spread over the place. And mostly because drag is a subculture of the LGBTQ+ community. So back in the day, it was not even well seen by the community. So there was a lot of discrimination against drag queens and kings, and transgender people by cisgender gay man. So West Hollywood, has always been a homosexual mecca. But it wasn’t that welcoming to drag kings and drag queens back then. So, Downtown L.A. was a big place. North Hollywood became a really important cluster for drag performances. And during the Post War era, a lot of soldiers at Los Angeles was their last staging before they would go overseas. So a lot of places with drag performances and meet up places for gay people started coming up during that era, catering basically, to the U.S. Army.
Willa Seidenberg 21:55
In your research. Is there one or two? Drag queens or kings that were your favorite, either in history or current day that really stand out to you is interesting characters and great performers?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 23:48
Well, I wouldn’t say favorite, but for sure there are people that now after my research, I really look up to like, Sir Lady Java here in Los Angeles. She used to perform at the Redd Foxx doing drag shows, and then she was prosecuted for being on stage in drag. She is a transgender woman. And she basically by her own fought Rule Nine against the City of Los Angeles, and she won.
Willa Seidenberg 24:29
And we should point out that the Redd Foxx Club was owned by the Black comedian Redd Foxx.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 24:37
Exactly. And he was always an ally to the community, and his club was on La Cienega Boulevard.
Willa Seidenberg 25:03
So you mentioned about the ephemeral aspect of drag, because a lot of the places aren’t here. What do you think cities could do to recognize the culture of drag and to give information about its history and its importance to the culture?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 25:25
Well, the first and most important thing that conservation community and historians need to do is to document these stories, because they’re out there. But there’s not a lot of documentation about it. And a lot of them have been passed down generations by word of mouth. So one of the things that we can do is amend National Park Historic nominations to include the stories in them. Most of the theaters and places part of the historic fabric in Downtown L.A. on Broadway showcase drag performances back in the day. But those stories are not part of their historic significance. So if the nomination is amended just to include all of these stories, that’s a really good way to bring the stories to light. Then there are a lot of other opportunities, like self-guided tours, or QR codes, where all these stories can be placed around the city so people can follow and know what happened in that place.
Willa Seidenberg 26:49
Are there any places that still exist that have for years featured any drag performances?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 26:58
The places that featured drag performances back in the day that are still here are mostly theatres, which are protected, but not because of their association to the LGBTQ+ community.
Willa Seidenberg 27:12
What is drag culture like in L.A. today? How would you characterize it?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 27:19
Well, I think personally, that drag culture in L.A. is leading the mainstream. Los Angeles has drag queens and kings left and right. This is the spot to be and thanks to RuPaul and his advocacy to drag culture and all the work that he’s been doing during these past years, drag culture is just flourishing here in Los Angeles.
Willa Seidenberg 27:51
But yet there’s a backlash in much of the country. So I wonder if Rue Paul’s success in making it maybe more palatable to the mainstream has then produced enough attention that states like Tennessee, are trying to limit drag performances?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 28:13
Well, yes, in the last couple of years, we’ve been seeing a lot of absurd and discriminatory ordinances that forbid drag people to do readings, to perform, to use restrooms. I don’t know if this happened, because all the exposure that the community is having right now. It certainly is a factor, I think. But I think the exposure and putting the stories out there and making sure that people understand that drag queens and kings are part of the community and they have the right to perform and to express their identities is more important.
Willa Seidenberg 29:04
I was kind of curious about it, because in your thesis, you said that in 1898, L.A. banned cross dressing between 6pm and 6am, which is really interesting, because it means that there was a significant culture where these performances were happening, that they felt the need to ban it.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 29:26
Exactly.
Willa Seidenberg 29:27
But why do you think that it is such a trigger? For so many people?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 29:34
To be honest, I don’t know. But I think people feel threatened against something that they don’t know. If something’s different, it’s always a threat. So yes, as a performance, it can be very much accepted. But the moment that people know that that performer is actually not performing but being their true identity that causes an issue. And, that is where society goes wrong.
Willa Seidenberg 29:34
Yeah. Has there been any move within the heritage conservation world overall, to acknowledge or protect drag culture?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 30:32
I am not completely aware of anything happening at the moment. But there’s a really good opportunity here, because a new generation of people advocating for our built environment and our heritage, are becoming aware that everything is intertwined, we are not going to preserve just brick and mortar anymore. We want to find the meaning behind it. Because I’ve always thought that architecture is the purest reflection of society. So whatever you see built, it was what was going on at the moment in time with people. And it can be lavish and exuberant, and it can be very humble and vernacular, but it is a really truthful reflection of what the people that were living there were going through. So this new generation of people interested in conservation and heritage are becoming aware that conservation is not about buildings, but it’s about people.
Willa Seidenberg 31:51
And, I think we should point out that you have been an architect, for what, ten years?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 31:57
Yes.
Willa Seidenberg 31:58
So you were working architect before you ever came to get your graduate degree at Heritage Conservation and I think it was interesting that you gravitated towards something that was much more intangible.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 32:11
Since I was a kid, I knew that I wanted to be an architect, and I love buildings. And if you’ve ever walked into a building with me, you know that I’m a nerd. And I start just talking about crown molding, flooring and windows and concrete. That is my passion. But for my master thesis work, I wanted to do something further than just architecture. I want it to be meaningful to people. And I wanted to make a concrete link between society and buildings. And I love how people evolves, communities move and work in this very integrated engine that is always connected to the built environment, it’s always connected to what we see when we walk out of our door. So, that’s why I wanted to write about this culture. And I wanted to start telling the stories that are out there. And I hope that this helps somebody else to continue.
Willa Seidenberg 33:30
Now that you finished your degree, we graduated together, which was fun. But going through the Heritage Conservation Program, are there ways that it’s changed your work as an architect or the way you see your work as an architect?
Jesús Barba Bonilla 33:46
For sure. I always like to design for the people that it’s going to use the building. But now, when I work on a building, and a building that also has history, it’s very energizing, to just dig into these stories. And, I know that my work can help these stories to stay alive. And also keep these buildings alive as they are because historic buildings that are empty and not used anymore are just dead carcasses. Going through the Heritage Conservation Program has made me take into account all these stories and lives that have happened in a place before and make sure that these are part of the narrative and the design that comes into the new users or what’s next for the building.
Willa Seidenberg 34:53
Well, thank you Chuy. We really appreciate you coming on Save As and sharing this really fascinating and much needed research.
Jesús Barba Bonilla 35:04
No, thank you for having me. This is amazing.
Trudi Sandmeier 35:11
So thank you, Willa, so much for that fun conversation with Chuy. It’s always fascinating to hear how people go from this germ of an idea to this really interesting research project and how it plays out in the end.
Cindy Olnick 35:27
Yes, absolutely. You know, the end of the season of Save As is coming up fast and furious. So we have one more episode, and we are going out with a bang with an interview with Lesley Dinkin, who did her thesis on the Los Angeles River from a perspective of heritage conservation, which is often overlooked in the conversations about what to do with it.
Leslie Dinkin 35:51
And what I really liked about the L.A. River I guess is that it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. But it really asks you to think about like what we have to do to live in certain spaces.
Trudi Sandmeier 36:00
Looking forward to that. It’s a really interesting topic and a great thesis so it’ll be a fun way to round out the season. For this episode’s, photos, and links to additional information, visit our website at saveas.place. You can also connect with us on Instagram at Save As Next Gen. Please subscribe, give us a review, and tell a friend about the podcast.
Cindy Olnick 36:33
This episode was produced by the amazing Willa Seidenberg. Our original theme music is by Steven Conley. Save As is a production of the Heritage Conservation program in the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California.
