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Why SF s legendary The Stud is a queer bar, not a gay bar, and why LGBTQ+ words are changing
Peter-Astrid Kane
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Editor s note: This story contains sensitive language relating to gender and sexuality.
For its 13th season, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” updated its initial words of encouragement to the contestants. For years, RuPaul started each show by saying, “Gentlemen, start your engines, and may the best woman win” (with “woman” emphasized with a winking tone). This season, that became “Racers, start your engines, and may the best drag queen win.”
While seemingly minor, it’s a reflection of the obvious fact that many competitors are not cisgender gay men, and an acknowledgment that there’s more to drag than female impersonation.
SF considers establishing trail-blazing new city office of drag laureate
Who should be the queen of queens?
Peter-Astrid Kane
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Sister Roma strikes a pose.Gooch
Although San Francisco nightlife is very much on pause due to the pandemic, it s still possible to look ahead and see green shoots for the city s LGBTQ+ community.
Supervisor Matt Haney wants to create a nightlife recovery fund to ensure that independent venues survive, for one. There may yet be a more targeted federal stimulus. And San Francisco may establish a new city-sanctioned office: that of drag laureate.
As the Bay Area Reporter noted, the idea was one of many in S.F.’s “LGBTQ+ Cultural Heritage Strategy,” a 2018 report that was revised in August amid nightlife’s pandemic near-extinction. The idea of creating another high-profile city position to advocate for queer culture and nightlife seems logical enough, although it may have detractors among fiscal hawks. A formal cost-benefit a