Drag flourished during the vaudeville era in the U.S., although it was straight men playing women for laughs, with no hint of homosexuality to be seen. Men dressing as women is as old as the stage itself, but drag in the modern sense began in the late 1800s, when female impersonators became common characters in European stage shows. It made sense as drag was booming, not just locally, but nationally.
Kampe expanded his reach and established LGBT-friendly dance nights at other venues around town, with drag taking over more and more of the spotlight. It was the first Flip Phone event to feature drag, and the audience loved it. The popularity of Flip Phone’s dance parties exploded the following year after Kampe devoted one to Swedish pop star Robyn. It drew 75 people, enough to turn it into a regular event. But he didn’t want to throw the shindig in a gay bar so he secured space at Honey in Northeast Minneapolis. It all began as a dance party in honor of a friend (and Mariah Carey fan) who had recently died of a head injury. Union doesn’t have a stage so, unlike a traditional drag show, the performers spend the entire time on the floor, up close and personal with the crowd. For the two hours they are there, they forget about everything else.”įor the two hours that started at 3 p.m., a trio of local drag performers - including Max Malanaphy, who competed on the seventh season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” - worked their way through the crowd, lip syncing to Bowie classics and interacting with excited audience members thrusting dollar bills into the queens’ fists. It’s become a culture, the new church for some people. “I wanted people to leave feeling fulfilled, happy and a part of something. “I wanted to create a community and make it an experience instead of just another event,” said Flip Phone founder Chad Kampe. The brunches have become so popular, Flip Phone sold nearly 32,000 tickets to them in 2018. drag brunch was actually the fourth and final two-hour show of the day, with a total of more than 660 fans keeping the venue hopping across an eight-hour stretch. Thanks in part to word-of-mouth, the brunches have become Flip Phone’s signature and routinely sell out, often weeks in advance. The David Bowie drag brunch was just the latest offering from Flip Phone Events, a production company that hosts drag queen parties in venues around the Twin Cities, including the weekly brunches at Union, each with a different theme. The occasion? Brunch and a two-hour show starring three drag performers impersonating David Bowie.
Yet last Saturday at 3 p.m., a crowd of more than 160 revelers packed the rooftop bar at Union in downtown Minneapolis, giving the room an almost New Year’s Eve-esque vibe. A Saturday afternoon in the dead of a Minnesota winter isn’t exactly peak time for most restaurants.
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