ATLANTIC CITY — Sandy Beach sauntered across the stage at Bourre in a sparkling dress and wig singing the Four Seasons’ “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” when she was, for a split second, interrupted by a water droplet falling from the ceiling.
“They still haven’t fixed this leak,” the 65-year-old drag queen joked after her performance as she tucked a dollar bill into her top at the recently opened Cajun eatery’s monthly drag brunch.
Sandy Beach (Robert) is no stranger to the venue.
She performed at Bourre throughout the 1970s when it was called the Saratoga, a popular gay bar that was one of dozens that lined New York and Kentucky avenues. She lived, for a time, in a boarding house on the Boardwalk where Ripley’s Believe it or Not now stands, with a group of other queens.
But by the end of the following decade, the strip had been bought and demolished by developers and subsequently left vacant, and the AIDS crisis put a strain on the gay community in Atlantic City, historians say. Throughout the 2000s, all that was left of the resort’s once bustling drag community were a few bars: Studio Six, which closed in 2007, and Resorts Casino Hotel’s ProBar.
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Over the past few years, though, there’s been somewhat of a resurgence in Atlantic City, following the popularity of the cable-TV competition “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and societal changes. A slew of glittery, lighthearted casino productions and more theatrical cabaret shows have been popping up, and to some, it’s clear the resort’s drag culture has evolved.
“I’m wearing jeans and my sneakers,” Sandy Beach said as she lifted up her long skirt to reveal baggy men’s clothing underneath. “That’s how it was. If you went outside with the blue laws, you’d get arrested. Nowadays, with ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’ you can wear a G-string, put pasties on ... and go, ‘I’m here.’”
The audiences have become straighter, and the jokes less political, as drag in the resort moves from its scrappy roots in gay bars to mainstream entertainment in casinos, said Laurie Greene, an associate professor of anthropology at Stockton University writing a book about the co-evolution of the Miss America pageant and its drag counterpart, the Miss’d America contest.
Forty years ago, Greene said, queens would go to a thrift store to throw together a cheap outfit and their sets would largely consist of jokes only a local, gay audience could understand. The performances would often be political, and the production value not as extravagant. Each queen would create her own character.
“Drag was an expression of the gay language, which is camp,” Greene said. “Now it’s seen as a nonthreatening entryway into the gay community.”
In 2016, Diva Royale began weekly drag shows at Tropicana Atlantic City, the same year RuPaul won his first Emmy award for “Drag Race.” Catering to bachelorette parties, four queens sing and do celebrity impersonations, from actress/singer/dancer Jennifer Lopez to country star Dolly Parton.
And last month, Golden Nugget Atlantic City hosted a Spice Girls-themed drag brunch, complete with mimosas and Bloody Marys.
“It’s more mainstream now than ever,” said Armand Peri, CEO of the production company that runs Diva Royale in 19 cities across the country.
You can find queens reading to kids, too. Philadelphia queen Brittany Lynn visited Dante Hall Theater last month for a story time event hosted by Stockton and arts nonprofit 48 Blocks. Similar literacy programs have been held throughout the U.S.
Brittany Lynn (real name Ian Morrison) began working in South Jersey in 1996 and has performed in a number of casinos and hotels along the Boardwalk, including the now-closed Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, the Claridge and Caesars Atlantic City. Outside of the few gay bars that have come and gone over the years, Lynn said she was booked for appearances at straight casino nightclubs and cabaret-style shows through the 2000s.
“Drag is always a staple at any kind of event because it’s so mainstream now. Any place you can imagine reaches out. Everybody wants drag queens,” said Lynn, founder of the performance group Philly Drag Mafia.
It’s not just more drag shows popping up in the city recently, but a wider variety of them.
Philadelphia queen Martha Graham Cracker is appearing at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa for the first time next month for a “rock-and-roll drag cabaret” at the Music Box with keyboardist Victor Fiorillo. And at the Showboat Atlantic City hotel in August, the traveling cabaret/drag troupe the Bearded Ladies will put on a theatrical, experimental production. Donning avant-garde makeup and outfits, the group’s website says they “tackle the politics of gender, identity and artistic intervention.”
For a laid-back afternoon, filled with bright costumes and lip syncing, there’s Bourre’s monthly drag brunch off the Boardwalk on New York Avenue.
The brunch started about nine months ago, after the restaurant’s owners, Diana Grossman and Charlie Interrante, were approached by Greene and others about the building’s colorful history.
Coming from Asbury Park, where there’s a thriving gay community, Grossman said she wanted to create a similar atmosphere in Atlantic City.
“Asbury Park is full of colorful people and where the gays are loud and proud, and we realized it wasn’t like that in Atlantic City,” Grossman said. “We just wanted to do something to say we want you here. ... It’s been catching on.”
