I can’t wait to see what drag is like in 20 years. Now there’s drag shows every night in Pittsburgh. I think we’re just going to keep going at this crazy level that we are. Now, it’s just kind of becoming a mainstream thing. It has been around for thousands of years. With RuPaul’s Drag Race and everything else - drag on TV, in movies like Mrs. Drag is really becoming a part of mainstream culture. We’ve come leaps and bounds and I see it going that much further into the future. So having all those queens that really set the bar for us and got us going back then. They still did it, but it was much harder. We’ve come so far and the fact that I can do drag during the day and have gigs in the day and walk around and you know, be pretty much fine and perform for the public is insane because 20 or 30 years ago we couldn’t do that. It has come such a long way even from queens performing at Lucky’s in the 80s and even before that - I mean, Andy Warhol, talk about the 60s and 70s. Niona: It all comes back to Stonewall and the riots 50 years ago now we are in the 50th year, the legacy, the anniversary. It’s more accepting, but it still needs to be worked on.
Thirty years ago that would not have been okay.
I can walk down the street in full drag and nobody will say anything to me. You look at the people before us, they gave us a chance to do what we’re doing now. Other than that, I think we have made a positive influence on people. There’s still more doors we have to bust down. So that really made a splash into the community with myself doing drag and performing and having gigs and I’ve just, you know, from the love of heels to makeup to having a friend that does costumes - that’s how I got my start into drag… It’s been a whirlwind.Ĭindy: I think with the queer community there’s still a lot to work on. I performed in the Miss Newcomer Pittsburgh Pride Pageant in 2016 when I started and I won. One of my friends at the time had been doing drag for a little bit and he sewed me an outfit or two. You know I always loved heels, I always loved makeup, and that just kind of spiraled into getting into drag and doing it. Niona: When I started drag… Well, I hadn’t seen RuPaul’s Drag Race before. I started bartending here and all of a sudden I was like I really want to do this. My first drag show was here, at the Blue Moon, and I saw Sharon, Alaska, Cherrie Baum and they just wowed me. Now that’s my teacher for the newcomer of drag, which I love. Those were the girls that gave me my chance. One commenter in a 2019 Buzzfeed article naming Blue Moon as one of the “ 26 Gay Bars Around The World To Put On Your Bucket List” remarked, “Every time I’m there I feel like I’m part of a big family where everyone is just super gay.”Ĭindy: I started drag in the era of Sharon and Alaska. If you’re alone at a show, give it an hour and you’ll have made a new group of friends. It’s the type of bar you can walk in, find a seat at the bar (if you’re early enough - it gets packed), and watch amazing drag shows, karaoke, or pop in for many of their watch parties for shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race or Dragula. Just about every queer person in Pittsburgh is going to have a Blue Moon story. Looking at it from the outside you may expect a typical scene of a corner jukebox and cheap beer, but inside is a haven for the LGBTQ+ community that’s existed for years - and a jukebox and cheap beer. The tiny dive bar is a short walk from the bustling main area of Butler Street. The Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh has gone through dynamic changes over the past 10 to 15 years.įrom an area that was home to many working class Pittsburgh-natives, to developing a burgeoning art scene, to the current “trendy” area for young professionals rife with gentrification, one mainstay of the community has been Blue Moon.