VALDOSTA — Downtown, inside the small, well-lit interior of El Paso Tacos and Tequila, guests began filing into the restaurant to secure a seat at a table with their friends while the restaurant should be closing for the night. Waitresses walk around to each table, passing around Jell-O shots to patrons 21 and over who have paid the $10 fee to watch, and tables sit and wait by the door. In the back right corner, DJ Big Daddy sets up his booth, while just in front of him, event coordinators are finalizing the payments for the night and preparing tip baskets.

Meanwhile, next door in the Theatre Guild of Valdosta building, the dressing rooms are alight with activity. Drag queens – the most recent group in Valdosta’s history – are finishing their makeup and securing their wigs, using the opportunity to check for any last-minute costume tweaks and remember choreography to the songs they are performing. One queen calls out to the room requesting a bobby pin, and another responds almost immediately with a bag for her to look through. Another is still gluing her nail extensions on, checking her makeup the whole time.

This is just one moment in the fast-paced, though newly revived, life of the Valdosta drag scene. After years of little activity, these are the queens determined to take this small scene and make it larger than life.

A brand new world

The drag scene in Valdosta is not as grand in size as cities such as Tallahassee or Fort Lauderdale, only consisting of a few queens at this point in time. It’s an intimate group, small in number, but large in personality. Most importantly, it’s new.

“It’s fresh,” said Dana Douglas, a local drag queen and emcee for the Tassels and Tequila event. “I’m lucky enough to work with a group of talented, young entertainers. I’ve been doing this for so long, it’s really refreshing to work with the kids because it keeps me fresh, and I can teach them a few things along the way.”

Douglas has been part of the drag scene for 47 years, and has performed all across the U.S. A Valdosta native, she’s returned to her hometown to participate in the newly-budding scene. 

“It’s my self expression, it’s my art form, and it’s something that I love to do,”  Douglas said. “It lets me express my creativity, and I get to meet lots of people doing it.”

Douglas’s creativity is just one piece of a larger puzzle of creative minds in Valdosta using drag as their expression. There are few Valdosta queens, with many moving into cities like Tallahassee in order to find more consistent shows. The scene was small to begin with, but after the local bar and drag hotspot Arlyn’s closed for business, there was nowhere to go consistently. For many queens, this was a huge blow to drag in the city.

That’s when Brawdy Gupton – a local nail technician and drag queen under the name Ivy Stone – came up with the idea to put together Tassels and Tequila. The show, which is hosted by Pedro’s and El Paso, started its consistent performance schedule in September of 2024. Gupton and Douglas pitched the idea for the show, and nearly a year later it has gained a consistent following.

“I’m very proud of (Brawdy),” Jeannie Gupton, Brawdy Gupton’s mother and a volunteer for the event, said. “He’s very talented as far as his ideas for costumes, he’s made a lot of his costumes. I’m his biggest cheerleader.”

Blood, sweat and glitter

Tassels and Tequila is a small event, typically running for around two hours depending on the number of queens performing. Guests pay a $10 cover fee at the door and are given a complimentary Jell-O shot.

The queens take turns lip-syncing, dancing, taking up tips from generous patrons and giving daring and acrobatic stunts. Many queens use an outer layer to add a layer of allure through an exciting outfit change, and all of them add audience participation to the show — whether dancing with a patron, calling for applause or weaving through tables to interact with the crowd. There is never a dull moment in a drag show.

Some shows are humorous, some more adult, some physical, all meant to entertain and amaze the crowd. Many are routine-based, all of these are lip sync-based.

“Drag is fun,” Aaliyah T’keelah, a drag queen and performer at Tassels and Tequila, said. “Drag is self-expression, it’s going out there and giving your art to the world.”

T’keelah has been doing drag for nine months, and is one of the local queens who have been loyal to Tassels and Tequila since it began. Her most recent show was on her birthday, where she opened her celebration by lip-syncing to the saxophone solo in the song “Tequila” before turning it into a dance routine to the song “One Margarita.” 

A tight-knit family

In such a small community, the performers involved have their own idea of what drag means to them, and what that meaning provides something special to all of their performances. 

“Every single drag performer I’ve ever met has their own touch on what it means to be a drag entertainer,” Aida Lott, a drag queen and performer at Tassels and Tequila, said. “I think that makes what we do so interesting, that everyone has their own point of view.”

Lott is a queen local to Tallahassee, but comes to perform when she can with Tassels and Tequila. She is not new to the stage by any stretch of the imagination; performing is like second nature.

“I’ve always been a performer my whole life,” Lott said. “I’ve worked on stages and backstage, and drag feels like an amalgamation of all those things.”

Even though the scene is drawing performers in from other cities, it is still miniscule in comparison to other places. This creates a sense of intimacy, and that camaraderie is what makes this one so special to the local queens.

“Everyone is truly a family here,” Kelly T. Kelly, a drag queen and performer at Tassels and Tequila, said. “And because there’s not a million performers here, everyone’s support is integral to the next person’s success.”

“I think to me, what’s so special about the scene here is the friendships that are formed from it,” Micaiah Barajas, a volunteer and friend of Gupton’s, said. “These people are amazing, they’re talented, on the stage or not on the stage. It’s a really special thing to see in Valdosta.”

But that doesn’t mean it’s going to stay small; more and more people come to show their support with each show, and the difference from September to now has been tremendous.

“The amount of people who came from the first night until now has gotten bigger and bigger,” T’keelah said. “It’s nice to know that there are people who come see us.”

In such a small pocket of the world, there are creatives behind the scenes putting their all into song, dance, makeup and costumes to go out and make people happy. Their joy – queer joy – is used to bring joy to other people, which in turn, gives them the ability to keep going. In a city with such a thriving artistic environment, this is just one piece of the colorful mosaic of Valdosta’s hub of local creativity.