I could no longer contain my anger and frustration with the drag scene in Pittsburgh.  I found most of their ‘art’ to be uninspired and insipid.  Drag was supposed to be the most subversive force in nature – the closest thing humanity has come to acquiring the fantastic – and here in Pittsburgh, drag was reduced to cocaine-queen standards of top-40 performances with back flips.  The only thing worse than their performances were their attitudes, full of vacuous banter and vapidity. 

I [Veronica Bleaus] created Drive By Drag with Dani Lamorte as an experiment, to see how long it would take before we were arrested or attacked for our public flaunting of queerness and glamour.  Much to our surprise, our new audience – the world at large – craves the delight and joy that the aesthetics and spirit of drag contain.  The world needs drag.

Every time Dani and I schedule a performance for Drive By Drag, and execute it, we are attacking the mainstream heterosexual world with queer culture and the most powerful symbols of queer life.  We are queering every public space that we enter, and every stone on which we tread.  Drag is no longer reduced to presence within a gay bar: drag can be where you least expect it.  The ramifications of this are grand.  When drag ceases relegation to the pageantry and normativity of the bar scene or RuPaul’s Drag Race, queer culture refuses assimilation, and instead thrusts its own demands upon the world of compulsory heterosexuality.

What are these demands?  Glamour and Glitter, Fashion and Fame.  To reframe queer culture as we see fit.  To inculcate our audience with a breadth of new gay iconography, while still revering the timeless ones.  Kylie Minogue, Alison Goldfrapp, Róisín Murphy– Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Grace Jones, Debbie Harry, Kate Bush.  These icons must never be forgotten. 

Veronica Bleaus strives to be the Oscar Wilde of drag queens, and to perform with a wit and dandyism that could put Miss Piggy to shame.  Perhaps one day I will make you laugh when you least expect it, whether the laughter stems from a witty quip or my ridiculous outfit really doesn’t matter.

Veronica Bleaus AKA John Musser