I really enjoy drag culture.
So naturally, I wanted to seek out a place where I could immerse myself in the drag community of Lyon. When searching online I was honestly surprised to see how often drag events were hosted throughout the city with at least one event every month. In Reno we have one (maybe two if the queens are feeling benevolent) event every year, and even then they don’t tend to have high turnouts. I couldn’t find any events to attend that would fit my schedule but I found out that the bar, Baston, right across (literally) from my apartment was listed as a gay bar and was renowned throughout Lyon for hosting drag shows. I didn’t want to go alone, so I asked a couple of my friends if they wanted to come and off we went to Baston.
When you walk in, you find yourself in a relatively small room with the bar on the left hand side. The bar itself has a bunch of plants falling down from the ceiling, which I thought was a nice touch. As for the rest of the bar, I don’t recall anything about the decor that rampantly screamed gay. Well, I digress. In the middle of the room is a couch, and on that couch is a plushed figurine of a cow on top of which sits Spongebob Squarepants.
If you take a look around the walls you’ll quickly notice just how many trinkets and other assorted paraphernalia plastered on the walls. I found myself inspecting them in an effort to one up my spongebob observation. The more that I searched the more appeared before me. I noticed that there were a great amount of printed photographs, many of which showing what appears to be drag queens. They didn’t have any drag events going on that night, so I was left to assume that they were taken in the bar at some other point.
At first I found the bar to be incredibly dead. It was me, my friends, another person, and the bartender all sitting in relative quietness. All of a sudden, a man named Sébastien manifested himself and approached my group. After talking to himfor a bit we suddenly heard roaring applause come from a crowd of people we couldn’t see. I jerked my head back to Spongebob and squinted. Still in the same position.
“Where did that come from?” I asked Sébastien.
“Oh, they’re doing improv in the back.” He responded.
There’s a back? We asked ourselves. Collectively we decided to continue exploring the place.
Once you make your way to the back, you find yourself in a small hallway plastered with drag paraphilia. Everything from drag to queens, they have it on those walls. I found myself appreciating this greatly because you could tell that this bar was a Bastion for the drag community. Hidden right next to the doorway, which I assume with the intent to scare people, is a gigantic mannequin with makeup drawn onto its face. Traversing further into the bar we found another lobby with a handful of people sitting down conversing. At the very end, we found ourselves in yet another room albeit much larger than the front lobby. There sat a group of may twenty people with actors running amuck. We sat ourselves down and began watching the show.
I found the show to be hilarious, from what I understood. We began with talking about bananas, which evolved into casseroles, and ultimately about France’s social hierarchy and politics? Nothing LGBT related, unfortunately.
I feel as though if I came on a different day or even at a different time the ambience would have been completely different. But either way, it’s a really interesting place and I’m happy to have made the adventure out there. The bar gave me the feeling of an English pub and I don't think that it began out as a gay bar, rather evolving into that. I find that to be a really nice thought, because as our society advances we’re finding ways to integrate more diverse identities into our collective communities. If any of you get the chance to check it out, I highly recommend it.
I'm a fan of drag culture too! For being situated right in the middle of the mountains of North Carolina, my university actually has a great drag community. They host drag shows, kareoke, bingo, and fashion shows up to three times a month. The events are so much fun and I honestly can't imagine my school's culture without them. I even know one of the queens! I suppose that must be why I wasn't very surprised when I discovered Lyon's drag community. Anyway, I think it's great that you got to have this experience at Baston, it seems like such a neat location with a lot of character.
ReplyDeleteIt is so important that we protect drag culture, especially now in the Unites States with all of the bans on drag queens being present in schools or simply outside of their homes in certain towns and states. The freedom to be who you are is essential, no matter who you want to be. And to see that certain people don't get to be themselves because small minded people feel threatened by the way they live is simultaneously heartbreaking and infuriating. If it isn't women's rights, it's gay rights, and if it's not gay rights it's trans rights, and if it's not trans rights it's drag rights. The cycle will simply go on and on until we can somehow convince the people in power that diversity is not a threat, it is beautiful.
You described your experience really well, this was a great addition to the blog!
This place sounds like a real find! I’m a bit sorry I never made it there myself. I didn’t realize how many drag events were taking place in the city either- and my town truly only ever has a drag event once a month in the Best Western ballroom, which as you might imagine lacks pizzaz. I would’ve loved to be able to see a show here. The vibe of this place seems to be pretty relaxed, somewhere can people can hang out without too much stress. It doesn’t surprise me that you found yourself surrounded by stand-up comedians and actors. Coming from a person who very much lives in those circles back at home, the Venn diagram of actors, comedians, and drag queens is almost entirely a circle. It’s nice to see places like this that are community centers as well as drag performance venues, I think it highlights just how much of a community can be built up around it.
ReplyDeleteSienna touched on this as well, but of course I can’t really avoid talking about the drag bans back at home. With them being so pervasive throughout such a large part of the U.S., I can’t help but be concerned on what the future of drag will be- not only as a queer person, but as a performer. The regulation of art and expression to the point of imprisonment has hardly ever boded well. All the more reason to support it where we can back at home, I guess.
This is awesome! I love seeing a flourishing drag culture. Especially in a venue that's designated to have drag shows. The vibe of this place seems really cool and looks like a great spot. I also really appreciated the spongebob on a cow content. I would expect to see nothing less at a drag bar. I'm really glad you got to experience this here because of the lack of places to see a show back home. For me personally, there's been a lot of drag bans in my hometown, teachers getting fired for booking them, etc. It is refreshing to talk about the art form and the effort it takes for the queens to put on a show, rather than questioning if they should be allowed to express themselves. I know Angel and Sienna touched on this already, but it is impossible to talk about drag shows without bringing up the 'controversy' surrounding it in the states. The drag bans are obviously just another way to suppress queer culture in the hopes that it won't 'make kids gay', as if being queer is a choice. Hopefully 20 years down the line, all of the old white men in power will have died and we can start rewriting our laws to be inclusive of diversity and other cultures.
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