Eager-eyed writer Justin Juul continues his Guardian’s SF series “Meet Your Neighbors” by interviewing the current reigning Miss Trannyshack (and local journalist) Paul E. Pratt, aka Pollo Del Mar.
Paul E. Pratt is an entertainment journalist who leads a double life as a crazy ass drag queen. So, when he’s not interviewing people like Spike Lee and Oliver Stone he’s getting all fierce and fabulous down at Trannyshack, where he was recently crowned Miss Trannyshack 2007. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but I wound up spending the better part of a recent quiet Sunday drinking Pilsner and watching a drag show with Pratt at Mecca in The Castro. Here’s what he had to say.
SFBG: Hey, you don’t look like a drag queen at all. Whaddup with that?
Pratt: Well, I like to keep a fine line between who I am in drag and who I am out of it.
SFBG: Yeah, I didn’t know what to expect before I met you. I kind of thought you’d be all dolled up, ten feet tall and scary.
Pratt: Well that’s something you see more of in the Midwest, where I used to live. A lot of the drag queens out there feel sort of forced to live in drag all of the time. You’ll see a lot of transgender people, men trying to become women. The point of the community out there is different in that sense. San Francisco has another side. There’s the pageant circuit — the Imperial Court thing — that you’re seeing some of now. And then there’s the Trannyshack crowd. It’s not so serious out here. I mean, there are straight guys who perform occasionally. There are also female drag queens — we call them faux queens — and even couples like Landa Lakes and Miso Hornay. You don’t find too much of that elsewhere.
SFBG: So what you do is more just for fun then?
Pratt: It’s for fun and glamour and fabulousness.