This story most recently aired in the April 10, 2023 episode of Crosscurrents.
With the popularity of drag on the rise, audiences around the country looking for entertainment can turn to Broadway's production of "Priscilla: Queen of the Desert" and televisions shows like "RuPaul's Drag Race." But here in San Francisco, drag shows happen most nights of the week. If you head out often enough, chances are you will encounter San Francisco drag icon Glamamore.
Recently, KALW's Daniel Moore found Glamamore before a performance, and she told him just who Glamamore is.
“Well, let’s see, Glamamore. Who is she? Sorta always been a dikey drag queen, even when I’m all gussied up: hair, nails, and everything. Glamamore is definitely a broad. "
"If I'm going through the process of putting on hair, and makeup and all of these things, well, there is a moment just when I am finishing the end of my lipstick, where I'm like, 'Yup, there she is.' And I see it. Like the whole rest of my face could be painted for hours, but there is a moment where that last piece of make-up goes on and it's like, 'Yup, there it is.'
"Glamamore can get away with a lot more stuff than I would ever do as my David part. There is, again, 'the power of the breast;' you can magically be able to tell any group of big truckers to go f*** themselves when you're in drag sometimes. I don't suggest it. It has happened before in my life where I have wound up doing that, and I would never do that as David. So maybe, maybe there is this amount of boldness that occurs when I am doing Glamamore as opposed to David. I'm very, by nature, decidedly introverted. People don't understand that, because on stage I'm like, a hog. They used to call me 'the hog queen of lip sync.' I'm, like, volcanic on stage, and off stage I'm rather quiet. I keep to myself a lot, drink coffee, smoke my cigarettes, make stuff. So there is that difference, definitely."
"For me, at least, being true to yourself, being a good anything, you have to be in it. You have to put yourself in it: heart in it, soul in it, mind in it, body in it, be in it. That to me is a good drag queen. I don't particularly care what you look like. Be it!”
You can see Glamamore and other drag queens Friday evenings at “Something,” a weekly event hosted by The Stud, a bar in the San Francisco's SOMA neighborhood.
