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Moments with Michelle
‘Drag Race’ judge to host Blade singles party this weekend
Michelle Visage says D.C. feels like home. (Photo by Jose Guzman Colon; courtesy Logo)
Washington Blade 2016 Most Eligible Singles
With Michelle Visage from ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’
Pre-show meet-and-greet tickets $20
Doors at 10 p.m.
Cover $12
Drag show at 10:30
DJ: Mad Science
Michelle Visage, the no-holds-barred judge on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” says she loves Town, D.C. in general, (Town owner) Ed Bailey and gay life here. She’ll be here this weekend for the Blade’s Most Eligible Singles contest and says she’s “up for whatever they want me to do.” We caught up with her by phone this week from her Los Angeles home. Her comments have been edited for length.
WASHINGTON BLADE: So you like coming to our fair city?
MICHELLE VISAGE: I’m from New Jersey so D.C. feels kind of familiar to me. It’s that coast, it’s my peeps. It’s an inner-city vibe, which I love. Everybody walks and the gays are so loving and funny and open and see no color. That’s kind of beautiful about D.C.
BLADE: And Town?
VISAGE: It’s like visiting family. Most of the time I end up just hanging out and dancing because the DJs are so good. I don’t do that at many nightclubs but I do at Town. It was like this weird connection the first time I was there and I stayed til like 4 in the morning dancing.
BLADE: We have such a rich drag community here yet our girls never seem to make it on the show. Why?
VISAGE: Well, there was Tatianna (season two) but overall there’s no anti-D.C. sentiment or anti- San Francisco or anywhere else. It’s all what you do with your audition tape. If you just phone it in, you’re not gonna get on the show. If you overproduce the hell out of it, I don’t know that you’ll get on either. It’s about showing your true colors because Ru looks at all those tapes and Ru can see through bullshit plain and simple. But I love Ba’Naka, I love Tatianna. It’s got nothing to do with D.C.
BLADE: What’s your advice for our Washington Blade Most Eligible Singles?
VISAGE: It’s OK to be picky. People say, ‘You’re never gonna find somebody because you’re too picky.” But it’s OK to be picky because nobody wants to settle in life. When you settle you have regrets and resentment. But there is such as thing as being too picky. … My big pet peeve with my single girlfriends or single gay friends is when they say things like, “Uh-uh, he’s not my type.” I don’t want to hear that. I married the complete opposite of what my type was … but if I hadn’t had an open mind, I would never have met my husband. I’d always dated African-American and Latino men and my husband is white. … Be open to anything and everything that comes your way. … Also, personality trumps looks any day. Open your mind.
BLADE: Would your “Drag Race” critiques be different, do you think, if you saw what goes on in the work room?
VISAGE: They know me very well and they know to keep me out for a reason. I’m there to judge a challenge. If I saw the work room and got to know them, I’d start pulling for certain people. I can separate, like obviously on “All Stars,” I know the girls by then, but I think they’re really smart to keep me out. I would look at them differently if I knew them.
BLADE: Was there any guest celebrity judge who was markedly different from their public persona then the cameras weren’t rolling?
VISAGE: I was so excited to meet Rose McGowan because I’ve been obsessed with her my whole life so when I met her I wanted us to be initially like, “Oh my God, you’re my soul mate,” and she had no time for me at all. So my ego was wounded by the fact that she didn’t want to be my best friend. That’s not negative, it was my issue. She was just very stoic and to herself and her people but maybe she has to be. She grew up in this business and it’s not easy. But most of the time the celebrity judges are obsessed with the show and are more excited to do our show than any other show they’ve been on. I hear that all the time.
BLADE: Cross-country road trip — Ross Matthews, Carson Kressley or Santino Rice?
VISAGE: Oh my God, that’s like “Sophie’s Choice”! Ross will kill me if I say Carson and Carson will kill me if I say Ross. Santino’s out of the picture. Can I go halfway and pick one of them up?
BLADE: Sure
VISAGE: That’s what we’d have to do or else get a station wagon so we could all fit and all our clothes. I spend more time with Carson but I love them both so much, I really couldn’t pick.
BLADE: Adore, Ginger — why do people go on this show if they can’t sew? Um, hello?
VISAGE: I know, it’s like every fucking season, you know there’s going to be a Snatch Game, you know there’s going to be a sewing challenge. … Either take a class or at least mentally prepare yourself like look at BenDeLaCreme. She’s a wiz with a glue gun and won the sewing challenge with a glue gun. … If you go on a reality show unprepared, you have no one to blame but yourself.
BLADE: The show so often strikes me as a microcosm of real life. Agree?
VISAGE: In real life, we compete every day with ourselves, our bank accounts, whatever the situation. You could say there’s no $100,000 prize at the end but there is because if you succeed and do really well, there is a prize waiting for you at the end. Obviously in real life you don’t have to make puppets that look like me and Santino, but there is competition at every turn. Sometimes it’s just, “How am I going to pay my rent?”
BLADE: In your Seduction days you opened for Milli Vanilli. Did you know it was a sham?
VISAGE: No! I was dating Fabrice, the French one. We had an affair when I was on the road with them. He had the thickest French accent yet when he rapped he sounded like he was from the Bronx. I wondered how he did that but I just thought it was like when you hear someone British sing and you don’t realize they’re British until they speak. I thought it was something like that. And back in 1989, 1990, we all sang to tracks, those of us with these highly choreographed shows. Madonna, Janet Jackson, New Kids — everybody did it. Our mics were live but we had backing tracks to support it. I did wonder how they were able to completely lose their accents in the studio, but the backing tracks, no, that didn’t seem unusual to me for the time.
BLADE: I understand the show is huge in Australia where you’re heading soon. Why does it explode in certain markets?
VISAGE: It’s obvious — it’s places where there’s a huge gay market and places like England, Australia, New York City … where there’s a rich drag history. Any of those places we go, it’s gonna be huge.
BLADE: But isn’t the bulk of “RuPaul’s Drag Race’s” fan base actually straight women? I’ve heard that.
VISAGE: I do not think that’s true. I go to these places and the crowd is 100 percent more gay men than straight women. They’re there too because every gay has a best friend but no, no, no — the majority are gay men.
BLADE: So the show basically shoots over five weeks in the summer then the fall is post-production?
VISAGE: I don’t know if I should really discuss the shooting schedule but it’s longer than five weeks.
BLADE: Obviously there are all different kinds of drag but is it really anything goes? Like when Milk did RuPaul in the workroom, is that still drag?
VISAGE: It is. It’s a different kind of drag. I just didn’t think he did it really well. There are all types but on that runway, I don’t want to see you dressed as a boy, but that’s just me. … There’s a place for all of it, I just don’t want to see boy drag on “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
a&e features
New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons
‘A Night at the Disco’ features interviews with Donna Summer, Debbie Harry, more
If you’re a fan of 1970s-era dance music, don’t miss the irresistible new book by Christian John Wikane and Alice Harris, “A Night at the Disco,” which revisits more than 90 interviews conducted with some of the biggest names in pop culture.
“A Night at the Disco” (ACC Art Books) was published on March 24, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. It celebrates more than 100 artists who sparked a phenomenon in dance music from 1970-1979 and features excerpts from interviews with everyone from Donna Summer to Debbie Harry.
Lost City Books (2467 18th St., N.W.) will welcome author Christian John Wikane for a book signing and conversation about “A Night at the Disco” on Thursday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Details at lostcitybookstore.com. Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore (11 E. 33rd St.) )will also host a Q&A with the author on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. Details at theivybookshop.com.
Below is an excerpt from “A Night at the Disco.”
“I’ll let in anyone who looks like they’ll make things fun.” Steve Rubell is guiding a New York Times reporter through Studio 54 as resident DJ Richie Kaczor dazzles the crowd with records by CHIC, Odyssey, and T-Connection. “Disco, that’s where the happy people go,” The Trammps sing as dancers spin and twirl underneath tubes of flashing lights. Seven months since Rubell and co-owner Ian Schrager opened Studio 54 in April 1977, it’s welcomed untold numbers of “happy people” … at least those lucky enough to pass through the doors.
“We were part of the chosen few,” says André De Shields, who immortalized the title role in The Wiz on Broadway at the time. “We could show up at Studio 54 and the doorman at the velvet stanchion would look over everyone and point to us from The Wiz to come in, that kind of thing.” As the lead vocalist in the GRAMMY-nominated Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, whose debut modernized big band sophistication for the discothèques, Cory Daye had carte blanche in the club. “The energy was like a New Year’s Eve party every night,” she says. “I would go up to the mezzanine and watch the mechanical light pillars go up and down, metallic confetti falling from the ceiling, the spoon and the moon. I was so fascinated and enamored by it.
“When a certain song came on, the people would just rush to the dance floor. There was no contact dancing — the hustle was pretty much on its way out — but it was just an amazing experience to see all the cultures together. It was a fusion of cultures, which described my life and my band, so I was right at home there.”
“Studio 54 was the place,” adds Linda Clifford. “Crazy parties. If you could think it, you would see it. It was like a circus. Just an amazing place to be. I worked 54 so many times. It was like a second home to me. The people there treated me so well. The crowd always seemed to enjoy my show. I always had a good time with them. That was the most important thing: making sure that they had fun.”
Well before Studio 54 opened, disco had become a business juggernaut. “A four billion dollar market and still growing,” Billboard announced in February 1977, with dance music offering more variety than ever. “There is no longer a single, readily identifiable disco beat, but a kaleidoscope of sounds that are melodic and danceable,” Tom Moulton told the magazine. In the clubs, records by veteran artists like Stevie Wonder and the Bee Gees were mixed in with a range of new acts like Grace Jones, Boney M., and The Ritchie Family, while everyone from ABBA to Marvin Gaye scored number one pop hits with songs that had club-centric storylines.
Beyond the charts, disco itself remained as idiosyncratic as ever, especially on several productions by Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, whose studio creations, El Coco (“Let’s Get It Together,” “Cocomotion”) and Le Pamplemousse (“Le Spank”), joined their own “Lust” from Seven Deadly Sins (1977) among the most tantalizing releases on AVI Records. Rinder & Lewis also produced acts for the newly hatched Butterfly Records in Los Angeles, where Saint Tropez (“On a Rien à Perdre”) and Tuxedo Junction (“Moonlight Serenade”) reflected the duo’s high gloss sound, spanning everything from European sophistication to a more literal translation of the ’40s sensibilities popularized by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.
12-inch singles had also grown as the preferred format to approximate the club music experience at home. Nearly a year after Atlantic Records introduced its series of promotional 12-inch singles for DJs, New York-based Salsoul Records released the industry’s first commercially available 12-inch single, “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure, in May 1976. A year later, T.K. Records was the first label to certify a gold record for a 12-inch single when Peter Brown’s “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me” tallied one million sales.— Christian John Wikane
(From “A Night at the Disco” by Alice Harris & Christian John Wikane. Published by ACC Art Books.)
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Award-winning D.C. chef reaching new culinary heights
Anthony Jones of Marcus DC competing on ‘Top Chef’
In Anthony Jones’s kitchen, all sorts of flags fly, including his own. Executive chef at award-winning restaurant Marcus DC, Jones has reached culinary heights (James Beard Award semifinalist for Emerging Chef, anyone?), yet he’s just getting started.
Briefly stepping away from his award-winning station, Jones took a moment under a different set of lights. Recently, he temporarily gave up his post at the restaurant for a starring small-screen slot on the latest season of “Top Chef,” which debuted in March. (The show airs weekly on Bravo and Peacock).
Before his strategic slice-and-dice competition, however, Jones, who identifies as gay, draws from his deep DMV roots. In the years before “Top Chef” and the top chef spot at Marcus, he was born and raised in Sunderland, Md., in southern Maryland, near the Chesapeake.
Early memories were steeped in afternoons on boats with his dad bonding over fishing, and wandering the garden of his great-grandparents spread with fresh vegetables and a few hogs. “It was Southern, old-school ethics and upbringing,” he said. “Family and food went hand in hand.” Weekends meant grabbing bushels of crabs, dad and grandma would cook and crack them. Family members would host fish fries for extra cash. In this seafood-heavy youth, Jones managed time to sneak in episodes of the “OG” Japanese “Iron Chef” show, which helped inspire him to pursue a career in the kitchen.
Jones moved to D.C. after graduating from college, ending up at lauded Restaurant Eve, and met famed chef Marcus Samuelson, who brought him to Miami to be part of the opening team for Red Rooster Overtown. After three years, Jones moved back to D.C., where he ran Dirty Habit, reinventing and reimagining the menu, integrating West African flavors and ingredients.
Samuelson, however, wouldn’t let a talent like Jones stay away for too long. Pulling Jones back into his orbit, Samuelson elevated Jones to help him open his namesake restaurant Marcus DC, which has been named a top-five restaurant by the Washington Post. Since then, Jones has been nominated as a semifinalist for the RAMMYs Rising Culinary Star in 2026 and won the Eater DC’s Rising Chef award in 2025.
Samuelson’s Marcus is a tour de force interpreting the Black Diaspora on the plate, from the American South to West Africa, along with his signature “Swedopian” touches. Yet it’s Jones who has deeply informed the plate, elevating his own story to date. Marcus DC is primarily a seafood restaurant, which serves Jones well.
“Where I’m from is seafood heavy, and as I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve moved away from meat.” Veggies and fish are hero dishes. His own dish, Mel’s Crab Rice, was not only lauded by the Washington Post, but is framed by his youth carrying home the crustaceans from Mel’s crab truck. It’s a bowl of Carolina rice, layered with pickled okra, uni béarnaise, and crab. Jones also points to a dish on the opening menu, rockfish and brassica, paying respect to a landmark D.C. institution, Ben’s Chili Bowl. Jones reverse engineered a favorite bowl of chili that’s seafood instead of meat forward, leveraging octopus and rockfish along with different riffs of cauliflower: showing his intellectual, creative, and cultural sides.
While “Top Chef” is showing Jones’s spotlight side, he also lets his identity show at work. “In the kitchen, I make sure we’re inclusive. We don’t tolerate discrimination. Everyone that’s here should feel confident to express themselves. There are so many different flags in the kitchen.”
Jones says that he didn’t fully express his gay identity until fairly recently. He felt reluctant coming out to certain family members, “you’re scared to tell them about being different,” he says, and while that anxiety ate at him, “I’m lucky and fortunate to have unconditional love and that weight off my shoulders.”
Today, “I’m me all the time, Monday to Sunday. I’m honest with people, and my staff is honest with me.”
“Being a chef is hard,” he says, “and being a chef of color is even more difficult.”
Yet his LGBTQ identity is a juggling act, he says. “I need to keep that balance, because once someone finds out something about you, their opinion can change, whether you want it or not.”
Being on a whole season of TV cooking competition, however, might mean millions more might have an opinion of him (Jones has appeared on TV already, on an episode of “Chopped”). To prepare, he says, “I’ve just kept a level head. It’s just an honor to be on top chef with amazing people happy to be there.”
Plus, this season is set in the Carolinas, and Jones attended Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C. “It’s a full story of my life, now a monumental moment for me.”
Jones also recently was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. “JBF has been a north star, a dream for so long. I always had this goal on my wall.”
Being at the top spot at Marcus DC, making waves through his accolades, and cooking on Bravo means that Jones is highly visible. “I think that if someone has a similar background to me, and can see our story, trajectory, and success, they can have more ability to be themselves. This is my goal.”
Back at Marcus, Jones has plenty up his chef’s white’s sleeves. A new spring menu is in the works. He’ll be launching a new tasting menu “dining experience,” he says, and has plans to work on more events and collaborations with chefs and friends to bring in new talent and share the culinary wealth.
a&e features
Introducing the Torchbearers Awards honoring queer, trans women and nonbinary people
Meet the Legends and Illuminators lighting new paths
The Torchbearers Awards are more than recognition—they are a continuation of legacy. They honor the quiet architects of progress in our community: those who organize, advocate, build, and protect, often without fanfare but always with purpose. Rooted in a belief in intentional recognition, this honor names those who carry our movements forward—those who make room for others, who remind us that change is both generational and generative. In a time marked by uncertainty and challenge, these leaders push forward with courage, clarity, and an unwavering commitment to expanding opportunity and equity.
This year’s honorees reflect the full breadth of our community, spanning generations, backgrounds, identities, and industries. From Legends, with decades of leadership and having created pathways for others, to Illuminators, who are lighting new paths with creativity and innovation, each Torchbearer represents the power of intergenerational leadership and the strength found in our diversity. They are organizers, advocates, artists, policy leaders, healers, and changemakers whose lived experiences shape a shared vision for equity and liberation.
This award is our love letter to queer and trans women and nonbinary people who carry the flame when it would be easier to let it dim. To those who consistently show up, who use their voice and visibility and stand firm, often without recognition, so that others may live more freely and fully. The Torchbearers Awards celebrates not just what has been done, but the enduring spirit, responsibility, and collective care that ensure the work continues, and that the flame is always passed forward.
Co-Creators of the Torchbearers Awards: Shannon Alston, June Crenshaw, Heidi Ellis
Torchbearers Awards Advisory Board: Aditi Hardikar, Lesley Bryant, Jasmine Wilson-Bryant, Stephen Rutgers
ILLUMINATOR AWARDEES
- Representative Sharice Davids (she/her), (D, KS-03)
— U.S. House of Representatives - Greisa Martinez Rosas (she/her/ella)
— Executive Director, United We Dream - Paola Ramos (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Meagan A. Fitzgerald (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Jessica L. Lewis (she/her)
— Founder / Producer, Play Play DC - Savannah Wade (she/her)
— Founder, OAR Agency - Suhad Babaa (she/her)
— Filmmaker/ Former Executive Director of Just Vision - Ashlee Davis (she/her)
— Global Head of Inclusive Outcomes, Ancestry - Jazmine Hughes (she/her)
— Journalist and Former Editor at New York Times Magazine - Queen Adesuyi (they/she)
— Policy Advisor & Organizer, ReFrame Health & Justice - Michele Rayner, Esq. (she/her)
— Civil Rights Attorney, State Representative (Florida House of Representatives) - Gaby Vincent (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Jenny Nguyen (she/her)
— Founder & Owner, The Sports Bra - Denice Frohman (she/her)
— Independent Artist, Poet / Performer - Vida Rangel (she/her)
— Founder, Our Trans Capital - Roxanne Anderson (they/them)
— Executive Director, Our Space - Ann Marie Gothard (she/her)
— Co-Founder & President, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Diana Rodriquez (she/her)
— Co-Founder & CEO, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Wendi Cooper (she/her)
— Founder / Executive Director, Transcending Women - Toya Matthews (she/her)
— City of San Antonio, Texas - Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Charity Blackwell (she/her)
— Poet, LGBTQ Advocate & Community Leader - Wilhelmina Indermaur (she/her)
— Director of Communications, Tyler Clementi Foundation - Em Chadwick (she/her)
— CMO, For Them & Autostraddle - Kylo Freeman (they/he)
— CEO, For Them & Autostraddle
LEGEND AWARDEES
- Sheila Alexander-Reid (she/her)
— Executive Director, PHL Diversity, Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau - Cassandra Cantave Burton (she/her)
— Interim Director of Thought Leadership & Senior Research Advisor, AARP - leigh h. mosley (she/her)
— Photographer / Educator, PhotoFlo Photography - Jenn M. Jackson, PhD (they/them)
— Assistant Professor of Political Science; Author & Columnist, Syracuse University - Jordyn White (she/her)
— COO, Washington Prodigy / VP of Leadership Development & Research, HRC Foundation - AJ Hikes (they/them)
— Deputy Executive Director, ACLU - RaeShanda Lias (she/her)
— Digital Creator, RL Lockhart - Donna Payne-Hardy (she/her)
— Educator, EEO Specialist, Founder of NBJC, Former Leader at the Human Rights Campaign - Courtney R. Snowden (she/her)
— Principal, Blueprint Strategy Group - Gaye Adegbalola (she/her)
— Musician & Activist, Musician / Inductee of the Blues Hall of Fame - Cheryl A. Head (she/her)
— Independent Author, Novelist (Crime Fiction) - Letitia Gomez (she/her)
— The American LGBTQ+ Museum, Board Chair - Lynne Brown (she/her)
— Publisher, Washington Blade - Shay Franco-Clausen (She/Her/Ella/Queen)
— Political Strategist and Organizer - Melissa L. Bradley (she/her)
— Founder & Managing Partner, New Majority Ventures - Meghann Burke (she/her)
— Executive Director, NWSL Players Association - Victoria Kirby York, MPA (she/they)
— Director of Public Policy & Programs, National Black Justice Collective - Joli Angel Robinson (she/her)
— CEO, Center on Halsted - Jeannine Frisby LaRue (she/her)
— CEO, Moxie Strategies - Alice Wu (she/her)
— Film Director (Saving Face, The Half of It) / Screenwriter - Storme Webber (she/her)
— Interdisciplinary Artist / Educator, University of Washington - Kim Stone
— CEO of the Washington Spirit, Washington Spirit - Mickalene Thomas
— American Visual Artist, Mickalene Thomas Studio - Erika Lorshbough (any/they/she)
— Executive Director, interACT - J. Gia Loving (she/ella)
— Co-Executive Director, GSA Network
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