Arts & Entertainment
Best of Gay D.C. 2017: NIGHTLIFE
Winners from the Washington Blade’s annual poll
(Photo of Dylan Knight by David Claypool; Washington Blade photo of Distrkt C by Ben Keller; Washington Blade photos of DJ Tezrah and Ophelia Heart by Tom Hausman)
Best Dance Party
Distrkt C
D.C. Eagle
Second Saturday of the month
D.C. Eagle
3701 Benning Rd., N.E.
Editor’s choice: Gay Bash, Trade
Distrkt C (Washington Blade photo by Ben Keller)
Best Bartender
Dusty Martinez, Trade
Also won in 2014; last year’s runner-up.
1410 14th St., N.W.
Runner-up: Tommy Honeycutt, Nellie’s
Dusty Martinez (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Best Burlesque Dancer
Ophelia Hart
Runner-up: GiGi Holliday
Ophelia Zayna Hartis a belly dancer and drag and burlesque performer hailing from Washington.
“I am thunder thighs, sinful curves, and fiery spirit,” she says.
She made her debut at Washington’s 2015 Burlypicks, where she won the title of Master of Lip-sync, and she has been shimmying and shaking across the East Coast since then. Always true to her Arab roots, Hart celebrates the fusion of classic and neo-burlesque and her homeland’s cultural riches.
Hart, who is known for dancing with grace, seducing with elegance and jiggling with abandon, has some advice for performers working on a new act: “When you’re crafting a number — brainstorming a concept, working on your choreography, creating a costume and rehearsing your act — ask yourself, what story am I telling, and is it mine to tell?” (BTC)
facebook.com/opheliahartburlesque
Ophelia Hart (Washington Blade photo by Tom Hausman)
Best Avion Tequila Margarita
Winner: Lauriol Plaza
1835 18th St., N.W.
Editor’s pick: Rito Loco
Avion Tequila Margarita at Lauriol Plaza (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Best DJ
DJ Tezrah
Runner-up: The Barber Streisand
Tezrah has a delightfully eclectic background and an amazing sound.
A native of Fairfax, Va., Tezrah says she “learned to play classical piano at age 5, which laid the foundation for future investigation into computer music programs.” She graduated with a pre-medical degree in Neuroscience from William & Mary, attended the Harvard School of Design Summer Program, and was accepted into the Graduate Architecture Program at Catholic University.
She also played semi-pro soccer.
Then, she says, “on a whim I tried turning my musical hobby into a profession.”
Now Tezrah reigns in her fourth year of DJing in the D.C. area, specializing in Top 40, electronic dance music, hip hop and other genres. Formerly known as DJ Deedub, she is hailed as one of D.C.’s and the LGBT community’s brightest stars. Her sound is eclectic, combining the newest music seamlessly with older classic songs. Winner of the DJ Battle for Her HRC for 2014 and 2015, headliner at the 9:30 Club, and headliner for a crowd of about 5,000 at Hampton Roads Pride 2016, she has garnered a solid local following. (BTC)
DJ Tezrah (Washington Blade photo by Tom Hausman)
Best Drag King
Roman Noodle
Runner-up: Avery Austin
Roman Noodle, real name Shay, first started doing drag in May 2016 as a way to escape being herself.
“Roman was created so I could kind of be myself without people judging me for being myself. Because they think I’m just being Roman. It turned into an avenue where in doing drag it made me completely myself,” Noodle, a dog walker by day, says.
The D.C. native kicked off her drag career as a choir boy for Pretty Boi Drag’s Sunday Service shows. At first she was unsure how to craft her drag persona and experimented with different genres and concepts. Eventually she settled on Roman, “a basic dude, no gimmicks.”
Even though Noodle has performed for other groups including D.C. Gurly Show and Girl Power in Baltimore, she still considers Pretty Boi Drag her family.
She also credits the art of drag with giving her, and countless others, a safe space to be who they are.
“I love that it gives everyone a place to be themselves, to feel safe, to express themselves creatively. Whether they are male-bodied or female-bodied, they’re able to present themselves the way they want without any issues or questions,” Noodle says. (PF)
Roman Noodle (Washington Blade photo by Chris Jennings)
Best Drag Queen
Sasha Adams
Runner-up: Tatianna
Drag performer Sasha Adams, whose real name is Richard Christmas, says “I’m the Clydesdale of D.C. drag. I’m plus sized but I dance. You’ll get the kicks, the splits, the hair flips and all that. Clydesdale are big, graceful, beautiful but most importantly, they’re work horses.”
Though he maintains a day job as a contractor with the federal government, Christmas performs as Sasha four or five times a week. His drag career is two-pronged: performing at clubs and brunches and competing in national drag pageants. “Sasha isn’t modeled after anyone in particular,” Christmas says. “I lip sync R&B and hip-hop. I like old school Janet, Missy and Mariah. And Donna Summer if the venue calls for it. I do contemporary top 20 artists too.”
Christmas grew up in a small-town outside of Charlottesville, Va. He did choir in high school but not a lot of acting. He graduated from James Madison University where he majored in finance and minored in dance and music. The Eagle Scout’s foray into drag began when he won amateur drag night at Freddie’s Beach Bar in 2010. Gigs and bookings followed.
When the wig is off and he’s untucked, Christmas can be found at home in Columbia Heights lying on the couch watching “Law & Order.” As a performer, he finds relationships difficult. He’s single but likes a guy who has his shit together.
Town Danceboutique
2009 8th St., N.W.
Sasha Adams (Photo by Bobby DeCanio)
Best Drag Show
Ladies of Town
Fridays and Saturdays at 10:30 p.m. Sixth win in this category!
Town Danceboutique
2009 8th St., N.W.
A perennial favorite in this category!
Editor’s choice: Pretty Boi Drag
Ba’Naka and Tatianna perform at Town. (Washington Blade photo by Hugh Clarke)
Best Singer or Band
Wicked Jezabel
Also won this award in 2013!
Runner-up: Homo Superior
Wicked Jezebel at NOVA Pride (Photo by Bobbie English)
Best Transgender Performer
Phoenix King
Runner-up: Salvadora Dali
Performer Phoenix King, real name Benny Rodriguez, identifies as trans.
“I’ve been a drag king in Washington for about four years,” he says. “Entertaining has translated into different kinds of performance art including burlesque. Being trans is a big part of my life but it’s not my entire performance persona.”
Rodriquez got into drag performance in 2013 while working at the now-defunct lesbian hot spot Phase 1 in Dupont Circle. “They had a drag show with drag kings and queens and I asked if I could perform,” he says. “The experience was totally exhilarating and ties into my trans identity. To see myself as a masculine-presenting person for the first time was shocking and exciting to me.”
By all accounts, Rodriguez’s drag debut was a resounding success. Over the last two years, he’s attracted an enthusiastic following and for the last two year he has been performing mostly at Bier Baron Tavern in D.C. He’s also performed in clubs and burlesque.
“Initially I perceived drag as a hobby but increasingly I’ve come to see it as a money-making venture,” says Rodriguez, 26. “Over this year, I’ve become increasingly focused on where I perform and for whom I perform. This experience has opened doors all over town. There’s no telling where it might lead.” (PF)
Phoenix King (Photo courtesy of Benicio Rodriguez)
Best Gay-Friendly Straight Bar
Dacha Beer Garden
Third consecutive win in this category!
1600 7th St., N.W.
202-524-8790
Editor’s choice: DC9
Dacha Beer Garden (Photo by Ted Eytan; courtesy Flickr)
Best Go-Go Dancer/Stripper
Dylan Knight
Runner-up: Eddie Danger
Dylan Knight started gyrating lasciviously at Town about 2010 after seeing other go-go dancers there. This is his second consecutive win in this category.
He’s a regular at Town and performs there and elsewhere, never taking himself too seriously.
“I just try to be entertaining and cute,” the 26-year-old D.C. resident, who also does gay porn, says. (JD)
Dylan Knight (Photo by David Claypool; courtesy Knight)
Best Absolut Happy Hour
Number Nine
Two-for-one happy hour is 5-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday and 2-9 p.m. on weekends. This is Nine’s fifth Best Of award.
1435 P St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Trade
Number 9 happy hour (Washington Blade photo by Daniel Truitt)
Hottest Bar Staff
The Dirty Goose
913 U St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Trade
The Dirty Goose bar staff (Washington Blade photo by Tom Hausman)
Best Live Music
9:30 Club
A perennial favorite in this category!
815 V St., N.W.
Editor’s Choice: Wolf Trap
Troye Sivan performs at the 9:30 Club (Photo by Katherine Gaines)
Best Neighborhood Bar
Trade
1410 14th St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: JR.’s
Trade (Washington Blade photo by Daniel Truitt)
Best Outside-the-District Bar
Freddie’s Beach Bar
This is Freddie’s 20th Best Of win, a Washington Blade record. Freddie’s has won this award every year since 2002 in addition to several others.
555 S. 23rd St.
Arlington, Va.
Editor’s choice: Baltimore Eagle
Freddie’s Beach Bar (Washington Blade photo by Hugh Clarke)
Best Outdoor Drinking
Town Patio
Third consecutive win in this category!
Town Danceboutique
2009 8th St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Dascha Beer Garden
Town Patio (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Best Place for Guys Night Out
Crew Club
1321 14th St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: DC Bear Crue: Bear Happy Hour
Crew Club (Washington Blade photo by Pete Exis)
Best Place for Girls Night Out
Pretty Boi Drag
Editor’s choice: BARE by LURe
Take a break from the numerous drag queen brunches and parties to have fun with the boys.
Pretty Boi Drag is D.C.’s newest drag king troupe that features daytime and nighttime parties and events throughout the city. The troupe started in 2016 and since then has expanded into a staple in the D.C. drag community.
Perhaps their best known event is Pretty Boi Sunday Service at the Bier Baron Tavern (1523 22nd St., N.W.). Described as “a parody drag church for the non-religious,” the kings entertain with heavy influences of hip-hop and R&B. The event is hosted by the troupe’s co-producer, Pretty Rik E.
Other events include happy hours, brunches and variety shows at different locales around town. Their performers are a diverse mix of characters and acts including Best Drag King winner, Roman Noodle.
“Pretty Boi Drag creates a fun, safe and unique atmosphere for queer women to see drag kings like they’ve never seen them before,” their website states. “Our events are drag show meets dance party meets a queer woman’s version of ‘Magic Mike.’ Our audience isn’t there to just watch what happens on stage, they also get to be a part of the show.” (MC)
(Washington Blade photo by Chris Jennings)
Best Rehoboth Bar
Purple Parrot
134 Rehoboth Ave.
Rehoboth Beach, Del.
Editor’s choice: Blue Moon
Purple Parrot (Washington Blade photo by Daniel Truitt)
Best Rehoboth Bartender
Holly Lane, Cafe Azafran
18 Baltimore Ave.
Rehoboth Beach, Del.
Runner-up: Jamie Romano, Purple Parrot
Holly Lane (Washington Blade photo by Daniel Truitt)
Best Rooftop
Uproar Lounge & Restaurant
Second consecutive win in this category!
639 Florida Ave., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Nellie’s
UpRoar Lounge (Washington Blade photo by Hugh Clarke)
To see winners in other categories in the Washington Blade’s Best of Gay D.C. 2017 Awards, click here.
Photos
PHOTOS: Remove the Regime rally and march
Dropkick Murphys, Earth to Eve perform on steps of Lincoln Memorial
The Remove the Regime rally and march was held on Saturday, Nov. 22.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Transgender Day of Remembrance was observed at the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Nov. 20. The event was emceed by Rayceen Pendarvis and Dwight Venson. Musical selections were provided by Agape Praise and Dynamic Praise. Proclamations from the D.C. Council and the D.C. Office of the Mayor were presented. The Pouring of the Libation was conducted by Rev. Elder Akousa McCray and Rev. Paul Fulton-Woods of Unity Fellowship Church.
Remarks were given by trans survivors of violence. Family members of slain trans woman Dream Johnson were featured speakers. Prayers were given by Rev. Cathy Alexander and Rev. Dwayne Johnson of Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, D.C. Yael Shafritz gave a Jewish prayer through a video presentation. Closing remarks were given by community leader, Earline Budd.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Books
Pioneering gay journalist takes on Trump 2.0 in new book
Nick Benton’s essays appeared in Fall Church News-Press
Nicholas Benton is a well-known local LGBTQ advocate and journalist and the longtime owner and editor of the Falls Church News-Press, a weekly newspaper.
In his eighth book out now, Benton offers a new set of remarkable essays all crafted in the first eight months of Trump 2.0 and its wholesale effort at dismantling democracy and the rule of law. Most were published in the Falls Church News-Press, but he adds a new piece to this volume, as an addendum to his “Cult Century” series, revealing for the first time his experiences from decades ago in the political cult of Lyndon LaRouche, aimed at providing a clearer grasp of today’s Cult of Trump.
His “Please Don’t Eat Your Children” set takes off from the satire of Jonathan Swift to explore society’s critical role of drumming creativity out of the young.
Below is an excerpt from “Please Don’t Eat Your Children, Cult Century, and other 2025 Essays.”
Please Don’t Eat Your Children
In his famous short essay, “A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public,” author and Anglican priest Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) uses cutting satire to suggest that cannibalism of the young might help solve a battery of social ills.
As we examine our broken society today, it seems to me that reflecting on Swift’s social critique can be quite useful. Now we face a nation filled with anger and division and there is little to suggest any real solutions other than insisting people “don’t do that!” We can start out with the observation that young children, left to their own, are neither hateful nor cruel. How do they get that way later on in their lives? What drives them toward such emotional states and behaviors? It is not a problem only for the margins of society, for the extreme misfits or troubled. It is defining the very center of our culture today. Our divisions are not the cause, but the result of something, and nobody is saying what that is.
Swift doesn’t say what it is in his biting little essay. But it is implied by a context of a lack of bounty, or poverty, on the one hand, and an approach to it characterized by obscenely cruel indifference, on the other. He coined the phrase “useless eaters” in defining his radical solution. In Hitler’s Germany, that term resonated through the death camps and some in our present situation are daring to evoke it again as the current administration pushes radical cuts in Medicaid funding.
But while that refers to the old and infirm, mostly, it is the young we are talking about here. The problem is that our society is structured to devour our young and as they begin to find that out, they rebel. Not in all cases is this the practice, of course. Where there is little or no lack, things are different. We nurture our young, as we should, and we love them. Lucky is the child who is born to parents who are of means, and in a community where nurture is possible and valued. But even such children are ultimately not immune from facing a destiny of pale conformity battered by tightly delimited social expectations and debt slavery. If they have enough ambition, education and doors opened for them, some can run the gauntlet with relative effectiveness. Otherwise, our young are raised to die on battlefields, or to struggle in myriad other painful social conflicts aimed at advancing the world of their elders. In the Bible, there is a great admonition against this process that comes at the very precondition for the tradition it represents that begins with Abraham.
It is in the book of Genesis at the beginning of the Biblical story when, as that story goes, God commanded Abraham to kill his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. As Abraham is about to obey, God steps in and says no. The entire subsequent eons-long struggle to realize Abraham’s commission by God to make a great nation that would be a light to the world would have been cut short right then if Abraham had slain his own son. The message is that all of the Abrahamic traditions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, owe their source, and in fact are rooted, in God’s command to reject the sacrifice of children to the whims of their elders. The last thousands of years can be best defined in these terms, where nurture is pitted against exploitation of our young with, at best, vastly mixed results. Scenes like that at the opening of “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the World War I novel and film where a teacher rallies a classroom full of boys to enlist in the war, is bone chilling. Or, the lyric in Pink Floyd’s iconic song, Comfortably Numb, “When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone. I cannot put my finger on it now. The child is grown, the dream is gone.”
Nick Benton’s new book is available now at Amazon.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
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