Philip Bailey Oral History
Item
Title
Philip Bailey Oral History
Identifier
2024.005.003
Type
Oral History
Description
Phillip Bailey has been a long time drag organizer and celebrity in Riverside since moving to the city in 1996. He discusses his long involvement in Riverside’s drag community and its beginnings in Riverside’s Menagerie and V.I.P. gay bars during the late 1980s and 1990s. Bailey details the activism role of the Riverside drag community during the AIDS epidemic, during which drag performers held fundraiser events for the Inland AIDS Project. He discusses how the LGBTQ+ community’s organized after the murder of Jeffrey Owens in which a “We Will Not Be Silent” march took place in the city and the Jeffrey Owens Community Center was founded. He talks about Riverside drag events that he has organized, including the annual Throwdown Drag Down Drag Race, his Fant-A-Shes productions beginning in 1997, and various drag shows at the V.I.P. and Menagerie bars over the years. Bailey also discusses key factors to drag history in the Inland Empire, including the famous Halston drag family, the impact of Ru Paul’s Drag Race locally, and the triangulation between Riverside, Palm Springs, and L.A. 's drag communities. He also notes the historic and contemporary relationship between the drag community and trans people and comments on the current attacks on drag performance and trans rights in the United States today.
Subject
LGBTQ
LGBTQ Community
LGBTQ History
Drag
Gay bars
Performing Arts
AIDS epidemic
Activism
Transgender rights
Spatial Coverage
Riverside (Calif.)
Temporal Coverage
1980s-present
Creator
Philip Bailey
Jill Surdzial
Date
May 1, 2023
Contributor
A People's History of the I.E.
Format
Audio
Language
English
Rights
Duration
01:54:39