The Rosemont is located within the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, throughout from a soccer discipline. In the Before Times, throngs of maskless L.G.B.T.Q.+ patrons, most of them of their twenties and thirties, squeezed into the small bar for elaborate drag performances, dancing, and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” watch events.

On a current crisp Friday evening, Troy Carson, a Rosemont co-owner (he additionally lives above the bar), and Magenta, one of many bar’s resident drag queens, hopped right into a fog-gray Jeep parked exterior, on Montrose Avenue. “Here we go,” Carson shouted, by his surgical masks. Magenta, who’d opted for a face protect within the curiosity of defending her make-up, positioned a Bluetooth speaker and a big paper bag with liquor, mixers, and biodegradable paper cups within the again seat. Although institutions just like the Rosemont can now function at fifty-per-cent capability, many New Yorkers are hesitant to return to indoor eating places and bars. Just a few months in the past, Carson and Magenta determined to convey drag performances to their clients, who can place orders by way of textual content message or Instagram direct message. It’s like Seamless for drag.

First cease: two dads in Ditmas Park. “Which house is it?” Carson requested, inching alongside a avenue close to Ocean Parkway.

“We’ve been here before!” Magenta stated. “You don’t remember it? It looks like a gay dads’ house.” She peered at homes painted in tones of beige and taupe and grimaced. “These definitely belong to straight people.”

Google Maps led the pair to a home with a jaunty teal façade. “See!” Magenta stated. “It looks like ‘Pinocchio’!”

Carson pulled into the driveway, and Magenta leaped out of the Jeep, her heels clicking on the pavement. She eliminated her coat, revealing a crop high, high-waisted cutoff shorts, and white stockings. The dads had invited an viewers—their two younger daughters, plus different children and fogeys from the neighborhood—and the group sat on the porch, all in masks.

Magenta shouted, “Yas-s-s-s-s! Hi, everybody!,” her Bronx accent ramped up. The crowd whooped. “I’m here with the Rosemont drag-delivery service,” she continued. She set down the Bluetooth speaker, and Carson hit Play on his iPhone. The opening chords of Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now” blared out. “Give it up for . . . me!”

Magenta, who’s twenty-two, handled the dads and their visitors to a dizzying sequence of excessive kicks, spins, finger wags, and hair flips, all whereas lip-synching. The youngsters sat silent and wide-eyed. Just a few mouths had been open.

“Enjoy the rest of your night!” Magenta stated after her efficiency, an enormous smile on her face. “Be good in school, kids!” She laughed at herself: “I’ve always wanted to say that to somebody and have it mean something!”

Brian Rubin-Sowers, the daddy of Anna, 5, and Joni, two (“like Joni Mitchell,” he stated), and his husband, Toby, who works in promoting, have ordered drag supply earlier than, at a value of seventy-one {dollars}, plus tip. “As much as I say that the kids are the perfect age to be surviving what we’re going through right now, Anna is still very aware,” Rubin-Sowers stated. “She keeps asking, ‘When is the virus going to be over?’ So we keep trying to find experiences she can be excited about.”

Anna, who has a YouTube channel that includes cooking movies (a banana-bread installment starred speaking bananas, voiced by Anna), is a drag-queen aficionado. “When we told her there was going to be a drag queen tonight, she asked, ‘Is it going to be Shangela?’ ” Rubin-Sowers stated. “Then she asked, ‘Oh, is it going to be Trixie Mattel?’ ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ is kind of a religion in this household.”

Next cease: to fulfill a gaggle of twentysomethings in Ridgewood, Queens. When Carson and Magenta pulled up, the children stood huddled on the entrance steps of an house constructing, iPhones on the prepared. On the sidewalk, Magenta did her factor, and the viewers members held out money suggestions and shouted “Yas-s-s-s!” and “Work!” A boy with inexperienced hair handed Carson a twenty and requested “Test Drive,” by Ariana Grande. Magenta grabbed a puffer jacket from the Jeep and wore it half slung off her physique, just like the ponytailed pop star.

For this specific group, the Rosemont supply service has been a lifesaver. They all get frequent Covid exams in order that they will convene every Friday to look at “Drag Race” collectively indoors.

“We’ve had to go underground with our social gatherings,” a daily named Nathan Bennett stated. “We can’t post pictures of our gatherings anymore—”

“—for fear of being cancelled,” Dallin Robinson, who held a beer can, completed, rolling his eyes.

A younger man named Sam Rolfe, who has a bald head and wore a pink bandanna as a masks, stated, “If there’s anything I miss the most right now, it’s being in a bar seeing drag queens, surrounded by other queers.”

Bennett nodded wistfully. “You have to carve out queer spaces,” he stated. “So to have a reminder like tonight that all of that will come back? It’s amazing.” ♦



Source link