Linda Simpson
is very quick to point out that Drag Queens come and go, but very few survive the test of time.. She should know as, after 30 years at the top of her game, she continues to dazzle and delight her many very loyal fans.
The world first caught sight of her in NY’s East Village in the late 1980’s when the place was really bubbling. It would soon start to dissipate with the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic that plowed its way un-mercilessly through this piece of gay heaven.
She however was more than a survivor and went on to rack up a mile-long list of creative endeavors, including nightlife work galore as a hostess and party promoter; publishing the “revolutionary gay magazine” My Comrade; writing and starring in four different plays; and extensive work as a journalist, often in cahoots with her male alter ego, Les Simpson.
Linda Simpson has, as you can imagine, a whole host of stories to tell about her flamboyantly colored life and she has curated them into an epic stroll down drag queen memory lane. This hefty 250-page coffee table book lt is a timeless scrapbook brimming with early snapshots of legendary queens in their formative days, partying, screeching, catcalling, ruling makeshift club runways, posing, and, unbeknownst to them at the time, setting the stage for decades of drag and performance art to come.
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Simpson is at her best covering that golden age of nightclub culture occupying the 1980s and ’90s where creativity and fierceness were outragous, but most of important FUN. It’s a real eye-opener and a joy to behold for all those people who never experinced drag until televison made it all about being some sort of reality star for 15 mins (or more)
Those were the days when the drag queens were at the forefront of the fight for individuality and identity collided head-on with rampant bigotry, anti-gay violence, and a deadly epidemic that decimated gay communities across the globe. Some still are, but that passion has subsided and been replaced by the need to turn drag into a paying career.
You can buy this essential (and glittery) record of queer history at http://www.domainbooks.org/.
