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I get followed after gigs, heckled by strangers."
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But here, everyone vocalises their problem with it. "If I walked down the streets of Sydney in drag, nobody would bat an eye-lid. They're all straight-acting and discreet." Baker says. With the community withdrawing to online spaces, there has been a re-emergence of "noughties-era discretion and internalised homophobia". We have no base, there's no home for the community."īaker says that the lack of LGBTIQ+ spaces on the Gold Coast has impacted the way members of the local community connect with one another, with hookup apps like Grindr becoming one of the only ways to meet like-minded queer people. "Now there is only one weekly drag event at The Avenue, and a monthly event called Tickle, which is held at another straight club. "The people representing the community and running these clubs were out of touch, they had no idea," Baker tells SBS Pride. Other nightclubs have flaunted new 'LGBTIQ+ inclusive' nights or events, but nobody has quite managed to fill the gap left behind.
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Those venues were The Meeting Place ( MPs), the longest standing, and Escape, which soon established itself as the place to be on a Friday or Saturday night.īaker getting up close and personal while hosting his monthly drag bingo event.īoth businesses have since closed, reopened, rebranded, and closed again. The razor sharp 27-year-old has been a fixture of the Gold Coast queer nightlife for six years, back when the city had two gay bars to choose from. Out of drag, Natasha St James is Nelson Baker, a self-described "six-foot-three Aussie bloke with a mullet." More often, it plays host to a steady stream of buck's nights, sport viewing events, and rowdy nights out - the stuff Surfers Paradise is infamous for. Surprisingly, The Avenue is not a gay bar. For six nights of the week, you'd be hard pressed to find a drag queen within walking distance of The Avenue. I'm sitting in for a dinner-and-show called Dragalicious, held weekly at The Avenue in Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. The man grins incredulously into his beer. "You know, I've got a mullet underneath this wig," Natasha purrs at him flirtatiously. He's wearing work boots and a navy singlet she's wearing a long faux-fur coat and plastic stilettos. Natasha St James, a Gold Coast drag queen, is leaning into the unshaven face of a man in his mid-50s.