How Breweries Are Creating Space for Drag Performers | Imbibe Magazine

Poison Waters at a drag queen bingo event in Portland, Oregon | Photo by Leah Nash

Much like craft beer, drag has traveled from cultural fringes to the mainstream. The gender-bending entertainment, in which people don clothing and stylized makeup to assume flamboyant forms of femininity and masculinity, typically of the opposite sex, is part of the pop-culture zeitgeist thanks to RuPaul’s Drag Race and other reality shows. Drag queens and drag kings regularly dance, lip-synch, and do bawdy comedy routines at clubs, gay bars, theaters, and themed restaurants.

Now brewery taprooms are emerging as drag’s next great stage. Drag performances are bringing new audiences to taprooms, introducing guests to craft beer and fostering affable environments. Equally beneficial, drag events inject taprooms with levity and humor, bringing a collective buzz to complement that hazy IPA. “It’s so cool to get 100 strangers in a room just organically laughing and smiling,” says Sara Kazmer, a founder of Atlanta’s Elsewhere Brewing, which hosts a bimonthly drag brunch. “It’s the absolute best energy that we feel ever in the taproom.”

For Imbibe magazine, I take a deep dive into the intersection of breweries and drag performances.