EPISODE 5 SHOW NOTES

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"As a non-binary person, I never feel like I”m 100% one thing, but I do feel like I’m a million things."

— Klondyke

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➡️👑 Drag Artists & Queer Creatives Mentioned

• Vera

Oakland-based drag king Pattie met during a group hike. Pattie describes Vera as one of the first drag artists she encountered who shared her love of nature and community-building. Together, they created the first Save Her! drag show, which later toured nationally.

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• Junior Mintt

Featured guest from Episode 404 (check it out) and creator/host of In Living Color, a Brooklyn drag show where Klondyke performed open sets early in their drag career. Klondyke describes the space as instrumental in showing them how expansive drag could be.

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• Selena Surreal

Black trans sideshow artist who introduced Klondyke to new forms of sideshow performance and actively worked to bring more people into the art form.

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Other Brooklyn-based drag artists named by Klondyke: 

• Juniper Juicy

• Just June

• Mother Theresa

• Islayaa

• Lily Suburbia

• Uncle Freek

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Institutions & Live Shows:

• Live Shows

  • Black Cherry Sideshow

  • In Living Color

• The Gradient Brooklyn - venue where In Living Color was held

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➡️🎤 Artists, Media & Pop Culture Mentioned

• Janelle Monáe

• Lil Bow Wow / Bow Wow

• Seinfeld

• “American Boy” by Estelle featuring Kanye West

• Sinners (movie, directed by Ryan Coogler)

• “Freak Like Me” by Adina Howard

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➡️🌲 Drag, Queerness & the Outdoors

Queer access to nature- Pattie describes nature as one of the first places she felt free as a queer child, before outdoor spaces later became associated with homophobia. Her work now seeks to reclaim those spaces and make access to nature more equitable.

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Nature as relative, not resource - Pattie discusses the disconnection between people and the natural world and asks what might change if we treated forests and the Earth as relatives rather than resources.

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Nothing blooms all year - Pattie uses nature as a metaphor for queer growth and transformation: periods when we aren’t “blooming” don't necessarily mean something is wrong; sometimes we need to find new “fertile soil” in which to grow.

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➡️🏳️‍⚧️ Gender, Nonbinary Identity & Representation

Klondyke’s story strongly connects drag to gender exploration. Their early drag was an extension of their transmasculine identity, but as their everyday gender presentation became more comfortable, Klondyke evolved into something stranger, more fluid, and less conventionally masculine.

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The episode also directly points listeners back to IFQT Season 2’s two-part “Transgressing the Binary” episodes, exploring nonbinary identities, representation, and transmasculine experiences.

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➡️🎪 Sideshow

Klondyke discusses their involvement with Black Cherry Sideshow, an all-BIPOC troupe, and the history of sideshow as a predominantly white art form that has sometimes exploited people of color.

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They also discuss “geeking” - historically a sideshow performance involving extreme or grotesque acts, and how they adapted the tradition into their own deliberately “gross,” but non-harmful, performance.

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For Klondyke, sideshow also became a way to reclaim agency while living with chronic pain: “When I get to decide how it hurts and, like, when it hurts, that feels very powerful.”

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💜 Fun Fact of the Day

The episode’s Fun Fact of the Day revisits William Dorsey Swann, described as the first person known to call himself the “Queen of Drag.” Swann was a queer activist who organized secret drag balls in Washington, D.C., in the late 19th century.