SF drag ‘Golden Girls’ holiday shows to return

by Matthew S. Bajko

S ince premiering in 2007 inside the parlor of a historic Victorian in San Francisco’s Western Addition neighborhood, the drag stagings of beloved TV sitcom “The Golden Girls” have starred Heklina as the buttoned-up substitute teacher Dorothy Zbornak. Over the years the Christmastime productions have become a Bay Area holiday tradition.

The sudden death last month of Heklina, the drag persona of Stefan Grygelko, raised questions on if her surviving castmates would bring back the production this December. The answer is “The Golden Girls Live! The Christmas Episodes” shows will go on, according to D’Arcy Drollinger, who since 2015 has played the dimwitted Midwesterner Rose Nylund and has directed the yearly yuletide offerings.

“We haven’t really started planning of anything, but we are going to con-

<< Heklina

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Pushing boundaries

Heklina pushed the boundaries of drag from female impersonation to more multifaceted and creative expressions through her transgressiveness, as multiple speakers attested to.

“Sometimes she’d say something so wrong – so wrong – and I’d start laughing and the whole room would explode,” Drollinger said. “I’d say ‘if some people could hear you you’d be canceled forever.’”

Heklina had moved to San Francisco from Reykjavík, Iceland in 1991, where she went after a stint in the U.S. Navy based in San Diego. She’d been born in Minneapolis.

“I met Heklina in 1991 and we bonded over our mutual love of alcohol,” said longtime friend and drag queen Pippi Lovestocking. “Once we realized alcohol plus drag equals straight men, the party was on and it wasn’t long before Trannyshack.”

Heklina’s drag career began to take off when she founded Trannyshack (the name of the show was later changed to Mother) at the old Stud bar in 1996, though her persona was first thought up for a Club Uranus pageant at the End Up nightclub.

In so doing, she tore down some of the guardrails of the drag of the era, inviting female performers and drag kings to share the stage. Some tinue,” Drollinger, named last week the city’s first-ever drag laureatep, told the Bay Area Reporter. “I had joked many times with Heklina that the show, at this point, has gotten bigger than any of us.”

Drollinger noted that they recast Holotta Tymes in the part of Sophia

Petrillo, Zbornak’s widowed mother, after Cookie Dough (aka Eddie Bell) died in January 2015 after becoming ill during a trip to Mexico.

“We soldiered on when Cookie passed away,” said Drollinger. “Heklina would never want us to stop. It brings too much joy to too many people.”

The sitcom aired on NBC from September 14, 1985, to May 9, 1992.

Reruns of its 180 half-hour episodes continue to be shown on cable, while the entire series is available to watch via streaming service Hulu. For the drag Christmas performances, two episodes are paired together for the run each year.

It has become a staple of the schedule at the Victoria Theatre in the Mission district. In 2020, the cast livestreamed their production without an audience due to the COVID pandemic. The following year they were able to bring it back for live performances, with Heklina telling the newsite 48Hills,

“Dorothy is the closest to my actual personality: dry, sarcastic, and she suffers no fools.”

Over the years the other two lead roles have also seen cast changes. Drag queen Pollo Del Mar initially portrayed Rose Nylund prior to Drollinger taking on the part.

Also from the start Matthew Martin has played Southern belle Blanche Devereaux, the most promiscuous of the roommates. The late drag queen Arturo Galster, who died in 2014, briefly took over the part for several performances the first year the shows were staged.

By September, Drollinger hopes they will have recast the role of Dorothy and will be able to announce this year’s run dates. Drollinger told the B.A.R. that Heklina didn’t have someone in mind to take over the part.

“None of us had our ‘Golden Girls’ wills put together. I think she expected to be doing this for years to come,” Drollinger said of Heklina. t she didn’t want to be known for that. She wanted to be a bitch.” who went on to national and international drag stardom got their starts at Trannyshack.

San Francisco’s queer political luminaries also spoke; beginning with Honey Mahogany, a Black queer trans person who’s the chair of the city’s Democratic Party and district director for Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco).

“She inspired so many of us long before there was a ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ to put on a wig and show the world who we were,” said Mahogany, a former contestant on RuPaul’s reality drag competition series.

“Heklina was part of a larger group of people who created something new and vibrant and exciting while our community was going through a tough and challenging time full of grief and misery,” longtime gay activist Cleve Jones, who attended the memorial, told the B.A.R. “We throw around the word icon so much, but Heklina was an icon and I’m so glad

I made it to the city to attend. I loved the old clips because I didn’t go to see any of those in person, so it was new for me.”

The memorial was full of that same mischievousness. BenDeLaCreme – who said Heklina “left a gaping hole in our community” –sang a song about Heklina’s love of rimming and made an homage to Heklina’s trademark habit of inviting a young man on stage for the act.

“She would approach straight guys and harass them in a way that’d have gotten the rest of us queers decked in the face,” Peaches said. “She’d ask them to show her their dick and they would! She was a real charmer.” In addition to being funny, Heklina was sweet and kind – but only secretly, Peaches said. “She didn’t want people to know she was kind,” Peaches said. “She was quiet about it. She gave people money, helped them with rent, but

Gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman and gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) spoke on the resurgent homophobia and transphobia on the right; the administration of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), for example, has used obscenity laws to threaten businesses that host drag performances, as the B.A.R. has reported, and some Pride celebrations in the Sunshine State have been canceled on account of a new law signed by the presidential aspirant last week.

“People are afraid of drag because they say it’s subversive,” Mandelman said. “It is.”

Said Wiener: “Here in California, in San Francisco, we lift up drag queens.”

Wiener said he’d be honoring Sister Roma, of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, at the state Legislature

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compiled by Cynthia Laird

Former executive director and longtime lesbian leader Leslie Ewing will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pacific Center for Human Growth at the nonprofit’s 50th anniversary celebration Saturday, June 3, from 6:30 p.m. to midnight at the Berkeley Panoramic Building, an outdoor space located at 2539 Telegraph Avenue.

The Berkeley LGBTQ community center is the oldest in the Bay Area and the third oldest in the country. Ewing led the organization from 2008 to 2019. Prior to that, she served on the board of the former AIDS Emergency Fund (later merged with PRC) and worked as a buyer for the old Under One Roof organization that raised funds for HIV/ AIDS nonprofits.

In an email, Ewing stated that it was “humbling” to be receiving the honor.

“Fifty continuous years of supporting LGBTQIA+ and QTBIPOC people, and their families, is an accomplishment that only three community centers in America can claim,” Ewing wrote, referring to queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and people of color. “Pacific Center is one of them, and it was a personal highlight and honor to have served 10 years as the organization’s executive director.”

The oldest continuously operating LGBTQ centers in the U.S. are in Albany, New York, which opened in 1970, according to its website, and the Los Angeles LGBT Center, which started in 1969, its website states.

“I do think I understand why the organization has thrived throughout the years, even in the face of daunting challenges,” Ewing added. “The Pacific Cen- ter community has always embraced anyone and everyone who’ve crossed its threshold. The organization does not take the position of ‘There is room for you at our table,’ but rather, ‘This table was built just for you!’ It has sometimes been challenging to stay true to that value, but doing so is a core value and why today Pacific Center celebrates 50 years.”

Other people the Pacific Center is honoring will be therapist Taunya Black, M.A., who will receive the Organizational Culture Shift Award; Horizons Foundation, which will be recognized with the Community Partnership Award; and Henry van der Voort III, who will receive the Volunteer Service Award.

One of the unique things about the center is that it operates the only sliding scale mental health clinic for LGBTQIA+ and queer Black, Indigenous, and people of color and their families in Alameda County, according to its website.

“Golden Dreams” is the theme of the upcoming gala. It will feature emcee Sister Tilda NexTime of the drag nun group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence; the Oakland Gay Men’s Chorus; and So Lauren as musical entertainment.

There are several things the center is working on for its next 50 years, its website notes. One is that it will be moving into a new building this year. As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, the center’s longtime home at 2712 Telegraph Avenue was sold last year. Plans call for the building and another one on the lot to be demolished and replaced with a five-story, mixed-use building containing 35 apartments.