How a Bay Area Asian American drag troupe survived the pandemic with high kicks and calculated pivots

Chi-Chi Kago has seen cultural attitudes toward both drag and Asian American representation shift dramatically in the 15 years since she joined the San Francisco-based Asian American drag troupe the Rice Rockettes.

The group may have gotten “old and ripe,” she said, but she hopes they can continue to bring something “new and fresh” to the table.

“Now that Asian drag is mainstream, are we still relevant?” mused Kago. “I like to think so.”

The Rice Rockettes are the “premiere all-Asian drag troupe in San Francisco,” said Estée Longah, a Filipino American drag queen and house mother for the 15-member group. Although Longah says that “premiere” just means they’re the longest-running Asian American and Pacific Islander drag house, the group is a respected institution among queer Asian Americans.

It was founded in 2009 by Longah and other drag queens she met while working with AAPI community groups, like the now-renamed API Wellness Center and the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance.

Longah recalls that in the mid-2000s, there weren’t a lot of Asian American drag queens in San Francisco. She participated in pageants within the AAPI community and mainstream LGBTQ+ community and noticed a difference in the way each of them operated. She described the mainstream pageants as competitive and focused on getting the job done, while pageants among Asian Americans had a sense of community, connectedness and camaraderie that she liked.

The Rice Rockettes were in a unique position at their founding. Facing racist stereotypes that they were effeminate, passive “bottoms,” many gay Asian men turned to hypermasculinity and rejected drag, seeing it as a stepping stone to transitioning. Several drag queens in a group that predated the Rice Rockettes, the Rice Girls, also transitioned, giving credence to the idea that being a drag queen was a gateway to a transgender identity, rather than its own form of self-expression.

The Rice Rockettes were formed with two goals in mind, Longah said: providing a safe space to allow gay AAPI men to learn about and be in drag comfortably, whether or not they wanted to transition, and recreating the same camaraderie Longah found in queer AAPI pageants so members would feel supported on their drag journeys.

“What I think the group has excelled at the most is storytelling and humor and a sort of zany, uniquely San Francisco perspective, and those are things that I feel really drawn to,” said Imelda Glucose, a Filipino American drag queen in the group.

Over the next 10 years, the Rice Rockettes packed more people in bars and clubs for their shows. They performed frequently at the Lookout, a bar in San Francisco. Community engagement was at the forefront of their shows; they held fundraisers for local causes and for those affected by Hurricane Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013 and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan.

Starting in October 2013, the group had their own monthly show called “Rice Rockettes Presents…” The group also auditioned for America’s Got Talent as a dance group in 2011. Kago said that although the experience wasn’t entirely positive, it was entertaining and gained the group some notoriety. In 2019, the group celebrated their tenth anniversary with a celebratory show, marking the height of the Rice Rockettes’ popularity, Longah said.

“We did a 10-year anniversary show, which was very well-received. People really loved watching us do group numbers and solo numbers and just kind of a “Best Of” and really challenging ourselves to do some pretty tough things onstage to entertain the crowd,” said Kago.

For the queens who joined the Rice Rockettes, the group’s unique approach to storytelling gave them an avenue to express their truths in a funny yet provocative way.

Glucose recalled a performance by her drag mother Doncha Vishyuwuzme that tackled a stereotype that Asian Americans ate dogs. To the tune of a catchy pop song, Vishyuwuzme revealed that she was serving up dog parts, not chicken parts.

“The way that everybody has chosen to infuse their identities as Asian folks into their performances, and the ways that we riff on the things that other people who aren’t Asian or aren’t part of our community have made fun of us for, it’s like reclamation in a way,” Glucose said.

Another drag queen, Kristi Yummykochi, said that drag allowed her to explore her Japanese American identity with a personal number based on a story on her mother’s side of the family.

“When you are doing a drag number about that kind of personal story, you’re learning about it. You’re asking your family members, you’re doing research about what happened and ‘What was this?’, ‘How can I convey this story?’ And that, I think, brings you closer into your identity,” Yummykochi said.

When the pandemic closed everything down in March 2020, the Rice Rockettes adapted by holding two digital shows and keeping connected with monthly video chats. Although they returned to performing live shows in 2021, the pandemic had taken a hit on the San Francisco nightlife. There was little interest in their performances due to a surplus of drag content, and the high cost of living prevented people from coming out to bars and clubs. Fewer queens were also willing to perform due to burnout. The group then pivoted, and the Rice Rockettes’ monthly show was rebranded to “Estée Longah’s Casting Couch,” which frequently included members of the Rice Rockettes and other guest performers.

Longah said one of the lowest points in the group’s history was when the Proud Boys attacked fellow Rice Rockette Panda Dulce during a Drag Queen Story Hour event at the San Lorenzo Library in 2022.

The event was interrupted when a group associated with the Proud Boys barged in, slinging insults at Dulce; one called her a “groomer” and another was wearing a T-shirt that said, “Kill Your Local Pedophile” with an image of an AK-47 on it.

“The right’s alarmist, downright fascist bias of who should or should not exist will never override the indisputable reality that we (LGBTQ people) do exist,” Dulce said in an interview with CNN.

Longah said the attack hit home for her, as it was an attack on not only a member of their group, but on her drag daughter while she wasn’t in the Bay Area at the time.

“That really sort of changed the way that we sort of operate and also how we think about safety,” Longah said, further advising the members to buddy up and be aware of their surroundings.

The group tries to inform each other about the gigs they do outside of the group and no longer accepts private bookings as a result of the attack.

Vermicelli Versace, a Vietnamese American drag queen who joined the group in 2019, said that in light of the attack — along with recent drag bans and anti-trans laws being passed, and the rise of the Stop Asian Hate movement in response to attacks on Asian Americans — the group’s work isn’t done.

“We’re here for a reason. and we’re here to continue to be a light for the community,” Versace said.

Longah said many members joined the Rice Rockettes without much drag experience, and now she has seen them grow as people and develop their drag personas until they can go out and grow their individual drag careers. This was true for Siam Phusri, a Thai American drag queen who joined the group within the last two years. She said her happiest moment was winning Mx. GAPA in 2022, a pageant put on by GLBTQ+ Asian Pacific Alliance, which is shortened to GAPA.

Kago said she hopes to recruit newer drag queens and work with other drag performers and groups of color. She added that the group is looking forward celebrating their 15-year anniversary, which is scheduled for Oct. 13. And although there has been an influx in Asian American drag representation, Kago said the group championed the art of drag for Asian Americans.

“I’m really thrilled at how much Asian drag representation there is right now, and I like to think that we were a little bit at the forefront of that, and maybe inspired some of these other groups to exist,” Kago said. “I hope that there’s still a place for us at the table with all this Asian representation that’s out in the world.”