On Friday, March 13th, New Orleans-based drag performer Laveau Contraire put on her last drag show for the foreseeable future.
“That’s a good, ominous date,” she jokes a week later. Up until then, the coronavirus pandemic felt like a “distant threat” for the city she calls home. Even so, the news was not lost on them, so the bars where she hosted shows — like her weekly, Friday evening RuPaul’s Drag Race viewing party — had already started taking extra precautions: Encouraging tips via Venmo, satin gloves, less physical interaction with the crowd, and sanitizing dollar bills at the end of the night.
“There was a vibration shift,” fellow NOLA-based drag performer Tarah Cards adds, on the same call. Her birthday was that same night and she had re-adjusted her prior party plans of having nearly 60 friends in her home.