Happy Halloween from the Club Peorian!
Judging for a Halloween Emperor/Empress show (date unknown). Left to right: Chuckles, Ty, Anastasia, Carey & Scott
"The lighting is low, the air is thick with smoke and helium balloons, the music pounding and loud. People crowd around the edges of the dance floor and spill through doorways.
John, the emcee, greets the crowd and announces the contestants.
First, 10 men dressed as women slink onto the stage, decked out in sequined and satin evening gowns, heavily padded in strategic areas. They wear long ringlets and heavy makeup.
Next, three women strut out, wearing suits and facial hair. They, too, are padded - in a different area.
It’s the weekend before Halloween, and these are the candidates for Empress and Emperor at the Club Peorian, 733 SW Adams.
On the Friday before Halloween, more than half the crowd of about 200 were women...On this festive night, the crowd was racially integrated as well, and most Empress and Emperor contestants were black...
The Club puts on five major shows a year and has a talent night every Thursday. But Halloween is when the tavern royalty are crowned, with the winners and runners-up getting cash prizes. Last year’s pageant was the 13th.
Empress candidates, who are men dressed as women, and Emperor candidates - women dressed as men - selected songs to lip-sync for the contest. Some of them were dressed to resemble the singers they mimicked.
One contestant, scantily dressed as Cher, elicited howls and wolf whistles from both sexes. Others, including one decked out in a cheerleading outfit and another sporting curlers and a nasal voice, were greeted with laughter.
The Emperor contest drew only three entries, and one woman, “Chad,” was recruited earlier that same evening. Her young face was covered with fake Don Johnson-style whiskers and she wore a denim jacket and jeans...
