Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Untitled Queen

Untitled Queen answers the door in her glasses. She is pre-makeup, pre-costume. One of the reigning queens of Brooklyn’s drag scene, I had the pleasure of meeting her when I worked on a piece about the borough’s drag culture last year.
Before that piece, I saw Untitled perform only on video--a few years ago, I wrote about an art show in which a performance of hers appeared. To Judy Garland’s rendition of “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” wearing a wildly teased blonde wig and a ball skirt of sewn-together rags, she eviscerated my soul. I felt even then there was a deeper understanding of humanity that went into her work. And then when I saw her perform live at annual Brooklyn drag festival Bushwig, in makeup inspired by Japanese Noh masks to the Dirty Projectors song “Keep Your Name,” I knew how right I was. Onstage, she told a powerful story about what our hopes for love can be and how they can destroy us as we destroy each other. And recently, from the tiny screen on my phone, seeing her performance of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” made me audibly gasp. I was then as I am now not just watching a drag queen at work, but an artist.
It’s fitting, since Untitled has an MFA in Fine Art from Parsons. She started the program focusing more on visual art, later moving into performance art and attempting drag at the behest of a friend. Six years later, she is performing around the world, from Brooklyn’s Bushwig to Miami’s Wigwood to Vienna’s famed Life Ball. She has been featured in The New York Times, Refinery29, Out, VICE (by yours truly) and countless others. Untitled continues her visual art practice as well, exhibiting at galleries in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.
Tonight she’s hosting the event “Cakes” at Metropolitan Bar in Williamsburg for the drag queen Didi Disco’s birthday. She smudges her face with pink to make an even canvas for the thick white makeup she will put on top of it. Beating her face with a powder puff, powder flies gently away from her face, illuminated to ghostly proportions by the lighted mirror in front of her. She draws on graphic, nearly pop-art eyebrows and eyeliner, adding circles and later lipgloss to complete the equation. After closing up her corset and jumping into a pink and blue dress, she tucks her bald head into a flowery skull cap and presses on clear nails that make her already lithe hands look even longer.
Arriving at Metropolitan, Untitled knows everyone. She kisses hello, says hi baby, sips a cocktail, floating on her platform combat boots. Soon, it’s her turn to take the stage with her co-hosts. She’s a luminous, commanding presence. Queen after queen performs, then it’s her turn. While she performs Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” her fingers curl in Joni’s pain and sweetness, her lip sync flawless. The audience sits in quiet awe then explodes in applause.
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Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Danny Chavis

Danny Chavis and I are making fun of Mark Rothko’s paintings when he gestures to a blank white wall. See? It’s great! We laugh.

Along with his twin brother Daniel (yes…), Chavis is part of the band The Veldt, one of the pioneers of shoegaze music. With a sound Afropunk called “a three way tug of war between Prince, Echo and the Bunnymen and Jimi Hendrix,” The Veldt opened for The Jesus and Mary Chain, Lush, and the Pixies, and toured with the Cocteau Twins in the 1990s. After some clueless record labels tried to put them into boxes where they didn’t want to be--be Lenny Kravitz! they said--Danny and Daniel decided to just be themselves and departed from labels altogether. It’s like they didn’t know what to do with a black-fronted rock band, Danny says.

People who know good music know and love them, everyone from Public Enemy’s Chuck D, who hired them to perform at Lincoln Center for the 20th anniversary of Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, to Modern English and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, both of whom they toured/opened for last year. Pitchfork also listed their 1994 album Afrodisiac as one of the 50 Greatest Shoegaze Albums of All Time. They’ll be headed to South by Southwest in March, and will be recording new music this year as well. You can buy their latest EPs, The Shocking Fuzz of Your Electric Fur: The Drake Equation and Thanks to the Moth and Areanna Rose, here and here.

Danny is also an artist, and designed the cover of Thanks to the Moth and Areanna Rose. He paints and is working on illustrations for a children’s book that will set the lyrics of a famous British rock band to life. He has lived in New York, in the East Village specifically, for nearly 30 years. He is kind and warm and says “C’mon, cuz!” when I’m slow crossing the street.

As we walk from Bleecker Street to that gallery in Chelsea, Danny’s friend, artist and musician Micah Gaugh, tells a story about Jean-Michel Basquiat’s, ah, unusual self-medicating habits. The East Village has changed so much, they say. There’s hardly any art anymore. There is art in Chelsea, though, albeit of a different stripe than the deliciously grungy 1980s-1990s East Village. That night there’s a swarm of people floating through the West 20s, flocking through each gallery’s standard pristine white walls. Danny and Micah are constantly pausing to say hello to people they know from their lives in the art and music scenes, people who ask them both how they are and where they’re hanging later.
One place they’re hanging later is Von, which we return to on Bleecker Street, their haunt of choice. Danny stands at the bar drinking first wine and later an iced shot of espresso. He talks about Japan (he speaks fluent Japanese), his family, women, style. Like many things about Danny and The Veldt, their power is magically individual. They just can’t be duplicated.
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Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Binalakshmi Nepram

The snow on Columbia University’s campus is beginning to thaw as Binalakshmi Nepram, who goes by Bina, takes me on a tour. Bina has been living underground in the U.S. for seven months after fleeing her native India. She is from a state called Manipur in the northeast that borders Myanmar. Known for her work as a disarmament activist, humanitarian, and writer, she came to New York in May of last year with only a suitcase after armed commandos broke into her home. A longtime advocate for families wrecked by gun violence in Manipur, she had come to the aid of a family whose 19-year-old son was murdered by the Chief Minister of Manipur’s son, connecting them with a lawyer in India’s Supreme Court. No sooner were commandos at her door--but she was out at a wedding. She is just now able to talk about her experiences.

Bina grew up surrounded by gun violence in Manipur and only upon moving to New Delhi for college did she learn this was not normal. In 2002, she authored the book South Asia’s Fractured Frontier, about how political violence is fueled by arms and narcotics in India, which became a pioneering work in the field. In 2004, she founded Control Arms Foundation of India, the country’s first civil society focusing on disarmament. Then in 2007, she founded the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network, aimed at helping women from the area who have experienced gun violence in their families rebuild their lives with entrepreneurship on a small scale so they can be self-sustaining. Bina has since been recognized internationally for her humanitarian work, by the Dalai Lama Foundation's WISCOMP Scholar of Peace Award, the Sean MacBride Peace Prize, and the CNN-IBN Real Heroes Award, among many other accolades. At Columbia, Bina is a visiting scholar in the Institute of Human Rights specializing in the rights of indigenous peoples.

When Bina first came to New York, she was very lonely, she says. So she decided to find the heart and soul of the city.

“Did you find it?” I ask, befuddled by what seems like a momentous task.
“I did,” she smiles. “The New York Public Library.”

We walk to a branch down the street from Columbia. Bina immerses herself in non-fiction about social issues in America. In India, she tells me, you can only take out three books from the library at once, but at the New York Public Library, you can take out 50 books at once. “It’s so wonderful!” she smiles.

Our next stop is Masala Club a few blocks down. Bina has never been, but spots the bright white sign as we’re walking on Broadway. “Oh, let’s go there!” she says, excited. She orders us first chai and pakora, which she describes with a chuckle as Indian tempura, and later dosas which we split with her friend Gilbert who joins us. Without noticing, it seems I’ve cleaned my plate. But I guess a good conversation will do that to you.
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