Lips San Diego advertises itself as "the ultimate in drag dining." But pass through its double doors and you enter another dimension.
"Once you get in here, it looks like a drag queen threw up in here," explained Tootie, Lips' show coordinator.
"Whatever this is, I love it," Lolita Von Tease enthused, sitting near a wall adorned with what looks like a chorus line of dismembered Can-Can girl legs encircled in brightly colored petticoats. "It's Chuck E. Cheese for adults."
But general manager Sean MacArthur simply said, "Lips is an escape. You can leave everything outside once you cross our double doors and just give yourselves over to the place."
Giving yourself over to Lips means surrendering to its sensory overload and gorgeous, towering drag queens. The place vibrates to music played at 11 and is covered in so much glitter that the term "gaudy" pales under the brightly colored lights bouncing off multiple disco balls. Tootie has been thriving in this environment since Lips began, serving as both a performer and show coordinator.
"For me, 25 years means an incredible amount of fun and fabulous work," Tootie said. "It means an incredible wealth of goodwill between the audience and my cast. It means that we've created something that we can all be proud of."
Lips was born out of the club culture of the late 1980s and early '90s. Its first location was in New York City, followed by San Diego, where it initially opened in Bankers Hill.
"San Diego at that time, it was a small town playing dress-up," Tootie said with a smile.
But Lips raised the bar, eventually moving to its current home on El Cajon Boulevard.
"Lips is what I consider one of the jewels on the boulevard," Tootie added. "We have lines outside every night. We have limousines pulling up here. That was not this neighborhood before. So Lips has transformed this part of the boulevard."
Tootie recalled getting the keys for the El Cajon Boulevard building and leaving the old Bankers Hill venue after her last show at 2 a.m. She arrived at the new location and immediately started demolishing the bathrooms but was so impressed by the iridescent texture under the tiles that she called a photographer over for a pre-dawn photo shoot.
"But it was all hands on deck," Tootie added about renovating an old restaurant into a drag palace. "Everybody had a job. The girls, we were going to be out of work for eight weeks, so the girls were all part of transforming the place. I wish somebody had left that Bob's Big Boy because I always wanted to put a wig on him and put him out front. I think he deserves to be here."
Last month, Mayor Todd Gloria attended the Lips birthday party and paid tribute to both the establishment and what it stands for.
"Let me just put in a little bit of context," Gloria said as he presented a proclamation to Lips. "We all know that right now, our drag community is within the crosshairs of those who don't like our community too much. I know why they do it. Because they know our movement was started by drag queens and drag kings at the Stonewall Inn many, many years ago. To this day, our drag performers are our best ambassadors. They are the folks who take a bridal party and turn them into the fiercest LGBTQ advocates you've ever met."
That’s because Lips offers more than just dinner and a drag show.
"It's a bit of a gateway into each and every person that comes here and sits in the chair and opens themselves up to the experience," MacArthur said. "It's a celebration every day. It's a little bit of an adventure. But it's a blend of my two passions that I've had in my life, and that's customer service and hospitality, and putting on a show. As I tell everybody, nobody leaves unhappy here."
And that’s because drag queens know how to entertain.
"We do a lot of comedy here at Lips," Tootie said. "And so I think that people drop a lot of their walls and barriers because of the comedy."
Lolita agreed. "I think it's a good way for people to interact and come and visit and get a taste of the queer or trans experience."
Lolita has been performing at Lips for 10 years. She first came in as a 16-year-old customer discovering drag for the first time.
"I am very lucky to work at a place where when I come into work, I know that I'm going to leave feeling better about myself and everything going on in my life," Lolita said.
Paris Sukomi Max has been with Lips for 18 years and is famous for her spectacular costumes, including one that featured a carousel encircling her. Like many other drag queens, she is very active in the community.
"We've always been in the forefront of our movement towards equality," Paris said. "But also, we've always been so visually queer that that in itself became our activism. I'm not trying to take away from my more cis-presenting queer family members, but day-to-day for them is very different than day-to-day for us."
Paris always ends her brunch show with a question.
"I just ask that if you enjoyed our show this morning, please remain an ally to our community all year long," Paris said. "At the end of the day, we're just here to entertain you, give you a little bit of leeway to be a little bit silly and a lot of bit inappropriate. And every time I say that, everybody's standing up in applause for it. And the cheers at that very end of that show gives me goosebumps. And to have that weekly for myself, one, is therapeutic because of all the crazy things that we have in our world and whatnot. But two, it is reassuring and reaffirming that things are going to be OK."
Tootie agreed that drag itself is a form of activism.
"Stepping out of the house looking like this is activism," Tootie said, wearing a stunning crushed purple velour off-the-shoulder mini dress. "I am confronted immediately, and the public is confronted immediately with who I am on the inside. We live openly and honestly and authentically, and that is activism."
And that’s part of Lips’ history.
"Just our visibility as a company in itself is activism and showing folks that at the end of the day, we're just entertainers doing our thing and representing for our community," Paris added. "It's not as scandalous as folks think it is."
So make a point to stop by Lips — not just to celebrate a quarter-century of entertainment but also its legacy of activism.
