MiamiHerald.com – Lydia Martin
But South Beach drag queen Elaine Lancaster is still going strong after nearly a decade
A glam blond in full evening gear sweeps into the women’s bathroom at Opium to check her mascara. Nearly seven feet tall in heels, she’s as hulking as a couple of still-celebrating Heat players here to guzzle champagne.
But the girls crowding the mirror don’t even blink. This is South Beach. Drag queens are hardly anything to gawk at any more.
Nobody knows it better than Elaine Lancaster, one of the last drag queens standing in a town where boys in boat-sized stilettos used to own the night.
Back at the start of the South Beach renaissance, they had nightlife carte blanche, breezing past velvet ropes because they were the magic potion that got celebs and club kids flying freak flags.
Things are a lot less imaginative these days. The party crowd is standard issue and way straight: Guys in untucked designer shirts, girls in the smallest black dresses their carb-free diets allow. Now you just have to agree to blow $800 on a bottle of Cristal, and you’re as good as inside Opium and the adjacent Priv?, pretty much the most coveted nightspots on the Beach.
You should be mortified that the bottle arrives at your table literally flaming, some rocket thing taped to the side to announce what a big spender you are. But you’re into it, because you’re what passes for a player now.
Back in the day, you had to add something to the party. You had to have some sort of edge. But Elaine, polished Southern diva with comic wit, is no crybaby. She couldn’t afford to get stuck in the South Beach past. That’s why she survived it.