We had the great privilege of speaking with one of San Francisco’s most famous drag queens, Miss Pollo Del Mar. We asked her for 20 minutes and took three times that. We’d like to apologize, but speaking with her was so much fun any apology would just come off as fake. We had so much to talk about that we need to break up the interview into a few parts.
Our first segment will help you get to know Pollo Del Mar a little better. She’s a drag queen who has been doing drag since 2006. She carefully calculates all her career moves, has taken the time to get to know her fans, her audience and craft.
We thought it especially cute to hear about her drag family.
DQG: Do you have a drag family, drag mother, drag daughter(s)?
PDM: Oh yes, I am part of a House called the House of Glitter and my drag mother is Landa Lakes. We have a humongous family, we have a huge drag family. And surprisingly tight nit despite how huge we are. In fact every week on Mondays we gather for a public dinner together. Not everyone can attend every week, you know it’s a rotating cast. We love it. It’s a great opportunity for us to spend time together outside of performing together and all of those wonderful things that we always do. I have tons and tons of kids and staying very true to my white trash roots, I have tons and tons of children and don’t know who any of the fathers are.
We were very surprised that the House of Glitter was so close, we can’t even say we have weekly meals with our real family members. What a great sense of family in the drag world.
We asked her who she admired most or looked up to. She couldn’t put her finger on one in particular but she does want to have similar success to Heklinaand Peaches Christ. Heklina is a San Francisco based queen who runs a show called “Trannyshack” which stars queens of all forms. Peaches Christ is also a San Francisco based queen whose events are held in the Castro Theatre and include Apollonia coming in July.
She also recognizes the legendary Lady Bunny (which drag queen couldn’t) and Jimmy James an “iconic 80’s and 90’s Marilyn Monroe impersonator” who made Pollo feel like “a little gay kid who was living in a surreal dream,” when she had dinner with the two of them. But she is also inspired by the queens who are fresh on the scene and hungry to make a name for themselves.
When we agreed with her that her empire was coming soon she had the following to say:
“Well it’s really weird as an entertainer, and a performer or personality to look back on nearly 10 years of your career and to think about each step of the way you don’t really think about how’s it’s going to build up to be a body of work. But when I look back at what has happened for me and all these amazing experiences that I’ve been able to have as a result of performing and doing drag and being in the public eye, it blows me away. Ideally someday somebody will look at what I’ve done and be like, “that was a cool performer, she was a cool queen.”
Pollo Del Mar is definitely a cool queen. We had so much fun and we’re so happy to tell everyone, there’s more of this interview to come, so stay tuned. Also, she’s kind of a control freak, so we definitely won’t let anything get out of control.
