Drag queens strut their stuff at Southern Fried Queer Pride Fest

A bevy of talented drag queens took the stage at this year’s Southern Fried Queer Pride Festival and first ever Peach Pit All Stars competition.

“What I love so much about the drag scene in Atlanta is that it offers a space for every type of drag artist to shine,” says drag artist and comedian Poptart. “Bearded queens, pageant queens, spooky queens. The fact that we have dedicated drag king shows — not many other cities can boast that. You can’t pigeonhole Atlanta’s drag.” 

This diversity was on full display at the 10th annual Southern Fried Queer Pride Festival the week of June 24 through June 30. It reflected the growth of the city’s drag scene as entertainers and activists took to stages around Little Five Points to proudly show their talents and advocate for their communities. 

The SFQP Fest is an annual series of shows, workshops, dance parties, markets, pageants and other events held every June by a collective of queer artists and organizers dedicated to fostering space for Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ community. This year’s Festival boasted its largest series of events to date.

The week kicked off Monday with a retrospective gallery looking into the history of the Festival, which started in 2014 as a cluster of events put together by close friends. It expanded into a weekend festival in its second year and finally became a week-long event.

“We wanted to do something around art and pride and building a sense of queer community,” says SFQP Festival co-founder and organizer Taylor Alxndr. 

Tuesday night featured a trans-centered cabaret and open mic, while various dance parties took place Wednesday and Friday. Thursday night saw a new iteration of the annual Peach Pit Pageant, an SFQP Fest staple. 

At the pageant, several former winners and runner-ups competed in the first ever Peach Pit All-Stars. Each contestant was tasked with creating and modeling a peach-themed look, performing a talent number and answering a question from the judges.  

Contestants represented various flavors of drag, from drag king Mr. Elle Aye’s Latin dance number to drag showgirl Jaybella Banks’ performance, which transitioned from a slow dance song into music for twerking. Both, of course, had outfit reveals. 

However, it was drag queen Yutoya Avaze Leon who went home with the first Peach Pit All Stars crown after wooing the audience with a hilarious off-the-cuff story and impressive vocals in “Cabaret” for her talent number. Avaze Leon also won last year’s Peach Pit Pageant, making her both the first All Star winner and the first Peach Pit winner two years in a row. 

“I blur the line between camp and sex,” Avaze Leon said. “It’ll be something provocative with humor or just straight up humor. I like making people laugh and also want to give them something pretty to look at.”

The week concluded with a series of events on Saturday and Sunday, including an outdoor artist market, a community thrift store set up in the Little Five Points Community Center and a series of workshops and performances. 

On both days, around 20 performers took the stage outside the Little Five Points Community Center, among them drag artists, yoga instructors, rappers and comedians. One such performer was drag entertainer and comedian Poptart, who uses quick-witted, irreverent humor to joke about everything from mental health to dating. 

“A big part of what makes comedy successful is the ease you can bring the audience into,” Poptart says. “There’s a natural magnetism drag artists have that pulls an audience in and makes them comfortable.” 

The Southern Fried Pride Festival reflects how Atlanta’s drag scene has expanded over the last decade to include new entertainers and styles of drag, due in part to TV reality shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Boulet Brothers’ Dragula.

Poptart also credits Alxndr for helping Atlanta’s drag scene evolve. She is the mother of the House of Alxndr, a collective of drag artists and queer organizers well-known for their influence in Atlanta’s queer community. A powerhouse drag entertainer herself, Alxndr hosts events in every corner of the city and considers Atlanta to be an LGBTQ+ mecca of sorts in the South.

This year’s Southern Fried Queer Pride Festival brought that home.

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Luke Gardner is an Atlanta-based journalist with a history of covering the arts. Luke is passionate about serving local communities and celebrating marginalized identities.