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This Issue 03/24/2005

Also in this issue

• Pious Drunkeness
• Thank you Jesus
• Yes, These Are Real

Well, that's not exactly true. Lisa Lisa isn't actually a girl -- she's a male-to-female transsexual who emcees a drag show at Bob and Barbara's. And she probably named herself. Besides, most of her friends just call her "Lisa."

But still, a large sign boasts: "Lisa Lisa -- The Girl so Nice they named her TWICE!!!." The sign sits behind the small, wooden stage of the discreet, dusky bar that sits on the corner of 15th and South and, like most everything else at Bob and Barbara's on Thursday nights, the sign captures the gist of Lisa Lisa, without ever revealing her essence.

Lisa Lisa is: A drag queen. A transsexual. A damn good emcee, with her twiggy, curvy figure and her easy rapport with the crowd. She is 5'6", but taller in heels. She is black.

And now, in the bar's muggy dressing room, she is spraying adhesive on her B-cup breasts, wearing a black thong that wraps up in two suspender straps that then drapes over her breasts like flaps of curtain and preparing for tonight's show.

In another corner of the dressing room, which really is more of a curtained off area anyhow, Audwin King, a short drag queen who goes by the stage name of "Joy Marnier" and works in an Atlantic City casino by day, stands in a state of undress. Two crudely cut and dirty-looking pieces of foam pop out of his black bra, and he's pulled his stockings up so tight that they squeeze his stomach, the skin pooling over in a small waterfall of flesh. His face looks like the rainbow -- yellow, pink and orange brushed on a black palette.

Just after 11 p.m., the DJ starts up with Chicago's "All That Jazz," and the crowd begins to chant -- "Li-sa! Li-sa! Li-sa!"

"They're chanting for you?" comes the jibe from the dressing room, at once skeptical and admiring, and Lisa Lisa waits a few beats, then struts out onstage.

Lisa Lisa has been doing this for 10 years, just about as long as the bar has been hosting Thursday nights. She's watched the crowd -- a mix of university kids, of friends and family, of neighborhood folks -- grow and evolve, but always return.

"It's always the same group of people, just more of them," manager Frank Galoardi says.

Three years ago, Bob and Barbara's expanded, knocking down a wall and moving into the empty room. Before, the shows went on behind the bar, atop the bar, even.

"Bartenders were occasionally used as props," Galoardi remembers."The volume of people that were there -- it was just packed, you were just shoulder to shoulder with people."

Lisa Lisa and Galoardi were also both there when the bar ended up in court. Galoardi says that one night, Lisa Lisa was bringing people up on stage, just like she always does, when "a boob had slipped out, and it just happened to be that night there was an undercover agent."

The bar didn't have a license for nudity, and had to pay a fine, but otherwise, Bob and Barbara's has been controversy free. The crowd comes to have a good time, and usually they do.