Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday. Sign up for our free newsletter. Percy Pegg has a problem. A video where the drag king is performing as Bob Belcher from Bob’s Burgers went viral on TikTok, racking up almost a million views since April. It even escaped the gay internet. “I’m in the public eye now, and hundreds of thousands of people have seen me in drag,” Pegg says over video call. “My normie friends who are not connected to the drag community in any way were texting me like, ‘Is this you?’ I’m like, ‘Uh-huh, dressed as Bob from Bob’s Burgers, correct.’ ” Making a splash on social media can be crucial for full-time performers. So this is great news… right? “This is the absolute farthest thing from regular Percy Pegg ever,” Pegg laments. “Percy doesn’t wear a moustache, he doesn’t wear wigs, he doesn’t have bland masculine features. It’s a specific cartoon character. Why is this guy going viral when I’ve been posting thirst traps?” If you head to a regular Percy Pegg show, you’ll quickly see why he’s not super stoked to be associated with a burger-​pilled middle-​aged father-of-three. Pegg, covered in body shimmer, loves to flex and pose and commit to a joke. Billing themself as “the non-binary friendly neighbourhood drag himbo”, Pegg’s performance oozes a kind of secure masculinity that’s inspired by pleasant jocks who love both sports and women. His signature number is a Baywatch-inspired interpretation of “I Need A Hero”, in which he dramatically tries to save a drowning rubber duck with a swagger that’s both silly and sexy. “He contains aspects of all the good men I’ve had in my life,” Pegg explains. “I spent a good chunk of my early 20s playing rugby and being surrounded by these big, buff, burly dudes that were probably the most secure men I’ve ever met in my life. You’d expect them to be absolute meatheads, but all they do is egg each other on and give each other hugs. I’ve seen them openly cry. They hype up their wives and their girlfriends and give each other ‘a little kiss for the boys’ and don’t say ‘no homo’ afterwards. That’s what Percy is.” While drag is performed for an audience, dabbling in different presentations has taught Pegg a lesson they carry into their life beyond the stage. “I owe a lot to Percy for understanding my own gender,” Pegg adds. “When I first started as Percy Pegg, I was still using she/her pronouns, and it became she/they, and then they/them…I think he’s helped me understand more about being me, and what I want to express day-to-day, and how much joy I can have in just showing up as however I woke up that day.” Pegg began doing drag around three years ago, and has since become a staple of the Vancouver scene. It’s been a difficult few years for the community: veteran drag king King Fisher (Jayme Andrews) died in 2023, and performer Julio Fox (Kira Salim) was killed in the Lapu Lapu festival tragedy earlier this year. But King Fisher’s death really served as a catalyst for change, and a collective of performers led by drag king Skim came together to create a web series, Long Live Kings, that began releasing last month. “The work really comes out of drag kings as a whole not wanting to be lonely anymore,” Pegg reflects, “not wanting to be the tokenized only king on the lineup, and understanding that we never had the opportunity to work together because no one ever gave us the platform. So we created the platform ourselves.” “I THINK A lot of people expect kings to be boring,” says Velvet Ryder over a video call. It’s not an idea you’ll keep for long after you see him perform. Ryder is a fellow member of the Long Live Kings collective, which puts on a monthly show called King Sized as well as collaborating on larger projects. The web series, which consists of five episodes and five mini-episodes, is a glimpse inside Vancouver’s diverse drag king scene—a world that thrives on defying expectations. “It’s honestly really informative,” Ryder says. “The first mini-episode is like, ‘What are drag kings compared to drag queens or drag things?’ And everyone has a different answer. It’s really interesting to hear what perspective other people have on your art.” By day, Ryder works at the Birdhouse, one of Vancouver’s few permanent spaces focused on the lesbian and trans community. By night, he charms stages around the city with old-school R&B numbers. “I grew up in sports, and I grew up with a lot of stereotypical men…douchebag-y, sleazy, fuck-boy men,” the former college basketball player muses. “My drag definitely is like a reclaiming of being around those types of people, and being maybe in vulnerable situations with those types of people, and now being able to have total control. You can be around that type of person, but it’s safe and funny and fun instead of weird and creepy.” Ryder’s first number in drag—and still one of his favourites—was to Sisqó’s “Thong Song”. The current version, with two years of evolution behind it, is both sexy and silly: Ryder, effortlessly commanding, pulling out various pairs of panties, becoming more and more obsessed with the underwear as his thong-related stunts become increasingly elaborate and absurd. “Being funny is a good way to show people we’re not boring,” Ryder says. “Having comedy, or doing some kind of bit, or having a reveal, gives me that extra, ‘People are gonna remember my number.’  ” That’s not to say drag is all fun and games. Drag kings are typically booked less than drag queens, despite doing functionally the same thing but playing with masculinity instead of femininity. Especially with Pride coming up, Ryder suggests that performers can feel the tension between their own visions and something that is more mainstream. “I very much want to express and do songs that I grew up with and that I have a close connection to, and a lot of that is like ’90s hip-hop,” Ryder muses. “Sometimes it can be hard, being like, ‘I want to do songs that are meaningful to me, but I also want to do songs that are entertaining and the audience is aware of.’ ” Still, in only two years of performing, Ryder has racked up a lot of success: producing his own events like Bad Drag and Spring Breakers, featuring in Toronto rapper Haviah Mighty’s latest music video “OK!” and winning last year’s Emerald City King’s Ball in Seattle. “I won, and I didn’t expect to, but it was very lovely and I’m very grateful and it was such a cool experience,” Ryder says. “It’s three days of just kings. It’s so cool: there’s so much art, and there are so many different artists with such creative expressions on gender and intimacy and connection and identity.” WHEN IT COMES to gender expression through drag, nobody is doing it like Rose Butch. Vancouver’s original drag thing has been a staple in the scene for just over 11 years, with a career that has taken them through a whole spectrum of what drag can be: from hyper-masculine to super-femme, pragmatic to maximalist, often performed with a clown-white face and dramatic paint. “My drag is a constantly evolving art project around the pursuit of gender euphoria,” Butch says over the phone. In the beginning—back when Man Up, which at 17 years old is Vancouver’s longest-running monthly drag show, was at the Cobalt—Butch began performing as a drag king. Their first-ever show was at a competition that won them a spot on Man Up’s sixth anniversary show, and for the first year they typically did more masculine numbers. “I had gone into drag as a non-binary drag king, but I felt like I wanted to expand my drag to allow myself to do whatever I wanted,” Butch explains. “It’s not that serious! Calling myself a ‘drag thing’ helped mentally open things up for me to do more of what I wanted to be doing.” Expression has been a core part of Butch’s drag. Before ever getting on stage to lip sync, the performer had been a “lifelong theatre kid”, who sought out drag shows as a way to connect with the queer community that they hadn’t found at theatre school. “I really felt called to do it to find community,” Butch says. “I wanted to make more queer friends, find community, express different things, and explore that to the furthest degree possible.” Pushing those boundaries meant accepting not quite fitting in. In 2014, the drag scene in Vancouver was much more sharply divided into Davie Street and East Vancouver. The Cobalt was about the only venue regularly putting on nights dedicated to non-queen performers, and yet the drag king scene was pretty healthy. “The incredible talent we have here with kings comes in waves: flourishing 11 years ago, then dying off, but there’s always been people that have been active drag kings in the city,” Butch says. “It’s important for performers and our audiences and people to see different kinds of drag and expressions of drag, especially different from what they see on TV, expanding that perspective.” For a long time, drag on TV has skewed heavily towards queens. Think of RuPaul’s Drag Race and its countless local or All-Star spin-offs; iconic queer movies like To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar or The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; or even more mainstream entertainment like White Chicks or Mrs. Doubtfire. Drag, to many people, means men dressing up as women. That’s reflected even in queer spaces, where queens tend to be booked more often than kings or things, as they’re seen as more appealing to a wider audience and thus more likely to bring in patrons and make money. The tides are constantly shifting—not just in Vancouver with Long Live Kings, but across queer pop culture. The universe of alternate drag competition series like Dragula and Call Me Mother cast kings; and the first drag king reality competition show, King of Drag, started airing in June on Revry. “There’s so much interest in drag now, and part of that is social media and how much more mainstream drag has become,” Butch reflects. “Coming back out of lockdown, more people had gotten interested—we had a bit of a drag baby boom! The other side of that is there are so many performers, but it feels a lot more competitive at times. Folks try and get all the same gigs, but more people are making gigs and making shows, not just at the handful of bars, but restaurants, breweries, libraries.” While Butch admits they feel a little bored with their art right now, they reflect that boredom can be important for growth. They have an alternate persona, Jeff Garbage, as their “fuckaround drag king”; perhaps their creative slump might fuel another new one. Drag, after all, isn’t that serious. “It can be whatever you want it to be,” Butch adds. “Drag monarchs, drag creatures, drag artists: let’s all be what you want to be.” FOR YUEN YOUNG, the answer to “What do you want to be?” might as well be “hot”. The drag king is the winner of TFD Presents and the Kendall Gender Foundation's inaugural King-Dom competition, which took place this past May. One of his most striking attributes is his ability to command the stage—no matter what language he performs in. “It is very hard for people like me, who are immigrants, or newcomers, or refugees, who are people of colour, who don’t speak English as a first language, to access queer spaces and queer culture,” Young says over a hot drink in a cafe. “I think I was very lucky, because I got introduced to queer spaces and drag as I was exploring my queerness, which is a very weird gift. After I explored drag, I found it so inspiring: it frees your spirit.” Young is originally from Chongqing, one of China’s largest cities and a place known for its two-flavour hot pot. The characters in the dish, 鸳鸯, are also used to refer to a kind of Hong Kong-style ​coffee milk tea—and Young adopted them as his own drag name too, with an anglicized spelling to help people pronounce it correctly. “You have one flavour that is very spicy, and one that is smooth and light,” he explains. “Yuen is essentially this two-in-one fantasy boy that gives you both spiciness and hotness, but also tenderness.” Young’s first show was in early 2024 at Forbidden City, Wan-Ting Moi’s drag show featuring Chinese performers doing Canto-pop and Mando-pop numbers. It was fitting, as it was Asian performers like Moi, Valak D’Mon, and Maiden China who first sparked Young’s love of drag. But there weren’t really any kings in Vancouver performing in a way that spoke to their pop cultural and traditional references, so why not be the first? Young’s references run the gamut, from flamboyant Canto-pop great Leslie Cheung and “pretty boy” K-pop bands to historical myths and folklore. His first-ever performance, as a child, was in kindergarten, dramatizing the legend of Fa Mulan. (“Looking back, I’m like, going back to kindergarten and doing the same thing—just grander!” he jokes.) Other legendary references include Xiaoqing, a mythological character known as a woman companion to Bai Suzhen (who in some tellings was originally a male snake spirit); and Tu’er Shen, the rabbit god of gay love. Even when they’re playing an original character though, Young connects to their heritage. His winning number at King-Dom included both shadow puppetry and a whip-like tai chi sword that his grandfather gave him—even as embracing his heritage can come with complicated feelings. “When I was young, I did tai chi dance with my grandpa all the time in the morning, so I was glad to incorporate it,” Young says. “But it also makes me feel sad, because I’m still in the closet. None of my family knows what I do, knows my career, and I don’t know if they would accept my drag.” Although Young’s queerness may not be accepted by their family in China, part of the power of drag is being able to create a new world. Drag helped them to find their place in Vancouver; and Young understands the importance of helping other people who are figuring out who they are find a place where they belong. “For my drag, I want to be inspiring, relatable, approachable, and accessible,” Young says. “so that someone who is out there like me—who is late to their queerness, who is an immigrant, who is finding it hard to navigate a space—could be like, ‘I can probably do that. I see someone like me in the space.’ That’s what really encourages me to keep going.” Whether sexy or silly, funny or fierce, jaded or joyous, or any combination thereof, drag kings can do it all. Bow down: it’s a king’s world. Percy Pegg, Velvet Ryder, Rose Butch, and Yuen Young perform at Man Up Pride on August 1 at the Commodore. Long Live Kings is airing weekly now on YouTube.