The Kings of Drag

January 8, 2025·32 min·2 clips

Mo Fisher discovered safety by cross-dressing as Mo B. Dick, avoiding harassment she faced as a woman.

1. Not Past It examines the rise and forced closure of Club Casanova, the drag king party that ran weekly at a dive bar in New York's East Village from 1996 to 1997. 2. Host Simone Polanin interviews Mo Fisher, creator of the drag king persona Mo B. Dick, and Olympia Kazi, a founding member of the New York City Artists Coalition. 3. The episode's central question is how a grassroots queer performance space survived the AIDS crisis and recession only to be killed by a 70-year-old law wielded by a mayor running for re-election. 4. Mo Fisher moved to New York in 1993 to study at the New School, took a waitressing job in Chelsea, and began encountering queer performers who bent gender and sex norms in ways she hadn't previously experienced. 5. After cutting her hair, saving the clippings, buying a bowling shirt with 'Dick' on it at a thrift store, and gluing the hair clippings to her face and chest, Mo debuted the character Mo B. Dick — spelled M-O-B period D-I-C-K — on Avenue B. 6. Walking Avenue B in male drag, Mo was not catcalled by a group of men on the corner and experienced what she described as 'a feeling of safety and comfort in my own skin' that she had never felt presenting as a woman on the same street. 7. Mo launched Club Casanova on March 31, 1996, first at the Pyramid Club and then at a dive bar called Cake, settling on Cake because 'it just felt right, it was magic.' 8. The weekly party featured drag king go-go dancers on the bar stage, a drag king at the door, and performances including a famed Elvis night with 'Leather Daddy Elvis' and all eras of Elvis from 'Bugle Boy to Vegas Heads and Tails.' 9. Mo refined her Mo B. Dick persona around a Rodney Dangerfield and Paulie Walnuts-style misogynist New Yorker who she used to satirize toxic masculinity, lip-syncing to The Cramps' 'Human Fly' as a 'human pest.' 10. Film director John Waters told Mo she was 'a sexual terrorist,' and Club Casanova was covered in Penthouse, a Japanese documentary, and MTV. 11. Starting about a year into the party's run, fire marshals in full gear began showing up to enforce the 1926 Cabaret Law, which banned dancing in establishments serving food or drinks without an expensive and difficult-to-obtain cabaret license. 12. The Cabaret Law was originally passed to suppress illegal speakeasies during Prohibition but was widely understood as a mechanism to clamp down on Black jazz clubs and the racial mixing of the Harlem Renaissance, requiring performers like Charlie Parker to carry cabaret cards. 13. Giuliani revived enforcement of the Cabaret Law during his mid-1990s 'quality of life' campaign, deploying what Olympia Kazi called 'dance police' in SWAT gear to raid clubs. 14. Under the law, 'dancing' was defined broadly enough that moving one's feet while standing still counted as a violation worth up to $1,000 per night, while 'sitting there snorting coke, smoking a fatty' was not a violation. 15. Fire marshals raided Cake — the bar hosting Club Casanova — at least three times, scaring away patrons and threatening the venue's liquor license after multiple violations. 16. Mo closed Club Casanova permanently on December 28, 1997, and recalls a final night of warm thanks from attendees who told her 'this made a difference in my life.' 17. Between 1996 and 1998, an estimated 50 to 60 nightclubs were shut down by Giuliani's quality of life enforcement, replacing the club scene with lounges and upscale storefronts. 18. The episode draws a straight line from Giuliani's anti-nightlife campaign to ongoing pressures on queer spaces — rising rents, targeted enforcement — that continue to close venues. 19. People interested in queer history, NYC nightlife, gender performance, and the political uses of obscure local laws will find specific detail here. 20. Listeners expecting a straightforward drag queen story, or those unfamiliar with 1990s New York, may find the East Village context unfamiliar.

As heard by us

A drag-king origin story that builds from character work to a vivid New York party scene.

Not Past It treats Mo B. Dick and Club Casanova as a lively origin story for drag kings, starting with comic monologue and moving into the New York art scene where the act settles into its form.

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Why you'd press play

You want drag history that starts as a joke and lands as a scene.

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