The campus event succeeded in bringing the joy of Halloween to everyone on Thursday night.
Imagine the combination of a costume party and a drag queen show, that’s what HallowQueens is. It was a night filled with frights, delights and spooky-ooky delights. Although the event started at 8:30 p.m., there was a line wrapping around and down the stairs half an hour before. The line was filled with people of all ages, genders and majors all chattering happily. There were people with elaborate costumes, with homemade simple costumes and with no costumes.
Once the doors opened, my eyes had to adjust to the darkness of the room. To create a Halloween-like atmosphere, the lights were off and there were inflatables and glow sticks around the room to bring in a little light. Just to the left of the entrance was a long table filled with drinks and snacks such as candy and cake. In the middle of the room were seven tables that had eight chairs, each all in a wide U-shape facing a stage. There were definitely not enough places for everyone to sit. From my seat, I watched as a non-stop flow of people entered the room. The room steadily filled as more chairs were brought out. Even with the extra chairs, many had to sit on the floor to find space.
At 9:00 a spotlight shined on the stage to reveal the MC of our evening, Adonia. Loud cheers of excitement rang out as the Drag Show began. The drag queens were beautiful and elegant as they danced around the room in tight outfits and stilettos to bouncy music. Cash and compliments were given out freely. Cheers and rhythmic clapping rang non-stop in approval of the exquisite dancers. There were seven drag queens all with vastly different performances, from jumping into splits to just walking around lip syncing to their song of choice.
After the final performance, there was a costume contest. The costume contest has three prizes; a 40-inch TV, an Apple Watch and a fall themed goodie bag filled with various treats including Beats. However, these prizes were not given to the first, second and third place winners of the costume contest. Instead, the first and second place winners got to choose their prize and the third prize went to the winner of the twerking contest that happened after the costume contest.
The costume contest was filled with costumes of all sorts of variety. But there could only be two winners. Two of the drag queens, Adonia and London, chose two favorites each as the finalists and then the winners were chosen by the audience’s favorite. The finalists were: a paired costume of ballet dancers of the black swan and white swan, a witch with a drinkable potion, a snake and a sexy sailor.
The first-place winner was the black swan and white swan, but the swans gave their first-place prize to the snake and asked for nothing in return! It was the sweetest part of the evening. The snake chose the fall themed goodie bag. The second-place winner was the sexy sailor who chose the Apple watch.
After the costume contest was the twerking contest, which was exactly what it sounds like. It was a contest of five contestants who twerked until there was a winner, who received the TV.
After the twerking contest was a short intermission where most of the attendees left since it was getting late. The intermission ended at 10:30, which was when it was technically supposed to end. However, the show was not over. Instead, there were another six performances by the drag queens Queens. The queens had a different order and different performances. The evening ended at 11:00 p.m., half an hour after the original ending time.
It was a happy and free evening. A relaxing difference from the stress of midterms that have been happening for the rest of this month.
