LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – The first ever Olive Burger festival in Lansing will be held on Saturday, June 24th from noon to 7 pm at the Jackson Field, home of the Lansing Lugnuts, a minor league baseball team out of the Midwest League. The Olive Burger Festival is being touted as a family event. In addition to a celebration of the city and its iconic burger, the festival is also featuring live music, games and activities for all ages including a kids area with bounce houses and face painting.
The festival has a general admission ticket of $20 and will include food tickets to eat olive burgers and more. The festival will feature a variety of olive burger creations from local restaurants and food trucks which attendees can vote on. Festivalgoers can also enjoy a cold beer or a glass of wine at the event. There is no smoking or vaping at the event and it will go on despite any “rain, hail, snow or shine.”
Also included in the festival will be drag queens. After all, what’s an olive burger festival without a drag queen performance?
The Lansing Foodies are hosting the event and they say it’ll be a “rip-roaring good time!”
They have posted information about the inclusion of drag queens during the festival on social media. Their Facebook post says, “Lansing Foodies is an inclusive and positive group. Therefore, the Olive Burger Festival will put inclusion and the celebration of diversity at the forefront. We will have drag performers. We won’t tolerate any behavior that makes people from marginalized groups feel uncomfortable.”
That said, the Lansing Foodies group has also relayed the following information online, “While we will do what we can to ensure the safety of attendees, you are attending this event at your own risk. Lansing Foodies and the Olive Burger Festival are not liable for any harm you may incur at the event or as a result of the event.”
Lansing Foodies describes themselves on their website as a “positive, inclusive online and in-person community for people who love food in Mid-Michigan.” They currently have 40,000 members in their public Facebook group that is run by Erin and James Brains, who created the group in 2017 to find the best food in the area.
Michigan News Source reached out to Lansing Foodies about the event and Vice President James Brains said, “We’ve chosen to include drag queens at the Olive Burger Festival because we want to provide a broad range of entertainment options so people will feel like they are getting value for their admission cost. We chose drag queens specifically because they are a misunderstood group. Certain politicians and media outlets have painted them in a negative light as part of their ‘culture war.’ In reality, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more positive, freedom-loving group than drag queens.”
Brains said that there won’t be a drag show, per se. Instead “the drag performers will be among the many roving entertainers we will have. People can interact and get pictures with the performers, or they can pay them no mind at all. There won’t be separate children’s areas and adult areas. Though, we’re not going to let adults jump in the bouncy houses or play on the playground. I think adults are the ones who have the problem with drag queens, and they’ve only seemed to start hating them in the last year or so, thanks to radical politicians and right-wing media outlets. Children aren’t phased by men dressed as women. It’s a simple concept that’s been around for centuries. As a kid, I remember seeing photos of my WW2-veteran grandparents dressed in drag for parties. I thought it was hilarious and freeing.”
There will be six drag performers for three hours of the festival. There are no limits placed on the drag performers although Brains says, “I’m certain they won’t show nudity. That would kind of destroy the whole illusion of men dressing as women, ya know?”
Brains concluded by saying, “The Olive Burger Festival will be more family-friendly than your average football game. Think of the drag performers as are our cheerleaders. But, instead of cheering on young people bashing each other’s brains in, we’ll be cheering on Lansing, olive burgers, positivity, and freedom.”
Sponsors of the event include the Hong Kong Restaurant, Honey Bun Bakery, and Sleepwalker, a microbrewery pizzeria. When asked about how they felt about the drag queen performers at the festival, only Honey Bun Bakery responded to Michigan News Source about their involvement in the festival.
Liz Kruger, owner of Honey Bun Bakery said, “The only reason why people get upset about drag performances now is because they don’t agree with the artist and their ‘lifestyle’ and assume that all drag performances are 18+ events, which they are not.”
She went on to say, “Every drag queen or king I know are very strict about the audience being aware of what their show may or may not be rated and it is advertised at every event. I am very grateful that the people behind the Olive Burger Festival are working at helping normalize drag in family-friendly spaces to help demonstrate that drag is not just a sex-driven performance, but also a show of masterful seamstress skills, dance, and other performing acts that I could never dream of pulling off. If people stop seeing these performers as villains, and start seeing them as the artists they are, a whole lot more than entertainment would change.”
Kruger was eager to discuss the topic of drag and said, “Drag has been such an important part of theater culture, dating back to the 1600’s (Shakespeare era) because women were not allowed to act on stage, so men would have to dress up and act out the female characters. As time went on, it has developed into what we are familiar with today: cis-gendered men dressing up as a character, typically a woman, but there is so much more to it than what we see on the surface.”
She continued, “Anyone can do drag, no matter their gender. It allows individuals to experiment with gender roles and presentation, to dress up and perform as their favorite idols (I’d have to pick David Bowie for myself if I had to choose), to express themselves artistically, and to help an individual learn more about themselves.”
She concluded by saying, “It is a fantastic art medium that not only takes dance and other athletic skills to pull off, most people who participate in drag also make their own costumes, style their wigs, and do their own make up as well. It’s very impressive.”
Leave a Comment
COMMENTS POLICY: We have no tolerance for messages of violence, racism, vulgarity, obscenity or other such discourteous behavior. Thank you for contributing to a respectful and useful online dialogue.