Jim Bunny Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

If it takes a bevy of flouncing and strutting drag queens on seven inch heels sporting flying feather boas to bring some life to the graveyard that is Devonport Road, then why not?

Something live down the dead end of town, something happening where nothing happens. Break out the hip and butt enhancer padded panties and the fake silicone boob bras you've been hiding in your cross-dressing kit in the closet and get downtown! Let your inner self loose.

Perhaps I'll give my $700 glitter mermaid dress another outing. And the $350 ‘Miss Sublime' curly wig I just adore. An expensive caper this drag.

Might even get my nails done – a truck driver mate recommends a nice wee ‘clippery' where you can soak and be pampered. Then two or three hours getting the face on, the full bright red lips, like the gates to Sydney's Lunar Park. But that's the price of embracing your individuality.

I am suggesting we K' Road-ise Devonport Road – not an industrial-strength red light district, but a toned down pinki-ish or cerise.

Respectably risqué.

A survey of 20,000 people named K Road one of the world's ‘coolest' streets – a strip of cabaret-style restaurants, of raunchiness and naughtiness, karaoke bars, gay clubs, strip tease, and drag queens.

Edgy, diverse, Bohemian, alternative and fringe. It's huge fun and tests your boundaries.

Erika and CoCo Flash

So why the hell not? Let's go where free parking, pavement painting and extended shopping hours have failed. Dowdiness out, flamboyance in.

Now cue Erika and CoCo Flash. Last week the ‘girls' in full kit, in all their wonderful excessiveness, were seen sashaying across Devonport Road towards the library. Perhaps an issue with outstanding overdue fines.

A colleague spotted the ‘girls'. 'It was just so cool.” Sheer theatre.

No-one had caused such a splash in lower Devonport since a Papamoa butcher set up to sell black pudding and pork sausages to passersby where there are no passersby. The shop remains empty – like dozens of others.

Perhaps the Drag Queen Shop – couturiers to the cross-dressers – could move in, providing for all those frustrated Tauranga males yearning to be in touch with their feminine side? Erika and CoCo Flash pulled off a marketing coup, did what few others have managed downtown in recent times – they pulled a crowd.

Fifty mums and children.

Rainbow Storytime

They held a ‘Rainbow Storytime' at He Puna Manawa – the public library. In all their glitzy overstated finery the ‘girls' read stories promoting acceptance, anti-bullying, inclusion and confidence as part of Tauranga Moana Pride Week celebrating LGBTQIA+.

And, yes of course, there were complaints to the library about Erika and CoCo Flash – a whole five of them – and some comments from the keyboard carpers on Facebook.

All of them, I suspect, card-carrying members of GAEAE. That's Grumblers About Everyone And Everything!

The kids were watching, listening and learning in the safe, supportive environment of a public library. Obviously the hoary old arguments of 'sexualisation” and 'grooming” were lurking just below the surface.

Well it could be the complaining that's terrorising and damaging the kids.

When kids dress up as villains, the grim reaper, ghosts and other assorted baddies, their costume choice is considered just innocent fun and play. But introduce a wig and suddenly it's perverted and dangerous.

A therapist I came cross reassures that 'drag” cannot turn a child gay or transgender. But the playful use of 'drag” may be reassuring to kids already questioning their sexual identity.

So no harm, just good.

Anyhow the library just may have struck pay dirt – they could be onto a winner.

For example, I always considered Tolstoy's ‘War and Peace' a daunting prospect at 1400 pages. If the library organised another drag queen ‘storytime', I might finally get through this literary classic. And if the same drag queens decided to do readings from ‘A Social History of Railways Stations' by Richards and MacKenzie, I'd probably sit and listen attentively through that as well.

With regular drag queen readings, all those Sky Sport-watching blokes might suddenly be devouring two or three books a week. The fathers who didn't have time to do sports practice or tap dancing with the kids might suddenly be taking afternoons off work to visit the library.

Bill and burlesque?

So let's get down to the library and bump and grind. What about some pole dancing and Pasternak, cocktails and C.S.Forester? The library could be pumping.

Bill Shakespeare and burlesque, which is not silly because ‘drag' may trace its roots back to the bard. Female roles were performed by men because women weren't accepted on stage. If it's okay for Stratford-upon-Avon, then surely it's okay for Devonport Road? Drag is just performance art, cabaret, enormous fun. And those kids who attended with Erika and CoCo flash won't be needing therapy – they'll just be more enlightened, more accepting and understanding than the kids who didn't go. Now excuse me, I'm off to order my new giant X cup silicone breast form bodysuit – $3296, down from $5811. And where's my library card? Email:hunter@thesun.co.nz