TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Drag Queens' Off-Color Bingo Too Blue For Cafe's Neighbor

ADVERTISEMENT

By ROGER DROUIN of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: December 13, 2007

SARASOTA - Skip Dyrda is fed up with Drag Queen Bingo at the neighboring Canvas Cafe, a weekly event that highlights drag queens hollering bingo numbers and off-color jokes into a megaphone less than 20 feet from Dyrda's home.

He has called the police three times, only to be told that the city's noise ordinance does not take effect until 10 p.m., an hour when Dyrda's 7-year-old daughter should be fast asleep.

The cafe's owner has agreed to take away the megaphone, but that is about as far as he will go in restricting an event that is garnering national attention. The noise dispute made CNN News on Wednesday.

The publicity isn't hurting business. The bingo game, which was launched this summer, is booked for Monday. Owner Louis Schultz promises it will be bingo as usual.

"I'm not going to let one resident take away my rights for free speech on my property," Schultz said.

Dyrda, a muralist who has lived in the Towles Court neighborhood where the cafe is located for 10 years - the past six years in a house next to it - plans to continue his fight.

Dyrda has a 74-second recording he plans to use as evidence to silence the language he does not want his daughter to hear every Monday night.

He plans to take the recording, and several neighbors who are just as upset as he is, to an upcoming city commission meeting to ask commissioners to step in on his behalf.

"I think I had a right to complain about that," Dyrda said from his studio after he played the short recording from Monday's bingo night.

"They know kids live close by," Dyrda said. "It's obvious they aren't doing anything to be a good neighbor, not one thing."

Schultz said of the CNN coverage: "We are booked for the next two weeks. Personally, I should thank him for all the publicity."

Tim Jaeger, manager and gallery director at Canvas, said the event draws a diverse mix of Sarasotans and has raised more than $10,000 for the Community AIDS Network.

Jaeger said he told his workers in September to make sure the drag queens tone down their language. Now that they will not be using the megaphone, it should not be an issue, he said.

Jaeger said neighbors are more upset by the nature of the event.

"Sarasota for the most part is pretty conservative," Jaeger said. "This may be a sign that it is changing a little. And with change there are always arguments."

Dyrda said his main concern is the noise, not the drag queens.

"It has nothing to do with discrimination about drag queens," Dyrda said.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT