Editor’s Note: This story is part of a project recognizing LGBTQ+ people who have shaped Washington ahead of the 50th anniversary of Seattle Pride. Keep an eye out for more in-depth coverage of changemakers through June 30. To read more, click here .
Halloween 2010, Chop Suey. A wild-haired, garishly made-up drag queen named Ursula Android takes the stage. Preparing for trick-or-treaters, she slips razor blades into apples and douses candy bars with rat poison.
A politely dressed heterosexual couple and their costumed child from the condo building next door come knocking. They profess their love of urban living — and penchant for filing noise complaints. Ursula pepper-sprays them, then launches into a blistering cover of Danzig’s “Mother.
” The vicious skit skewers Capitol Hill gentrification, Ursula’s look eschews voluptuous exaggerated femme in favor of punk princess, and the soundtrack expands the drag repertoire well beyond the diva classics. These aesthetic choices are hallmarks of Seattle artist, musician and nightlife maven Marcus Wilson, who for nearly 30 years has injected the city’s LGBTQ+ cultural scene with a dose of avant-garde energy. Wilson is perhaps best known as the creative force behind Pony, the self-proclaimed “very gay bar” on East Madison Street that he founded in 2007.
The building resembles the prow of a ship, and its odd angles are a suitable metaphor for where Pony — and Wilson, by extension — fits, or more accurately misfits, i.