This Saturday, Uber will be teaming up with Seattle Pride to offer Drag Queens on-Demand - if you’re in Capitol Hill, South Lake Union, or Downtown from 2 to 6 p.m. tomorrow, you can tap the “PRIDE” option and get an exclusive drag performance at the location of your choosing along with your ride.
Uber will also be donating $1 to Country Doctor Community Health Centers (CDCHC) each time someone posts the hashtag #INDIVISIBLE (the theme of Seattle’s Pride March) on social media this weekend.
This is undoubtedly, awesome. But wait! Isn’t Uber that ultra-evil company steeped in sexism, icky labor practices, and toxic masculinity that we’ve been writing about a lot lately? Well…yes. But.
R Place regular Stacey Starstruck will be one of five queens performing for Drag Queens On-Demand tomorrow, along with Amora Dior Black, Lasaveona Hunt and RuPaul’s Drag Race queens Robbie Turner and Latrice Royale.
“I know I've heard some backlash, a little bit, because of Uber and the current… political events,” she says. “However, I see absolutely none of that with what I am doing.”
So far, Starstruck says, Uber has been “great to work with” and they “treat the people that they hire for events amazingly,” taking care of the queens with snacks during and after the four-hour performance, and paying “a very fair rate” – a full Pride price that’s double to triple the rate of what she would normally get paid for an evening at a regular venue.
“What's going on, at the very top of the company doesn't always dictate what the people working under them are doing,” Starstruck says. “The current employees -like my driver, that people volunteering that are working, and then Corporate - some of the people who are putting this event on, they have a completely different point of view, then let's say like, the owners.”
So, at least this weekend, you may want to undelete Uber, see a LIT drag performance from a talented local queen for a good cause, and then…delete it again when Monday comes around!