Uber Driver In Drag In LA

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Meet the Male Uber Driver Who Chauffeurs in Drag

 

It’s practically an article of faith in Los Angeles that you’ve got to have a gimmick, and one local Uber and Lyft driver has a doozy: dressing in drag while chauffeuring customers around town.

 

Picture this: you call your ride share, and instead of the standard gray Prius, a car shows up  with “Driving is a Drag” emblazoned all over it. Then, out pops drag queen Erika Simone in a bright yellow taxi driver mini-dress, fishnet stockings and a yellow cap reading “taxi.”

 

“Hey, I heard you need a lift!” she says.

 

Erika may be in drag, but the ride is anything but, as passengers program the music and Erika shares a toy chest of pink necklaces, funny sunglasses and jokey headbands. “People take a lot of selfies,” said Erika’s alter ego, a.k.a. Erik Koral in the non-drag world.

 

There is one catch: Until the car arrives, Koral says, “Nobody knows I’m showing up in drag. Passengers see a picture of a guy in the driver profile.”

 

Yet after 14 months and over 1,600 rides, Koral says that many passengers’ reactions have been positively giddy. “I’ve had people drop their shopping bags, invite me into their parents’ house for a dinner party and stop me on the street to take pictures. Only one passenger has turned down a ride, and he was nice about it.”

 

“Erika in the yellow taxi driver outfit is a total cartoon character,” he says. “I really think that its one of the main reasons this concept has been so successful.” Koral says he deliberately avoids the look of, say, drag queens on RuPaul’s Drag Race, who have what he calls “huge hair and eyes and over-the-top makeup.”

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2015/10/14/meet-the-male-uber-driver-who-chauffeurs-in-drag/