Brooklyn has long been home to pageantry of all shapes and sizes, but this week we’re welcoming a contender from across the river. Bowery Boogie noticed that the 16-year-old institution “Mr. Lower East Side Pageant” was recently exiled from its usual Manhattan venue (the Cake Shop) for getting a little too raunchy. But hey, that means it’s just right for us! This Monday night, February 23, at Lucky 13 Saloon in Gowanus, you can watch as 10 men compete in a series of uber-femme categories like “Best Male Tits” and “Congeniality.”
Hostess Jen Miller is a pretty interstellar character to begin with; she describes her pageant as “an avant-garde Roman coliseum” that draws in large crowds of crazed women to watch men drop trou. Fitting, since according to New York Natives the event is fundamentally a rah-rah! response to the objectification of women in society.
In kind, the winner gets showered with ironic affirmations of manliness—i.e., a pack of Budweiser and a slice of pizza. On a seemingly unrelated note, he also gets a crown with a detachable bong. The runner-up is crowned Mr. Tribeca and gets a vagina-shaped crown that he is encouraged to wear throughout the year. This year, befitting the competition’s move to Gowanus, the first ever Mr. Gowanus will be crowned and given a tinfoil crown.
The event is bizarrely billed as all-ages, so we’ll bet a couple of unassuming 14-year-olds are going to get quite the, ahem, education. And eligibility ain’t nothing but a thang: all you need to do is be a dude and “possess qualities,” whatever that means. It is first-come first-serve, though—so if you’re hairy and unafraid, e-mail revjen12 [at] yahoo [dot] com to get a slot in the competition.