Emulating Imelda Can Be a Royal Drag

When Nicole Murray materialized in drag on the cover of LA Weekly and was hailed as the best-known drag queen in California, what caught Bill Bernardo’s eye was not Empress Carlotta’s coronation gown but the San Diego gay activist’s bone structure.

“I saw the cheekbones!” Bernardo said. “And I said, ‘It’s Imelda Marcos!’ ”

So on Saturday, Murray pulled a few favorite gowns, crowns and scepters from his wardrobe and headed north for a photo session in West Hollywood. Next month, Bernardo’s greeting card company, Expose Cards, intends to introduce its new Imelda Marcos line, starring Murray.

“First of all, I kind of do look like her,” explained Murray, a veteran of the gay rights movement, political activist and publisher of San Diego Scene. “I’m not Filipino, but people think I am. She has a very easy hair style. . . . And I guess they got a whole lot of shoes.”

In one card, Murray will appear in a shoe store amid a sea of shoes, reminiscent of Imelda’s notorious shopping sprees. Another shows him draped on a sofa ringed with Nieman-Marcus-style bags, over the greeting, “Shop ‘Til You Drop (Like Imelda did).”

“I’m really amused by it,” laughed Murray, a gravelly voiced man (who reminded us never to ask a drag queen his age). “Obviously, I’m going to be on cards across the United States, so that’s kind of nifty. And I do a lot of traveling and stuff.”

Murray is the only drag queen on the national board of the Gay Rights National Lobby and is four-time empress of the Imperial Court of San Diego, a chapter of a gay fraternal order. He spoke in drag at the first gay pride rally in San Diego and has remained active ever since.

“You see, years ago when the gay rights movement started, the drag queens were in the forefront,” said Murray. “ . . . Why everyone finds me interesting is I’m still there. I’m probably the only drag queen in the United States that still has influence.”

But there are logistical problems in transporting imperial paraphernalia. So Murray has eschewed airplane transport. “It’s really funny when I go through the metal detector,” he mused. “When they open up (the case) there’s this huge mass of crowns!”

Let There Be Light

Down where Pacific Highway meets Sassafras Street, they’re perforating The Rock, the giant bomb shelter built for designing weapons during World War II and now inhabited by proliferating bureaucracy of the Port of San Diego.

Windows are appearing for the first time in the vast expanses of foot-thick concrete, first as etchings and then gouged out of the walls. This time next year, there should be 27, introducing sunlight to the building’s bowels for the first time in 40 years.

“We’re trying to make it a more--what’s the word?--a more pleasant working environment,” explained Jim Anderson, a Port District spokesman. “ . . . I think some people feel a little bit confined. I don’t, because we’re one of the fortunate ones to have a window on the seventh floor here.”

Convair erected The Rock in 1942 as a nursery for young weapons systems; according to Anderson, the B-24 bomber was designed there. The defense contracting firm put in seven floors of office space, but for security purposes, gave only the seventh floor a view.

The Port District inherited the building in the 1960s, but moved in only on the bottom and top floors. Now the agency is expanding and remodeling. So it has hired Soltek of San Diego to upgrade the building, seal off floors three to five, and make the rest habitable.

“Oh yeah,” mused Steve Thompson of Soltek. “That place is a fortress down there.”

Political Alteration

Plates clinked and dignitaries guffawed at the Hotel Inter-Continental Friday night as Gov. George Deukmejian’s swollen campaign chest burst its seams. At the $250-a-plate fund-raiser, earthquake jokes made the rounds from the podium microphone, with Deukmejian himself tracing the latest rash of temblors to his dynamic rhetorical style.

But former Congressman Clair Burgener, the master of ceremonies, tried out the latest fashion in “Take my wife . . . “ jokes in introducing the cast of characters seated at the speaker’s table to the crowd of 650. Introducing his beloved, Burgener explained that she had been a Democrat before they married but changed her registration after the wedding.

“That gives you the best of two worlds,” Burgener grinned. “You get to date a liberal and marry a conservative.”

No Smoke in Their Eyes

Mark Bracker, an assistant clinical professor at UC San Diego Medical School, has noticed an encouraging trend: When he graduated from medical school in 1974, some 30% of his class smoked cigarettes, but he doesn’t know of a single smoker in this year’s entering class.

The lesson is a heartening one--that research about smoking risks learned in class carry over to students’ personal behavior. When pressed, Bracker said he could think of one medical resident who does smoke.

But the peer pressure is so intense, he said, that she retreats to a closet.