the Social Shuttle

Images

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Coals to Newcastle..

Local cops reckon he is a major figure in organised crime but the ever so charming nightclub entrepreneur John Ibrahim is credited with re-inventing the Kings Cross nightclub scene with an interest in 20 venues. Now help is on hand for the ailing Golden Gay Mile of Sydney's Oxford  Street which has fallen on hard times.

One of America's most famous transexuals Amanda Lapore, a young hybrid version of the older Amanda Lear and Joyce Wilderstein will open the new club Nevermind tonight. For 15 years Oxford Street has boomed as young hetero-sexual kids flocked to numerous discos and bars, oblivious to sexual labels. Now most straight kids are flooding to the Cross with it's amazing revival in top spots like Hugos, Candy's Apartment, Kit'n'Kaboodle, Lady Lux and the Mandalay Room.

  Lepore, model, fashion icon, nightlife hostess and performer has been the advertising face for Mac cosmetics and a variety of fashion labels and had her sex-change operation at 15 courtesy of then boyfriend, a plastic surgeon. She's been under the knife ever since refining various body parts.

But how will she fare in a street blessed with more drag queens and trannies per square mile than any on earth and which makes the legendary Singapore's Boogie Street (now demolished) look like it was a Sunday school picnic?

Sydney cocks in frocks are known for their cutting tongues and often, bruising upper-cuts. Word is out that some of the town's more high profile drag-queens are a somewhat miffed at this ring-in being invited to launch the new nightclub. She could always call upon Ibrahim's bouncers for help if needed. They  also guard the gay strip's nightspots. We'll see tonight at the launch party-billed as Saturday Fucking Night-whether there is a stiletto stand-off between Amanda and her local contemporaries.