Grab Your Best Hair and Come to Brooklyn, Because Bushwig Is This Weekend

This weekend, the 4th annual Bushwig will celebrate the “queer drag and music thriving in Brooklyn” during a 3-day festival in Bushwick – the Brooklyn neighborhood where it gets its name. There will be queens, there will be music, and—most importantly—there will be so much good fucking hair.

Earlier this month, Bushwig co-founder Matthew Mendoza told me the idea came to him while shopping for new wigs in Bushwick, the neighborhood he’s called home since moving to New York from Texas.

“I was actually walking down the street, and it kind of just hit me. Oh my god! I want to throw a party called Bushwig. Then it went from wanting to just be a party to being a festival – and all from shopping for a wig!”

Though Mendoza, who goes by Horrorchata when performing, used to buy all his wigs at a shop on Broadway and Flushing (the heart of the neighborhood), he says he’s recently begun buying them exclusively from a wig maker named Marco.

“He does everybody’s wigs. Once you go to Marco’s wigs, you don’t ever go back, you know? They’re just so amazing.”

This weekend, Horrorchata will join over 100 drag queens and 25 musical acts at the Onderdonk House – a large venue in Bushwick’s north side that proves how large and successful Bushwig has become since its humble beginnings in 2012.

When I asked Leahy to tell me his favorite memory of Bushwigs past, he said:

So, I grew up going to church—you know, Catholic—and there’s a part where the pastor says, ‘Everyone look to your right and to your left y’all give each other a handshake or a kiss.’ I do that every year during Bushwig and everyone gets really into it. I think it’s just a special thing. It’s all about love.

It’s all about love. Well, love and wigs.

You can buy tickets to Bushwig here.

Image via Maro Hagopian.