With their art under attack, Rock Hill bar provides a safe space for drag queens
One performance night before a sparse crowd entered the bar, Will Lattman spent more than an hour perfecting his makeup. His eyes, flittering with fake eyelashes, took the longest.
His transition from Will to Seveene Eleveene, his drag name, was a stark contrast to the young man wearing a beanie and carpenter pants days before.
To observers sitting in a booth at the bar, drag queen shows are performance art at its finest or maybe a fun show for a group of girlfriends at a bachelorette party. But to the entertainers at The Hideaway, a longtime Rock Hill bar owned by 85-year-old Mack Teal and his wife Margie, 83, since 1989 it’s a personal journey borne out of love for the stage, artistry and self-expression
The bar hosts drag queens for karaoke Fridays and “Sashay Saturdays.”
“I’ve had many discussions with drag queens over the years,” Margie Teal said. “They are proud of their profession, and it is a profession.”
Lattman enters the bar before his shift on a Friday in March carrying a suitcase full of wigs, costumes, bras and high heels. He’s wearing a green frock — a simple precursor to the Ariana Grande costume he’d later don. It’s all an extension of the creative focus he sought as an art student at Winthrop University, from which he graduated in 2019 with a bachelors of fine art, with photography as his focus.
“I treat putting on makeup as if I’m painting on a canvas; like this is art for me the same way someone is doing photo shoots or someone is doing sculpture or painting or ceramics, print making,” Lattman said.
Here, the art studio is behind a stage at the dive bar. Beyond a curtain in a little primitive room with a mirror and a stool, Lattman begins applying color. To achieve a curvy, feminine shape, he uses pieces of a carefully shaved-off mattress topper that he tucks into his tights onto his thighs.
“I may not be in a gallery, but I’ll be at public spaces that people can go to and it’s all about you presenting a story,” he said.
SC legal changes
But what Lattman calls “art” is being defined differently by some South Carolina lawmakers.
A proposed bill “Defense of Children’s Innocence Act,” or H. 3381, would designate any business that holds drag shows to be a sexually oriented business and prohibit any entity that receives state funds from having the shows. It would also create a new offense of allowing a minor to view a drag show. The Hideaway does not allow patrons under 18.
The bill hasn’t moved much in the legislature this year. And a similar measure has been introduced before.
According to the ACLU, drag is protected by the first amendment. The proposed bill would violate free speech, it said.
“This bill would severely limit drag performances and potentially other expressive acts in South Carolina by placing limitations on performances ‘in which a performer exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth,’” according to a statement on the ACLU’s website. “Drag is a form of creative expression, and just like dance, fashion, and music, it is protected by the First Amendment. It’s a fundamental principle of our democracy that the government can’t discriminate against people — or silence them — based on the content of their speech”
Lattman said drag is not just sexualization or an “us versus them.”
“There’s the majority of people that are performing in drag, like, they just want to do it because it’s an outlet and it’s keeping them out of trouble,” he said. “It’s not harmful or endangering anybody.
“I just don’t see how just because someone is wearing a dress, that automatically means they are a creep.”
Traveling through the Carolinas
Gage Filipovic, a 20-year-old from Asheville, N.C., whose drag name is Marceline Mashic, found his creative outlet in drag at an age too young to perform at bars. He started drag when he was 13. His first exposure came at age 12 at a youth drag brunch.
On this night, Marceline Mashic is gliding around The Hideaway stage at a pageant, wearing a red and silver sequined gown with a ‘60s-inspired bouffant wig and bouncy curls. Mashic’s bright contact lenses and a faux diamond-studded tiara on a pedestal catch the spotlight.
For the talent portion, Mashic performed Rockette-style high kicks. Mashic was limber in high school, having been a cheerleader.
Filipovic travels through several cities in the Carolinas to compete for drag pageant titles and to perform. During one night, he won the title of Miss Hideaway 2025, vying for the tiara against a half-of-a-dozen other queens.
Like Lattman, Filipovic said he just likes to entertain.
“I did theater, I did band, I sang, I did cheer,” Filipovic said. “So that was all very entertaining things … I mean, I like being pretty, I like all this other stuff, but I really do it to entertain at the end of the day, regardless if you’re gonna laugh at me, I don’t care, as long as you’re entertained.”
Drag doesn’t pay for retirement, but it pays the bills, he said. He plans to pick up college classes for a business degree and invest in property, perhaps a club.
He started his career performing at brunches, in pageants and pride festivals, and his mom came to every show, he said. Back then he was underage for bars.
The Hideaway provides a safe space for his work.
“I think Rock Hill itself has accepted that it’s here,” Margie Teal said of the 36-year-old establishment.
The bar is a canvas
As a photography student, portraits were Lattman’s focus. But the Hilton Head native soon realized that drag reminded him of the middle and high school theatre he’d do, including playing around with makeup.
He decided to combine those passions.
“I wanted to take photos of my drag queen friends, which then led to me going on a three-month little departure from Winthrop and re-finding my love of performing,” he said. “And when I came back, I was like, ‘this is what I want to do.’ I want to just play around and live my life.”
He was 23 when he began to perform. But his makeup was “trash” and he remembers feeling like a baby giraffe in heels. A lot has changed since then. The soft-spoken 30-year-old said he learned all he needed to know about the drag world at The Hideaway, where he has colleagues that have become friends.
Drag doesn’t pay all of the bills for Lattman. He has struggled with sparse tip money and has taken jobs in retail and at a wine bar to supplement his income. He most recently worked as a photographer for a studio.
Lattman has also struggled with people trying to understand his sexuality. He identifies as bisexual.
“I’m a human who likes humans and that’s where I confuse a lot of people with me doing drag, because they want to say just because I do drag means I’m 100 percent gay,” he said. “It’s not a black and white thing of, you must be gay to do drag.”
‘Passion behind it’
Victoria Lefaris, a drag queen who does not want to reveal her real name, said the job has become more challenging.
Lefaris is the host of Sashay Saturdays at The Hideaway.
“I feel like there was a little quiet moment for a few years, but now I feel like it’s such a huge responsibility to be a drag performer because there’s things coming at us now, trying to ban us,” Lefaris said. “So it comes more with, you’ve got to have more than just a love for performing. There’s passion behind it.”
For Lefaris, drag is more than just putting makeup on a face.
“Because you have to break down your “male face,” he said. “You break it down and then you basically create a new face.”
Artists don’t always have a space to create their paintings or to perform, Lefaris said.
“They go paint their face, they go perform and people are impressed by how they paint their face. And that’s a way they can open a door for something else. You can always use it to open doors.”
LeFaris, 36, works for an insurance company and has been in drag for 13 years. He said he has always been an entertainer, performing in the drama club, musicals and plays. He started a brief modeling career and received a scholarship to the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.
He is also a support to other queens.
Some transgender people start out as “dry performers” to get their feet wet and once they start performing, they realize “Ok, I knew there was something in me,” Lefaris said.
“I take it very seriously because people come that may be transgender and not know where to turn, don’t have an outlet at home, but they come to the club or a pride event.”
His husband, Christian, is transgender.
Lefaris has been in drag performances that have been canceled because of backlash. But he doesn’t want people to judge it before they have experienced it, he said, because they may have a good time.
“That’s what drag is, it’s entertainment,” Lefaris said.
This story was originally published September 29, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
