Borscht Belt Revivalist
Drag kings to the Catskills!
The Catskills revival has done little to resuscitate the area’s Borscht Belt past, but that’s all about to change thanks to James Habacker, owner of the Lower East Side burlesque bar the Slipper Room. Habacker just bought the long-shuttered Hotel Clair in Youngsville and plans to turn it into a kind of theme resort for fans of his club’s postmodern, gender-bending cocktail-lounge shtick. “We’ll be bringing back the Borscht Belt,” Habacker says. Guests will be able to take in such acts as drag king Murray Hill and the Pontani Sisters, as well as, Habacker hopes, summer-stock theater in a barn. It’ll take him till 2007 to refurbish the place. As for the Slipper Room itself, “I imagine we’ll be gentrified out of the neighborhood at some point,” but so far he’s rebuffed offers from deep-pocketed suitors like Pop Burger.
—Ethan Brown