The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 32

4 couple danced as others mingled among the lights and sound at the Annex. Below, Mother, a drag queen who prefers not to use his real name, is the night manager and customers' surrogate mom at Sparks. 1 1 1 The clubs in Louisville's 'pink triangle' are the center of a gay nightlife extravaganza By JUDITH EGERTON, Staff Writer Staff Photos by TRACEY STEELE IV His cellar dressing room is crammed with $80,000 worth of sequined gowns, boas and high heels he bought in Chicago. He owns more than 200 wigs blonde and red ones are his favorites. It takes Mother several hours to apply layers of pancake makeup and false eyelashes and to don the women's undergarments and other clothing that he wears in his act.

But then Sparks has a reputation for outrageous-ness: In a June promotional gimmick intended to lure patrons for body piercings, the nightclub's posters advertising the event blared "SHOW YOUR HOLE." "We are the cutting edge. We are and we have been," said Sparks owner Steve Irwin. Regular Sparks customer, Steve Mercker, 31, a self-employed Louisvillian who is a business adviser to entrepreneurs, isn't gay but likes going to gay bars with friends to dance. His favorite Louisville nightspot is Sparks because the club plays the type of music heard in trendy clubs in New York, Los Angeles and Europe, he said. 'It's not the music you hear 30 times a day on Louisville radio." Details magazine chose the Main Street club as one of the nation's top alternative nightclubs, Irwin said, adding: "We want to have a balance between freaks, straights, gays, drag queens and the punks with nose rings.

It's a beautiful world. Diversity is what it's all about." And that's what you'll find in Louisville's gay nightclubs. Female impersonators like Mother, transvestites, lesbians, bisexuals, artistic punks, mainstream YOU CAN'T handle Mother, you can't handle Sparks. Or any other club that's part of the thriving gay night life in downtown Louisville. The city's concentration of gay clubs called the "pink triangle" is fast becoming a regional center for gay entertainment, drawing people from Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Nashville, St.

Louis and points in between. Meet Mother: He's a 6-foot, 300-pound the night manager and self-described Ann Landers of Sparks nightclub on Main Street. "The girls come to me for Tampax, safety pins and to talk about their love problems," said Mother, who prefers not to use his real name. Besides his role as surrogate mom to club customers, Mother also performs as a female drag queen with cobalt-blue eyes and volcanic-red lips, a man partial to bouffant auburn wigs as big as 19-inch television sets and size 12 stiletto heels. The Pineville, native is a retired nurse who now is Page 18 The Courier-Journal SCENE June 25, 1994.