Drag Storytime
Babes & Beans
Spruce Coffee
New Haven
June 19, 2026
Blaze lunged at his mom’s plate of brownie crumbs. After this plan failed, he regrouped by silently staring at his other friends, before suddenly grabbing at a new friend’s headband. But when drag queen Bambi Olivia Melrose, in her rainbow tulle dress, walked his way, he finally stood still.
Blaze the baby fell in love with Bambi during Drag Storytime at Spruce Coffee.
“Happy Pride, and Happy Juneteenth!” Bambi exclaimed. Parents, grandmothers, and college students cheered.
“Glen Coco got four candy-cane grams. You go, Glen Coco!” Bambi read from a Little Golden Book adaption of the 2004 movie Mean Girls.
The nostalgia for the film drew chuckles from the audience. Then a voice chimed in with a perfectly-harried delivery of the next line, “And none for Gretchen Wieners. Bye.” Blaze didn’t get the reference, but he cooed anyway, just tickled that everyone else was smiling.
He was a vocal participant throughout the reading of both this book and My Little Golden Book of Pride, even sharply crying out at the recounting of injustice of queer history. But when Bambi, now in her pink platform heels, came his way during the bridge of Golden, he fell silent. His jaw dropped long enough for the plastic tiara he was munching on to fall out.
Bambi channeled a few of her style icons such as Betsy Johnson, Lisa Frank, and the drag queen Trixie Mattel, for Friday's performance. Her song choices included HUNTRX’s Golden and VCHA’s Y.O.Universe, which were “kid-friendly, but still fun and upbeat.” As a pophead myself, I recognized some of the official choreography that Bambi had built upon, as she danced up and down Spruce with such force and energy I aspired to one day have.
For Bambi, drag is a joyful escape. She created the Bambi persona in 2020 at the height of COVID, and performed for the first time two years ago at an open stage.
“Bambi is an extension of Ben, in a way. While Ben is unsure, Bambi is a diva. Performing helps exert the negative energy that I don’t even realize I have until I let it out,” she said.
She said she hoped that the audience, including the babies, felt the warmth of community and was reminded of the importance of being ourselves.
“Drag is a way of self-expression and performance art. Gender is a construct! Sometimes self-expression is villainized, but that’s the furthest thing from the truth.”
