Trans performer Justin Vivian Bond, née Justin Bond, got v's start in San Francisco — and v, by the way, is Mx. Bond's preferred pronoun. Bond's first cabaret endeavor in 1990, intended at the time to distract friends from those sick and dying from AIDS-related complications, was to create something fun, old-school, and life-affirming, and it was called Dixie McCall's Patterns for Living. Now on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Bond's drag and cabaret career beginnings, v will be performing the show again this fall at Joe's Pub in New York, where Bond has frequently been in residence over the last decade.

As Bond tells the Village Voice, v's first foray into drag presaged the broad, angry, alcoholic, aging showgirl character of Kiki DuRane that would come to define v's work for the next two decades.

Bond and longtime collaborator and accompanist Kenny Mellman (the eventual Herb of Kiki & Herb) first performed Dixie McCall's Patterns for Living on September 9, 1990 at Athens By Night, a hole-in-the-wall Greek restaurant at 811 Valencia Street, now the home of The Phoenix Bar. "The show laid the groundwork for what became the pair's legendary signature act 'Kiki and Herb,' and ultimately created the blueprint of every Mx. Justin Vivian Bond show to date," the Public Theater tells it.

Bond, 52, who was 27 at the time the show was first performed, says, "I’ve fetishized older women since I was in my twenties. But now I’m in my fifties and I still fetishize older women." V says that the Kiki character, which grew partly out of the 1950s sultry glamour of Julie London (who played Nurse Dixie McCall on the 1970's TV show Emergency), was also inspired by a friend's mother. "When I met her, she was standing at the top of the stairs in this turban and a sweatshirt. And she starts dancing: ‘That’s a soft shoe. I started out as a dancer in Baltimore in the Fifties, and I still got it.’" Bond adds, "She was one of those people who can tell every bit of bullshit about you, every fake thing.”

With Dixie McCall's, Bond and Mellman wanted to take the "seemingly exhausted genre [of cabaret] and make it new and fresh for their generation and community of young queerdos, outcasts and activists." And Bond explains that the show began a two-decade-long journey of self-discovery that ultimately led to the decision to transition in 2008, despite years living as a man who did drag.

Bond recalls a review of Dixie McCall’s in the San Francisco Chronicle that described v as “a six-foot man in a dress.”

“It made me feel really vulnerable, and that eventually led me to create the character of Kiki. I then had a persona and a character to hide behind, and I sort of hid behind that character for about fifteen years. I didn’t care what people said about Kiki. She’s supposed to be horrible.”

I've reached out to Bond to see if Dixie McCall's might make a return trip to SF at any point, but for now, v will be occupied with this season-long "tranniversary" at Joe's Pub, which will include some of the body, scratchy-throated renditions of Christmas Carols that were part of Kiki & Herb's annual holiday show, come December. And before that, in November, v will be doing Justin Vivian Bond and the Freudian Slippers: The Lost Show, a recreation of a show that was never performed, slated to open on September 11, 2001.

Below, in case you've never seen it, Bond's 2014 video cover of an underground San Francisco classic, "The Golden Age of Hustlers," written and originally performed by Bambi Lake (and featuring a shout-out to The Grubstake).

Previously: SF Pride Is Way Better Than NY Pride, Says Justin Vivian Bond