E. 236: Allota Shots | La Crosse Gurls

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
la crosse, shows, entertainers, tickets, drag, crosse, excited, wisconsin, people, twin cities, eventbrite, area, component, center, titles, cast, events, raised, live, hometown

Amy Gabay 00:01
La Crosse Local is proud to be a sponsor of the La Crosse Winter Roots Festival brought to you by Ultra Federal Credit Union. We invite you to celebrate music, cuisine, artists, makers, brewers and distillers in the new La Crosse Center Riverside ballroom. Musical entertainment includes Dan Sebranek, Three Grimm, Tugg, the Remainders, Greg Hall and the Wrecking Ball and the Tripping Billies, the nation’s most renowned Dave Matthews tribute band. La Crosse Winter Roots Festival is presented by the La Crosse Center, La Crosse Local, and with special thanks to the Remainders. Find out more information and how to get tickets at lacrosselocal.com. We got La Crosse Gurl, Allota Shots on the line to chat about an upcoming show in The Main Event Space in downtown La Crosse. We chatted about the origins of the group, the cast, and what people can expect from the show, and where to find out more. You can find more conversations, food reviews, live music and events on our website lacrosselocal.com. I’m Amy.

Brent Hanifl 01:09
I’m Brent.

Amy Gabay 01:10
And this is La Crosse Local.

Allota Shots 01:13
So my name is Joshua Bilskemper, also known as Allota Shots, drag entertainer. I was born and raised in La Crosse, Wisconsin. So raised there, born there and everything. I am a teacher by day and crossdresser by night, it’s basically Hannah Montana. And I currently live in the Twin Cities now. So La Crosse Gurls is the show that I organize. I’m kind of the director for the troupe. And it kind of went away for about a year and a half due to COVID. And all that. We were doing them at the Days Inn out in oh, French Island, their bar there shut down and hasn’t reopened along with the hotel. So there’s no longer a liquor license there. So we’ve been like kind of looking for new locations. And someone brought up the name The Main. And I was like, well, I’ve never heard of this place before. And it’s a brand new event. And I love working with Matt, he’s been so excellent to work with so far. And we’re super excited to get the shows going again in La Crosse, I know a lot of people have missed them. I’m super excited to get them back and going again.

Brent Hanifl 02:14
So you know, just like you mentioned the last 18 months as 18 months COVID If you’ve you know been asleep. So is La Crosse Gurls from then to now? Is it like a rotating cast of characters, or where’s it at now?

Allota Shots 02:27
For sure. So generally, we have half of the cast or so people who are from the area and then we have a lot of rotating people who come from like other parts of Wisconsin or the Rochester, Twin Cities area, Minnesota. Right now we’re looking at doing shows once every other month. So six in total for the year. And hopefully through that progress will hopefully get down to once a month based on building that showcase up again. But we do have some people who come every time. We do people who are changing all the time. Um, it’s always a nice little mix of people here and there. It’s a really exciting show. If you’ve never been to a drag show before, totally worth your time to go for sure.

Brent Hanifl 03:07
So kind of speaking about that. So February 19th, you’ll be at The Main event space. What can people expect? You know, I’ve full disclosure, I’ve only probably been to about three or four drag shows.

Allota Shots 03:18
Yeah.

Brent Hanifl 03:18
And they seemed all uniquely different, you know, anything from kind of more vaudeville, if that’s the right word, you know, talent show of sorts to kind of the burlesque component to it. Like, what’s this show all about? What can people expect for it?

Allota Shots 03:31
So we have seven amazing entertainers coming for this one, all of them are basically from the area of La Crosse or started in La Crosse and have moved elsewhere. So there are a lot of like the hometown girls, you could say. And basically how drag works is people come they do their thing, a lot of the entertainers will do some lip synching, and then people come they cheer the hoot and holler, they tip the gals, it’s a good all time where people can just celebrate, kind of get away from all the craziness going on in the world and just really enjoy their time. I’m really excited. I haven’t seen some of these people in a while. So we’re excited to get them back. And we’re already selling a bunch of tickets and it’s gonna be a great time, no matter how many people show up. I always say if it’s a crowd of one or a crowd of 100 they’re going to get a show, so.

Brent Hanifl 04:23
We talked to Matt earlier about this too, you know, Matt’s, you know, kind of heading up The Main Event Space. And he likes to add this component of, you know, kind of this philanthropic sort of component to it. So there’s money being raised at night as well, correct?

Allota Shots 04:35
For sure. Yeah, we are raising money for the Seven Rivers LGBTQ plus center in La Crosse, Wisconsin. They’re an LGBTA plus organization in the La Crosse area that oversees 13 other counties by providing programming and other events for community youth. All within the alphabet soup you could say, and the money raised during that night will go to help support a lot of those programs. And as we continue doing shows there, our goal is to be doing more outreach for other not only businesses, but nonprofits and the La Crosse area as well.

Brent Hanifl 05:11
So you know, you kind of talk about your past, and also a potential future kind of like every other month shows, kick it back up again. So what is next? What’s coming down the line that you’re excited for, for the group or yourself?

Allota Shots 05:23
For sure. So I think just getting us going in February is probably the one thing I’m most excited about. Because it’s been some time since La Crosse has had a show. I know a lot of people are super excited for it. I know, we’re partnering with Thrunies downtown, and we’ll be having an after party at their establishment after each La Crosse show, Gurls show. So there’s a lot of components and organizations and people who are all coming together to really make these events really successful. And I’m really excited to continue that as we move on through the year bringing in new entertainment, getting the name back up there again and building up these shows. Because when we went away we’re getting great turnouts, it was everything and we’re building every single month and it’s kind of like starting over again, you could say but people know the shows and it’s just kind of rebuilding and getting people acquainted with the fact that there are shows in La Crosse again.

Brent Hanifl 06:14
Just looking at this poster, who are you excited to see besides yourself, well no you won’t see yourself, but?

Allota Shots 06:21
Oh, okay!

Brent Hanifl 06:22
I just love the names.

Allota Shots 06:23
I’m a total narcissist. Now. Let’s see here. Let me pull this up. I am in like, so many shows throughout the Twin Cities and stuff. I always forget who’s in the shows, but I just want to pull up so a lot of these people have a lot of good representation and La Crosse Wisconsin. So my good sister, we like to call each other sisters in the drag community, Stacy Lamour, she’s gorgeous. She’s pretty. She’s a hometown girl now living in the Twin Cities that people just love and adore. She’s a wonderful following here with her family and friends throughout the area. Cendel Clyne, she’s actually moving back to La Crosse in the next month with a job promotion. So she’ll be living there again. Kathy Kalamity, she is a train wreck in so many great ways. And I just love her so much. And she knows how to let people have a good time. My sister from Madison, Wisconsin, her name is Cynthia Mooseknuckle, I know it’s wonderful. She has held some titles in La Crosse. So we’re excited to always bring people who have gotten like titles through pageantry and stuff to come back and be in the shows. Tenacious Eddie is our Drake king. And he was at the Mr. La Crosse pride I think two years ago, something like that. So we’re excited to have him in the show. And then Electra Lytes. She’s new to the area. But I’ve heard a lot of great things about her. So I’m really excited to be working with her. So we have a well rounded cast of all these entertainers who have some type of connection to La Crosse. And it’s like we said, the girls are back in town, baby. That’s the title of our show. And it’s nice to be bringing back all these hometown girls.

Brent Hanifl 08:01
So if people want to find out more, you know, maybe pick up some tickets or just learn a bit more about the event and the programming, where should people go?

Allota Shots 08:10
For sure. So there’s many different ways. So we are selling presale tickets at Eventbrite. You can check out the main, our Facebook page, La Crosse Gurls, that and Eventbrite, its being posted all over the place. It is $10 pre-sale or if you want to get your ticket at the door of the day of it is 15. So you can get tickets if you want to walk up and do it. It is 21 plus, that is something that The Main has pushed. So that is what we’re working with. Hopefully in the future we’ll try to make it 18 plus, but as of right now it’s 21 plus. Or you can always contact me, Allota Shots on Facebook, Instagram, all sorts of forms of social media or any of the other entertainers in the show and they have all the links they have all the information to get the details.

Amy Gabay 08:56
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