Well known local drag queen and self-styled chanteuse Katya Smirnoff-Skyy is now moonlighting \u2014 or, daylighting? \u2014 as a San Francisco realtor, and she’s using her drag persona to sell property on social media.<\/p>\n
If you’ve already got a penchant for performing in drag, why not use it to sell houses? That’s the thinking of J. Conrad Frank, who has been using his longtime faux Russian drag character Katya Smirnoff-Skyy to market properties ever since becoming a bona fide real estate agent late last year. <\/p>\n
As Frank tells the Chronicle<\/a>, as Katya, “I have an elegance and a poise about me” which helps in giving a character-driven house tour via Instagram<\/a> and TikTok<\/a> videos.<\/p>\n Of a recent Castro home, Katya cooed, “It’s got two bedrooms, two bathrooms, two kitchens \u2014 it’s just too, too, too much! Just like me.”<\/p>\n Frank has been performing as Katya for two decades at venues like The Stud and Martuni’s, sometimes doing entire cabaret shows with live singing \u2014 which is not too common in the world of lip-synching drag. But with all that practice he has also honed the art of snappy patter and a sort of over-confident, Old Hollywood sort of bravado that lends itself well to showing houses.<\/p>\n The conceit is that “Auntie Katya,” dressed to the nines in the middle of the day, is on a “quest to find the perfect Bay Area home,” ostensibly for herself. And so far she’s posted nine of these videos, including this one from last week<\/a> about a five-bedroom home in Daly City \u2014 where she’s sure to include a shot outside Original Joe’s Westlake. <\/p>\n The videos feature some slightly comical editing and voice-over insertions about countertops and such, and they seem to be raising her profile even further \u2014 as Frank tells the Chronicle, he was recently recognized by a checker at the grocery store as “that drag queen who does the house tours.”<\/p>\n Here she is showing off a condo in Cow Hollow priced at $1,095,000.<\/p>\n “There’s a backsplash that lights up because, I don’t know, maybe faeries live inside of it!”<\/p>\n Frank signed with Vanguard back in November, which he says is “the gayest real estate brokerage in the country,” and he also posts the Katya real estate videos to his personal Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n And while the drag showings have so far been confined to these social media videos, Frank told the Chronicle that clients can, perhaps, expect live showings in drag, and\/or “a champagne tour” with Katya.<\/p>\n Also, do note that tomorrow night, April 23, Katya is performing her “Bittersweet 90s Symphony” at Feinstein’s at the Nikko.<\/a><\/p>\n