New Zealand's First Local Drag Directory
Back in Auckland Pride Month of 2026, a close friend of mine was charged with the responsibility of organising a drag performance for his corporate Pride celebration. We had a chat about his experience finding a performer and, although he was able to find one eventually, it took time and effort to work out which performers were local and which ones offered hosting services. It was this conversation that had me asking, "Why isn't there one place to find all the local drag performers in New Zealand?".
The Birth of Local Drag Directory
And so, the idea for the Local Drag Directory was born. A free public directory of local drag performers across New Zealand, created to support the local drag community and make it easier for people to find and get in touch with local drag performers. The directory needed to be simple to use, easy to maintain and, most importantly, free for performers to list themselves on, which meant that the cost of running the service needed to be as low as possible.
Building the Directory
Over the past couple of years, I had been working on developing a low-cost infrastructure design that provided strong security, great speed of service and cost next to nothing to run. This was the perfect opportunity to put that design to the test and create a full-stack frontend/backend application for the Local Drag Directory.
In the end it looked something like this:
Having this serverless design meant that I could deploy the entire application and have it running in production for less than a cup of coffee a month.
The Experience
Now I don't know if you've ever met a drag performer, but they're some of the most creative people you'll ever get to meet. They're also some of the most critical. So when it came to the design of the interface, I knew I had some tough initial critics to satisfy. I wanted to create a design that was simple and easy to use, but also had a bit of flair to it.
Initially, I wanted to "vibe code" the entire interface, as it was a great opportunity to put AI to the test. I found that Google's Gemini model worked pretty well for writing the interface and setting a great foundational look, tone and feel for the directory. However, when it came to the finer details of the design, I found that I needed to take a more hands-on approach and do a lot of the design work myself, which, of course, is what I enjoy doing.
Convincing the Queens,
Once I decided the site was in a solid MVP state, I reached out to Wellington's drag community to get them listed and gather some initial feedback on how the onboarding process was overall. I was really happy with the feedback I got, and it was great to see that the queens were excited about the directory and saw the value in it.
There were some minor tweaks needed (such as adding a moderation step in verifying performers) to be made to the onboarding process but overall, it was a pretty smooth process and I was able to get a good number of performers listed on the directory in a short amount of time.
What next?
Overall, I'm really happy with how the directory turned out and I'm excited to see how it can support the local drag community in New Zealand. If you're a drag performer in New Zealand, or you happen to know one yourself, I'd love to see you list on the directory. And if you're looking for a drag performer for your next event, there's this great website I happen to know called LocalDrag.co.nz where you can find talented performers.
In terms of next steps, I want to keep the features simple, low-cost and have the platform be self-sustaining. Currently, I'm looking at introducing Google AdSense placements to help cover the costs of running the directory so that it can remain free for performers to list themselves on and free for people to use when they're looking for a drag performer. .