Ridesharing superstar Erika Simone on celebrity, shock value and staying safe during the holidays
As we slowly approach the end of not only the holiday season but the year itself, our thoughts naturally turn to that most diminished of celebrations: New Year’s Eve. I mean, there was a time when you could ride seatbelt-less from party to party, consuming ever larger quantities of alcohol, before shuffling your bleary-eyed self off to the next affair without too much overall concern about the law. (See: Men, Mad.)
But due to a combination of pesky safety laws and a certain moral opprobrium that became increasingly associated with all-out, fall-down public drunkenness, well, that slowly became a thing of the past. Now, thanks to a new crop of ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft, those halcyon days are coming back with a vengeance and sparing some hard charging New Year’s Eve revelers the prospect of starting 2016 with a ticket for DUI.
And if you happen to be out and about this New Year’s Eve and live in Los Angeles, you may be lucky enough to hail a lift from Erika Simone, the resourceful cab maiden who’s schticky business, Driving is a Drag, is catching on fire and has helped launched Driving is a DRAG-TV, a new YouTube series featuring Erika – née Erik Koral – in a confessional, lighthearted and occasionally musical romp around the City of Angels.
San Diego LGBT Weekly caught up with Koral between fares to talk about his approach to the now ubiquitous business of ridesharing. As it turns out, Koral’s introduction to drag came completely by surprise. “To be completely honest, dressing up was a complete accident 18 months ago,” explained Koral. “I was in a sexual situation with a bi couple and they wanted to play dress up. I said, sure why not, you only live once and as soon as I tried on women’s clothes a chemical reaction happened and I’m like, wow…where has this been all of my life? I quickly went down the rabbit hole and experimented some more. I never saw this as some inner desire to be a woman; I thought it was fun and creative. It doesn’t go much deeper than that for me.”
Koral then went on to explain how he monetized his desire to wear women’s clothes. “I was really getting into cross dressing during the summer of 2014 when I needed to take the job as a Lyft driver to pay some bills,” revealed Koral. “I read online that there are some other themed Lyft rides like Batman, Big Lebowski, Harry Potter, etc. and coming from a 15 year marketing background I thought, what the hell am I going to do? I was driving on Mulholland Drive one day and had an epiphany. What if my alter ego, Erika Simone, showed up to pick people up? I then saw the name of the company in a big neon sign and it said, “Driving is a DRAG,” which has a much better hook to it than “Driving is a Crossdresser.”
Since then, in a matter of a few short months, Erika Simone became not just a thing to capitalize on but an ideal about how one should live their life each and every moment.
Koral, a native Angeleno added that his drag influences are pretty universal. “I really have no specific drag influence. I created my own character that is very cartoonish, like Hanna Barbara’s Penelope Pitstop. I am not a performer either. I dance like Elaine on Seinfeld. Not ruling it out though.”
Commenting about the current Zeitgeist and how no one had really capitalized on that sooner Koral said, “Thanks to RuPaul drag culture has entered the mainstream and there is a ton of attention on drag and transgender characters in the media with Caitlyn Jenner, Transparent, Laverne Cox, etc. Also Uber and Lyft have shown that they are part of the most disruptive technologies of the last five years with a $60 billion transportation industry. Somehow, I have combined both of them into a funny stew and the response has been wonderful. I have major plans for this business including two different web series and cameos in documentaries. I am a contestant in a reality TV pilot that will hopefully air next year; I’ve done 35 press interviews since February, and eventually I want to franchise this as a party bus and limo business fronted by drag queens.”
But doesn’t part of the shtick come from the rider not knowing who’s picking them up? So I asked Koral if he’s ever had a fare where the party he was picking up didn’t know he was part of the act. Did something turn ugly, a case of steroids (or, estrogen, for that matter) gone mad? “I’ve been really lucky that after 1,600 or so trips in the last 15 months, I have only been turned down once by a guy and he was nice about it. I’ve had a few drunken people get a bit weird in the car, but overall no problems. I credit this to being a smart driver only picking up in safe neighborhoods and avoiding the 2 a.m. bar crowd. I’m not naive thinking I am immune to problems in the future, but that’s the risk I take putting myself out there like this. I think my yellow taxi outfit with the TAXI cap really helps me though because people immediately get the joke that this ride is supposed to be fun and not to be taken very seriously.”
As mentioned earlier, Koral is branching out into the content creation business. With the launch of his web series, Driving is a DRAG-TV, and the promise of other opportunities to reach a wider audience, he is confident about where his brand is going. “I don’t have a web show yet, but my web series Driving is a DRAG -TV follows my adventures picking up crazy passengers with six GoPro cameras mounted on my car,” said Koral. “There are some really hilarious rides and you’ll just have to check them out as they are released in the coming weeks. I think that if this series gets picked up and made into a network TV show, we can really push boundaries by moving my adventures into more conservative states. Imagine Erika picking up a bunch of nuns or people at an NRA rally. Then we are definitely veering into Borat territory!”
Finally, the temptation became simply too great and I had to ask, “Who is the most famous person you’ve driven in drag? Was it a happy ending?”
“I took the director of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, Jared Hess, to Los Angeles Airport this year,” replied Koral. “He was really cool and loved my concept. It ended with a cash tip, so that’s always a happy ending for me as Uber has no tipping feature within the app. A really happy ending would be a cameo in his next movie. Hint! Hint!”
