10 FEBRUARY 12-18, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Call Elaine Lustig, PhD .......................................................... at 303-369-7770 Needing Your Emotional ....... Animal W/ You? For eligible people who need their emotional support animal to accompany them at/or away from home, I am available to provide the documentation and counseling. CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED and cafe that took over the old Mercury Cafe space. “I got to be able to work with The Pearl a month or two after they initially opened, when they were still Pearl Divers,” she says. “I was able to do an event at their old location and transfer from there to their new place. Now I’m just getting into being brave enough to produce on my own.” At the Pearl, Coco’s Cabaret will mimic a cabaret experience by combining performers of all kinds. “I really wanted it to be a cabaret experience, so you’re getting that variety versus strictly burlesque or strictly drag, because I do both, and I always like to join the best of both worlds together,” she says. “I’ll be at Champagne Tiger on Valen- tine’s Day for the second Sapphic Brunch Club,” continues Bardot. “It’s a joint ven- ture between me and Chase Bottoms, but I’m hosting solo for Black History Month, and then we’ll be bouncing off with one of us hosting each month.” On top of all that, Bardot is currently competing in the second cycle of Colorado’s Next Drag Superstar, a weekly competition taking place at 9 p.m. every Sunday at X Bar. It’s taken Bardot years to create a thriving career as an entertainer on her own terms, but she’s learned to hold fi rm boundaries. A working mom, she recognizes that her time and energy are precious. “Knowing my self- worth was defi nitely something I needed to embrace, and have a hard boundary on,” she notes. “I know how much I’m willing to work for, how much I’m willing to do, and I’ll turn down gigs with trusted people I’ve worked with for years if they come at me incorrectly. They hopefully know me well enough to know I’m not being a diva, I’m just not going to hire a babysitter and travel an hour out of the city to perform for $75.” Besides using a lighter shade for eyebrows — “When I learned to stop using black for my eyebrows, that was a big moment,” she jokes — Bardot has one main piece of advice she’d give herself as a baby queen. “I could’ve shaved three years of drama off of my career if I just told cis male drag queens to shut the fuck up,” she confesses. “I lived in Albuquer- que for a year and Phoenix for three years, so I got to experience two different drag communities on top of the big city of Denver. Some are more pageant-focused, some have a more club-kid, underground-party focus. But even in those sub-communities, I still dealt with people who wanted to detract from or diminish any of the work that I put in. Not even just cis men, but other non-Black lesbian sapphics too. I’ve dealt with that my entire career. So baby Coco should’ve learned to tell people to shut up a long time ago.” Then she quickly adds: “Maybe ‘have a backbone’ sounds better than telling people to shut the fuck up. And gosh, learn how to blend my contour a lot sooner!” For more information on Coco Bardot and to keep up with her full performance schedule, fol- low her on Instagram @theecocobardot. Culture continued from page 8
