Drag—dressing in the clothing atypical of your born gender—in recent years has found mainstream success.  Films such as Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar have prominently featured drag performers.  But they have all focused on men in drag as women.
Murray Hill is a comedian, emcee and performer.  He is also a drag king.  Called "The Hardest Working Middle-aged Man in Show Business", The New York Times christened him "the current reigning patriarch of the downtown performance community."  He is seemingly everywhere, emceeing a bingo night at the now closed, Jimmy Fallon-backed Mo Pitkins' House of Satisfaction on Avenue A, or hosting the Polyamorous Pride Day in Central Park.  Hill has become a legend in New York's "anything goes" counterculture theater scene who is beginning to find mainstream success; which would be a first for a drag king.  
David Shankbone's examination of New York City's culture has brought him to the whip's end of a BDSM dungeon, on the phone with RuPaul, matching wits with Michael Musto, grilling Gay Talese, eating dinner with Augusten Burroughs and quizzing the bands that play the Bowery Ballroom.  In this segment he talks to downtown legend Murray Hill, former New York City mayoral candidate and comedian, on the last night of Mo Pitkins' House of Satisfaction.
David Shankbone:  Where is Murray Hill from?
DS:  What does Murray Hill do on a Saturday?
DS:  Do you ever talk about the Iraq War in your routines?
DS:  Has the war affected you at all?
DS:  Would you ever leave New York?
DS:  Why?
DS:  Do you feel like you are being held back here because it has dwindled so much?
DS:  How has your show evolved since you started doing it?
DS:  When you say you have honed your craft, what sort of research do you do?
DS:  They say all really great comedians they honed their craft through personal tragedy.
DS:  Does that apply to you?
DS:  Who have you patterned your persona of Murray Hill after?
DS:  As Murray Hill?
DS:  Does your family accept you?
DS:  How was the reaction?
DS:  What do you do when you’re not doing show business?
DS:  Are you dating anyone?
DS:  The New York Times article made it seem like you are embodying this character, that you have become him, and have no personality outside of Murray Hill.
DS:  Do you consider yourself transgendered?
DS:  Do you consider yourself butch?
DS:  Because it denies your femininity as well?
DS:  Do you surprise yourself with your sexuality?
DS:  You don’t like the phrase drag king, is that correct?
DS:  What is a drag king?
DS:  What do you think people think of when they hear ‘drag king’?
DS:  Who is rarely divorced from that personality—
DS:  Then there’s Lypsinka, who very much sees it as a character.
DS:  Do you think it’s less acceptable to be a drag king or a drag queen?
DS:  Do you think you get it worse from the gays or worse from the mainstream?
DS:  I interviewed Michael Musto and he spoke about how younger gays are embracing their femininity more and have overcome body fascism; but in my interview with RuPaul she said almost the exact opposite.  She felt men using femininity as part of their emotional palate is still considered anathema.  What do you think about how gender is seen today among younger people?
DS:  You think RuPaul’s perspective is coming from a show-tour world?
DS:  With drag queens it seems like almost anything is on the table.  If they want to butch it up, if they want to fem it up.  In the craft, are there boundaries you feel you can’t cross?
DS:  What about in terms of gender roles, how you use gender?  Are there boundaries for a drag king when they are performing in terms of what they should or shouldn’t do?
DS:  Why do you think the drag king scene in New York has died down?
DS:  But it used to be?
DS:  The Pyramid Club days—
DS:  Where do you think downtown Manhattan culture is going right now?
DS:  Where in Brooklyn?
DS:  Do you think it’s a permanent change?
DS:  When was that?
DS:  Where did it go?
DS:  Is there not an audience for it anymore?
DS:  Why wouldn’t they cultivate a scene?  Everybody is still here.
DS:  Manhattan was always so central, do you think Brooklyn can fulfill that role or is the central-ness gone?
DS:  What kinds of places are cultivating the scene there and by whom?

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Murray Hill on the life and versatility of a New York drag king