San Francisco's Cease-and-Desist Queen: Trannyshack's Heklina Defends Her Trademarked Drag Show Name Across the Realm

Heklina as Liza

​Heklina, one of the top queens of San Francisco's drag scene, doesn't take well to people imitating her. She says she stopped her weekly Trannyshack drag show last year partly because the punk-flavored underground cabaret she started in the 1990s had morphed into the city's top drag revue with many imitators. "I felt like if everyone's trying to copy me, maybe I should try to do something different," she says.

Yet the imitations didn't stop at San Francisco city limits. In fact, Heklina has just smacked the sixth U.S. club that has copied the Trannyshack name with a cease and desist letter demanding they drop the brand or else.

Heklina says she's stopped clubs in New York, Arizona, Boston, and three in Florida over the last 10 years from ripping off Trannyshack's trademarked name.

"Three times in Florida? What's up with that? I wonder if it's the same queens over and over," Heklina said on Tuesday from the set of NBC's Trauma at the Great American Music Hall. She was on break from her current gig as technical director for a scene in which a gaggle of drag queens are injured in a theater stampede. Read about that here.

The most recent cease and desist letter was served on the BS West club in Scottsdale, Ariz. (Though the manager says they've stopped using the name, "Tranny Shack" still appears on a flier posted on the club's Web site.)

"It's flattering in a way, that the name has become so iconic, you know," Heklina says. "But I can't let that weaken the brand. If I ever felt like going to Florida and doing a Trannyshack show I can't have them be like 'there was a Trannyshack here a little while ago and it was so tired.' ... So many club promoters tell me they have a great club and people copy the name. It diminishes the work you put into it."
   
Heklina owes her victories to her decision in 1999 to trademark the catchy title when a DJ threatened to start a Trannyshack in New York City: "I said you can't because I own the name and I'll sue you, but I was lying. So now I said 'I have to go and do it.'"

Heklina has allowed the Trannyshack show in London to continue because she didn't think she had an international trademark when she first heard about the copycat Brits. By the time she found out she did have international rights, Heklina had already performed a couple times there. "I guess it would be weird to sue them," she notes, although she says she may ask them to change the name to "Trannyshack UK" when she heads back for an encore performance this fall.

Heklina says she got $500 in attorney fees covered by BS West in Arizona, and her San Francisco attorney, Alex Austin, says the club was more amenable to their request than most: "A lot of these people are not very sweet when they get these letters from me," Austin says. "The guy in Arizona said I had no idea and I'm immediately going to change the name of the [show] to Train Wreck."

With a back-up name like that, it's no wonder he needed a little wit.