Club Kinkead's expands in downtown Fort Smith

It is the only drag bar in town, and one of the only nightclubs that is also known safe haven for drag performances, cross-dressers and people who are members of the LGBTQ+ community in Fort Smith.

And Club Kinkead's, formerly known as Kinkead's, has the only venue for drag shows in Fort Smith.

That venue has tripled with the expansion of the club at 1004 Garrison Ave. with a new bar, state-of-the-art sound system and space in what was once a place to buy military surplus items. Camping, hunting, fishing, supplies, cots, tents and tarps were also found there, as the words read on the storefront windows. Kinkead's opened in the mid-1990s by Kirby Kinkead.

Today's owner is 45-year-old Trey Hart, a Barling native who moved to Denver for 18 years and then moved back to Fort Smith. He bought the former Army surplus store next to the club in October 2022. Now, a $1.3 million expansion is about to wrap up. An official grand opening will be Sept. 23.

Club Kinkead's hosts Thursday night local talent drag shows and weekend shows by performers such as PollyEsther Foxx, Crystall Queerr, Logan Sloan, Vanessa Rayne, Monica Savant and others. There is also the Sunday drag bingo at the club.

Wesley Fox, 35, from Roland, saw his first drag performer at Kinkead's. Today he hosts the 8 p.m. Sunday night shows and performs Fridays and Saturdays as PollyEsther Foxx. Fox travels regularly to perform outside of Arkansas. In Memphis, Tennessee he has performed at a private party the Hard Rock Cafe and at the Ibis Cocktail Bar. He travels to Springfield, Missouri for shows at the Hour House and to Tulsa where he plays the Majestic and Mojito bars.

Fox moved to Washington, D.C., in 2014 and worked in comedy and theater before moving back to Fort Smith in 2020.

Fox remembers Fort Smith had several venues with drag performers in the early 1990s, but only Club Kinkead's remains today.

The expansion of the venue is a win for the LGBTQ+ community in Fort Smith.

"There are lots of young artists and creatives in the Fort Smith area who are interested in the performance art of drag," Fox said. "New Kinkead's gives us even more space and even more artistic opportunities to give them that chance to try it out for the first time."

Fox said while visiting gay bars in Fort Smith in the 1990s he saw his first drag shows at Kinkead's and thought, "I really want to do that some day." Some of the older drag performers he recalls are Taylor Madison Monroe and Rosa Lee Turrelle.

"Fort Smith does have a long history of drag performance. Where there used to be four or five drag venues in the Fort Smith area it has dwindled down to this one performance space. And it is so important and special to us that they have expanded it and someone has invested their time and their money into the space to give that opportunity to young LGBTQ+ creatives to express themselves and make a little money while they are at it."

Fox said the show hosts on Sundays caters to older people who might not make it to the late night Friday or Saturday shows. There is bingo once a month.

Fox has a background in comedy, musical theater arts. He performs in Arkansas and surrounding states, Oklahoma, Missouri and Tennessee.

"It's really cool that Kinkead's is expanding and giving us this space to do what we want to do for even more people," Fox said. "It's just a beautiful stage set up with lights and sound that is fantastic and we're excited to get started."

In Fort Smith, Fox said he has discovered support for drag. He says he also convinced his mother that he is not a stripper.

"I am so glad to say in Fort Smith I have found nothing but love from the people who come to our shows," Fox said. "I've never felt personally threatened, I've never felt like my creativity was being stifled, so in Fort Smith I think we have a great LGBTQ+ community but we have to recognize that we are being attacked from all sides. The trans community in particular is the group being targeted through drag performance bans through these public bans of self-expression and creativity.

"But in Fort Smith I am excited for the future because we do get such a good reception. So our plan is just to keep doing what we do and keep watching these crowds grow and expand.

"I hope we can open people's eyes up to what drag is. I hope people will come out and watch what we do and fall in love with it the way I fell in love with it when I was young," Fox said.

Hart, the club's owners, said that for some members of the community, it may have been a bit of a scary year, with state issues coming up revolving around trans rights and drag shows and freedoms of expressions.

Club Kinkead's capacity had previously been 99 people. That will increase when an official capacity limit is soon set by the city.

The building in the 1000 block of Garrison, where Hero's Bar and Tipsy's Pub are also located in the same building, was constructed in the 1930s. Hart said after he purchased the Army surplus store, in the wall a container was found. Inside it were the original deeds to the building, a rare find.

The bar is a safe haven with drag performers, and others who identify as LGBTQ+. The nearest drag bar, Hart said, is in Fayetteville.

Hart said there was a "soft opening" of the new bar the weekend of July 28-29. He said the work took about eight months.

"I bought the Army surplus so we could make the bar bigger," Hart said. "Kinkead's has always been around as a drag bar, but it's been limited to the size of the original bar because we just can't accommodate that many people," Hart said.

"My decision was to go ahead and expand it and make it more accessible to the community, and hope to have some sort of better venue that is part drag, part live music and just a safe haven for the LGBTQ community," Hart said.

Hart bought the Army surplus building and had to do work to make it meet the city codes, and that meant installing a new sprinkler system, too.

A booklet of original deeds shows the building transactions dating back to the mid-1930s.

"We called it a time capsule. It was a small container that was found in the wall when they were working on the demolition (of the) Army surplus (store)," Hart said.

He said he has been worried this year the state law could restrict drag performance, and the renovations may be for naught.

"We were kind of scared when they were going to pass the anti-drag bill in Arkansas. But that didn't happen. So that was a plus for us. At that point if it had happened I would have had to look into turning the bar into a different venue," Hart said.

Kinkead's has always been a drag bar since it opened about 25 years ago, he added. He said Club Kinkead's was the first bar he went to when he turned 21.

One key element of the construction work involved installing a concrete awning that connects the old club space to the new one.

"I've basically tripled the size," he said.

Hart said he will announce the details of the grand opening and drag performance as soon they are finalized. Alternative music acts are also ahead, he said.

This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: Club Kinkead's triples in size in Fort Smith