How did the club kids scene vary from the gay ballroom scene?

No. Very little to do with each other. Neither one inspired the other. Your impressions are all wrong.

I looked up club kids and this comes up on Wikipedia:

[quote] The Club Kids were a group of young New York City dance club personalities popularized by Michael Alig, James St. James, Julie Jewels, Astro Erle, Michael Tronn, DJ Keoki, and Ernie Glam in the late 1980s, and throughout the 1990s grew to include Amanda Lepore, Waltpaper (Walt Cassidy), Christopher Comp, It Twins, Jennytalia (Jenny Dembrow), Desi Monster (Desi Santiago), Keda, Kabuki Starshine, and Richie Rich. The group was notable for its members' flamboyant behavior and outrageous costumes. In 1988, writer Michael Musto wrote about the Club Kids' "cult of crazy fashion and petulance": "They ... are terminally superficial, have dubious aesthetic values, and are master manipulators, exploiters, and, thank God, partiers."

That made me realize for the first time that Gen Z TikTok influencers who speak in Drag Race-derived lingo are EXACTLY THE SAME as the NYC Club Kids of the 90s!

They're the same! Same age group, same gender bending (Amanda Lepore, Richie Rich et al. would be genderqueer know-it-alls today), same mischief, same look-at-me antics, same poor judgment much of the time. Fascinating.

Race.

Gay ballroom scene: In Harlem, with black gay & trans perfomers. Clearly memorable.

Club kid scene: Mostly downtown, with mostly white kids. Clearly just annoying.

The Ballroom scene was not in Harlem.

Run-on sentences

Did RuPaul inhabit both worlds?

I've seen clips of him on Donohue with club kids (I think), but he was already talking about how drag is a political act back then and stood out as more thoughtful than the druggy kids.

Was he involved with the NYC ballroom scene at all? He seemed to have been a little too glam and not scruffy enough for the company of the kids in Paris is Burning.

RuPaul had many many ROUGH and scruffy years, hunny. And he wasn't a part of the Ballroom scene, and he was not a club kid or part of their scene. For chrissakes you seem to be misinformation central. Or Miss Pollyanna of Sheboygan just mentioning any name to see if it will stick.

But yes he was on that talk show. RuPaul was already famous and older than the club kids. We scratched our heads when we saw him on the talk show. I think he was just famewhoring for any publicity.

By 1990 RuPaul had a noticeable low tolerance for messy people. Which was the club kid brand. MESS.

"Cunt is as cunt does."

R3 There being racial issues was mentioned in relation to the kiddie clubs, and that makes sense as the ballroom scene was mostly black, if not entirely. (I already admitted to ignorance there)

R7 I saw the talkshow earlier with RuPaul being referred to as a 'club kid' , but was older and I was wondering if there was cross-over with Ru too.

R8 If you have actual content to share, please do. This period of post-Warhol NY has me curious about these two groups and the 'celebutants ' the club kids were supposedly replacing.

The ballroom scene was mostly black dot dot dot.

Oops, sorry! Wrong thread.

R11 Your comment blended right in. Especially regarding the club kids.

Interesting question, OP.

The Ballroom scene was dominated by black men and black transgender women, most seemed to be from urban and disadvantaged backgrounds, and all ages were represented in "Paris Is Burning".

The Club Kids were boys and girls, all young, all orientations and gender identifications, all races... but it seemed like their scene was dominated by white kids from middle-class backgrounds. Definitely a whiff of rebelling against suburbia about most of them, even though they'd all die before they admitted it.

Ballroom was not "Post Warhol". It ran for decades. You seem determined to misread everything to suit your nonsense set up.