Jay and Theo
Behind the wheel
Jay drives, Theo waves at everyone. They have done the Prom in the pink soft-top more times than either will admit, and they always book the room before the bar.
Everyone you see on the home page has a name. These are illustrations, drawn for Blackpool.gay: no real people, just the kind of crowd you meet on a good night in the Rainbow Quarter.
Kai and Ollie
Hand in hand on the Prom
Kai wears the rainbow and Ollie brings the fan. One hand on the hip, one hand in his boyfriend's, and never in a hurry.
Amara and Rue
Sunshine and a rainbow skirt
Amara is in sunflower yellow, Rue in a rainbow skirt with her lilac hair down. First to the street party, last to leave.
Lady Illuminata and Biscuit
The Queen of the Prom
Six inches of beehive, a sequin gown and a gold handbag. Biscuit, in his rainbow bow, sets the pace.
The Prom Posse
Four letters, five moustaches
A cop, a cowboy, a builder, a biker and a sailor stop on the Prom and spell out the most famous four letters in disco. Everybody joins in.
Ziggy
Cat about town
A grey tabby with a rainbow mohican and absolutely no interest in anyone's opinion.
Flo
The flamingo
Nobody knows where Flo came from. Everybody agrees she should stay.
Spot the symbols
Look closer at the Prom and you will find a short history of queer culture hiding in plain sight. Each of these signs began as a code, a joke or a badge, and each one is somewhere in our scene.
The rainbow flag
Spot it on the banner plane, every venue front, Kai's T-shirt and Rue's skirt.
Artist Gilbert Baker made the first rainbow flags for San Francisco Pride on 25 June 1978. There were eight stripes, and each one meant something: hot pink for sexuality, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic and art, indigo for serenity and violet for spirit.
The pink triangle
It is your mouse pointer.
The Nazis forced gay men in the camps to wear a pink triangle. In 1986 six New York activists put it on their Silence = Death poster, flipped to point upwards, and ACT UP made it the face of its fight against AIDS. A badge of persecution became a badge of defiance.
The pink flamingo
That is Flo, strutting the Prom.
John Waters' 1972 cult film Pink Flamingos, starring Divine, was billed as an exercise in poor taste. It turned the plastic lawn flamingo into a byword for camp: glorious bad taste, worn with pride.
The green carnation
Ollie wears one on his lapel.
At the 1892 premiere of Lady Windermere's Fan, Oscar Wilde had friends wear green carnations in their buttonholes. Asked what it meant, he said: "Nothing whatever, but that is just what nobody will guess." It went on to be read as a quiet signal between gay men.
Violets
Amara wears them in her hair.
The poet Sappho, writing on Lesbos in the 6th century BC, described garlands of violets. Women who loved women have given and worn violets ever since, from 1920s Paris to New York audiences at the 1926 play The Captive.
The carabiner
Clipped to Rue's skirt, keys and all.
A climbing clip loaded with keys on a belt loop: practical, and a famously knowing nod in lesbian style.
The labrys
Printed on Rue's top.
A double-headed axe linked in myth to the Amazons. Lesbian feminists took it up in the 1970s as a sign of strength and self-reliance.
The lambda
On the chain round Kai's neck.
Designer Tom Doerr chose the Greek letter in 1970 for New York's Gay Activists Alliance. In science it marks a change in energy, which was the point. It became a sign of gay liberation everywhere.
The right ear
Kai's earring is in his right ear.
Schoolyard lore in the 1980s and 1990s said one earring in the right ear meant you were gay: "left is right, right is wrong". It was always a myth. Kai just likes the earring.
The bandana
Round the cowboy's neck, where it is just a bandana.
In 1970s gay bars, a coloured handkerchief in a back pocket was a whole silent language, the hanky code: the colour and the side said what you were after. We will leave the translation to the bars.
Iced coffee
Rue's drink, whatever the weather.
The newest symbol here and the only joke: the running gag that queer people drink iced coffee all year round. Even in Blackpool in October.
Sources: LGBT History UK, Kew, Village Voice, Gilbert Baker, Tom Doerr, Senses of Cinema.