Julien Macdonald: Unlike You

Guardian.

He studied at Brighton Art College - and he was an annoying ugly prissy pissy queen then, too.

You'd take tips on what to look like from someone that looks like that?

Freak.

Into The Outside: The Story So Far

Into the Outside is a major, multi-partner heritage-learning project with local young people, re-examining the city’s rich LGBTQ+ past and creating a new archive of queer youth experiences.

The exhibition charts the progress of the project and includes creative writing, photography and archive material.

Supported by respected photographer Helen Cammock, young participants are examining how issues faced today by young people identifying as LGBTQ+ compare with those faced by young LGBTQ+ people over the past forty years.

Participants are exploring a range of archive materials, including the National Lesbian and Gay Survey – an extraordinary collection of autobiographical writing and ephemera submitted by over 700 people between 1986 and 1994.

A collaboration with the Mass Observation Archive, Brighton & Hove Libraries Service, the East Sussex Record Office and Queer in Brighton.

University of Brighton Galleries – Grand Parade, 58-67 Grand Parade BN2 0JY. 1st October to 30th October. Free.

Download the beautiful exhibition guide here.

Panorama: Labour - Is The Party Over?

Hilariously this programme is set in Brighton (& Hove), where the NEC has shut down the CLP for supporting Corbyn.

Brighton: Pride

Fagburn is away trying to be proud this weekend. x

PS The Brighton Pride parade and the St James's Street Village Party always make me well up with genuine pride about this city (but if  I see another rainbow flag or disgusting clothing item I swear I'll do time).

Brighton: Eyesore

Yup.

And the restaurants and bars are all on ground level and don't move - congrats!

Fagburn: Is At The Beach

See ya!
x

Brighton: Schoolboys In Skirts

Sweltering teenage boys beat their school’s strict uniform policy by wearing skirts.

The 14-year-old pupils were punished for wearing shorts in a bid to keep cool on the hottest day of the year.

In protest the lads decided to borrow from the girls’ official uniform.

Michael Parker, Kodi Ailing, George Boyland and Jesse Stringer were allowed to wear the pleated skirts as they are within the school’s rules.

The students at Longhill High School, in Brighton, East Sussex, donned the skirts in protest of the school’s decision to punish boys who wore school-issued PE shorts rather than trousers on Tuesday.

Michael Parker, 14, said: “It’s not fair for boys to be roasting in black trousers on the hottest day of the year while the girls can wear skirts.”

His mother Angela, added: “We’re fully in support of the boys."

Mirror.

I love this town.

Margate: Good Luck With That

The Times.

Brighton: Bulldog Spirit

THE landlord of Brighton’s oldest gay pub is selling up after almost 20 years following a licensing dispute which he says has left him stressed and damaged his business.

Dean Holmes has put The Bulldog on the market after nearly 20 years of running the well-known gay venue in St James’s Street.

The freehold on the late-night venue has been made available for £1.1 million.

The planned sale follows a damning review into incidents at the pub last year which saw Sussex Police calling for the venue’s licence to be revoked.

The review detailed 48 incidents at the pub since January 2014 including underage drinking, drug use, fights, and sexual assaults...

Brighton Argus.

LOL!

Oh, the happy, happy times I've had there.

Something makes me suspect this could all be a ruse, a bit like that BBC recipes thing.

Brighton: Questions To Which The Answer Is Yes

Brighton can be painfully right-on. Its council threatens residents with fines of as much as £50,000 if they fail to abide by its Byzantine recylying rules. Its official forms allow people to chose from titles including Mr, Mrs, Ms and “Mx” (denoting refusal to be confined to a single gender). So perhaps it is unsurprising that Brighton and Hove council refused to use a rubbish lorry because it was emblazoned with the Union flag. Some residents believed displaying the British flag was “political” and inappropriate before the EU referendum; it might encourage Brexit, apparently.

Such behaviour suggests a certain discomfort with modern Britain and its values, a city that does not feel entirely at home in this country. Perhaps Brighton should hold its own referendum, on independence from the UK. 

Telegraph.

We're ahead of you; The Peoples' Republic Of Brighton.

Brighton: Much More Likely To Be Unmarried

The Office For National Statistics have an online thingy where you can find what the census tells you about people who live in your neighbourhood by entering your postcod - via the Mirror.

This is what it says for the area around St James's Street, in Kemptown, Brighton.

The census doesn't ask about sexual orientation, thankfully - it's none of their business.

Brighton Pride: Sake

PinkNews Exclusive

The Minister of State for the Armed Forces, Penny Mordaunt, has announced that the Red Arrows are to fly over Brighton Pride…but it knows nothing about it!

Speaking at the pro-Brexit Out and Proud launch event in London last night, the Portsmouth North MP said: “I can offer you a bit of an exclusive tonight. If they would like it, Brighton Pride will have been offered the Red Arrows to fly over the city...

YAY!!! 

Hopefully dropping rainbow-coloured drones.

Stonewallers, you did not riot in vain.

PS Manchester latest victim of gay fuckwittery.

Laurie Penny: Poor Little Rich Girl

When I was at school in Brighton, nobody spoke about feminism or gay rights, even though just beyond the playground walls was Kemptown, arguably one of the gayest square miles of the British Isles, stuffed with special-interest sex shops and scattered with drag queens glittering up the pavements as we waited for the school bus in our stupid posh-kid uniforms.*

Back then I didn’t have words like “genderqueer” or “non-binary” to describe my spiky tangle of teenage feelings; I only knew that I didn’t feel quite like a boy or a girl, and that I longed to wear a blazer and trousers like the boys, to cut my hair and call myself a different name. When I turned up in a suit and tie at a function to show off the scholarship kids to the governing board, I was told off by my teachers...

The Guardian.

Silly moo.

*I lived near Brighton College for many years and can not ever recall seeing 'drag queens glittering up the pavements'.

Television: Bye Bye

Sad to see the last episode of the wonderful Cuffs tonight, and sadder still to hear that the fools at the BBC haven't commissioned a second series!

And so sad to see the end of the mighty Peep Show, too.

Boo hoo hoo.

Update: Can you spot the difference betweeen the Express story on the end of Cuffs and Pink News'? And not one tweet was changed... The 'journalist' couldn't even be bothered to find a hotter photo of hot cop, Jake. But they do add a tenuous footnote about Tyson Fury and the Sports Personality Of The Year award, as part of PN's Mail-style BBC-bashing.

Daring Hearts: Lesbian And Gay Lives Of 50s And 60s Brighton

This is a collection of life stories of people who are members of the gay and lesbian community in the Brighton area. The book is based on taped interviews with forty lesbian and gay men who spoke openly about their lives in and around Brighton. In the fifties and sixties the town enjoyed a national reputation as a haven for gay people and it was viewed as a relatively tolerant place for people to visit and live. Lesbians and gay men came from all over Britain for holidays and to settle down. Brighton was considered a type of ‘Eldorado’, a promised land, and this tradition remains today, where its thriving gay community is one of the largest in the country, outside London.

This wonderful work of oral history, first published in 1992, is now available as an e-book from QueenSpark Books.

Roy Scroggins: 1940-2015

Goodbye my friend. 

I'll miss your camp faux grumpiness, your dread of 'Tourists!', the way you always gave me discounts, and your little shrine to Audrey Hepburn.

Every time I turn on my wireless, I'll think of you.

xxx

Cuffs: Hand Job

Nothing going on so I watched BBC 1's new Brighton-based cop show, Cuffs starring Jacob Ifan as a hot rookie bent copper.

Talk about 'Fuck/ing Tha Police' and the blind fetishisation of state power etc.

Phwoar!

I tweeted about it here.

You can watch it here.

Evenin' all.

PS One thing I didn't mention that's notable is that PC Jake doesn't have yer standard tortuous 'secret gay' storyline ending with an EXPLOSIVE coming out scene/expose, on his first day on the job he just goes to his colleague; 'I'm gay, 22, single...'

Oh, and the plot was about as non-sensical as some cows tap-dancing on the moon.

Fagburn: On Holiday

Fagburn decided to throw heck to the wind and went on holiday today.

Here he is on the beach at Brighton!

x

PS Loved this beautiful, thought-provoking and powerful Pride window display at Prowler Brighton - especially the stack of something called 'Lubrifist'.

Kinda reminds you what Pride's all about...

Tweet Of The Day: Panti Bliss

Yesterday, two days after the result, I saw so many LGBT couples holding hands in Dublin. All changed, changed utterly. Long may it continue

— Panti Bliss (@PantiBliss) May 26, 2015

It seemed like this in Brighton, too, interestingly...

PS Let's not be beastly to the Christians, urges the Telegraph.

Update: GCN cover.

General Election 2015: A Small Red/Green Dot

Freedom for the St James's Street bit of Kemptown!

Update: Come join the People's Republic Of Brighton & Hove.