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California Gay Flags

image by Jim Ferrigan

Flag Description
Californian bear pride flag

See also:

Flag Description

One version of a gay flag based on the California state flag is shown above. However, in the 11 years the Paramount Flag Co. maintained a flag shop on Polk St., a gay Mecca, in San Francisco, we made a variety of variants of the California state flag for gay customers. We stocked two versions. One popular version, which we stocked, was to simply replace the star with an inverted triangle and to change the stripe to pink. Another version was the take a stock six striped rainbow flag and with the red stripe down, insert the California Bear, into the Rainbow field and then add a red star. [Note: this worked because the stripe on a 3'x5' state flag is the same width as the red stripe on the 3'x5' six-stripe rainbow, thus making it proportionally correct.] In both cases the flags could be fabricated from stock on hand to cut costs. In fact they were usually fabricated out of seconds. Other versions were fabricated upon request, but never stocked.
Jim Ferrigan, 30 October 2002

Californian bear pride flag

image by Jim Ferrigan and Tomislav Todorovic, 19 September 2011

Californian bear pride flag - usually called simply "Californian bear flag" - was used by the bear community of San Francisco in early 2000's and possibly in late 1990's as well. It is derived from the Californian gay flag simply by omitting the star and inscription. The flag seems to have fallen out of use long ago, having been replaced by flags in much more widespread use, most notably the International Bear Brotherhood Flag.

Sources:
[1] Chris Pinette's website at the Internet Archive - Flags of the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Community (last updated on 2000-11-28): http://web.archive.org/web/20050210025241/http://www.pinette.net/chris/flags/gay/index.html
[2] Spreebaeren club Berlin - Bearish Info page: http://www.spreebaeren.de/sprbinfoGB.html
Tomislav Todorovic, 19 September 2011