Somewhere Under the Rainbow

by Rhiannon Smith & Gretchen Trupp

"The ancient battle cry was 'We're Queer and We're Here.'
Now, it's a marketing scheme. It's a place to come and shop."

Watch the Video.

An Exploratory Critique of Philadelphia's Gayborhood.

Our video project surveys an area of the city of Philadelphia called the Gayborhood, which is located in Washington Square West covering about 9 blocks, and which has rainbow street signs and crosswalks in addition to rainbow flags on many establishments. There are a variety of buildings in the Gayborhood, ranging from subsidized housing to historical bookstores to LGBTQ-specific health clinics to luxury apartments, restaurants, stores, and clubs. While a variety of different people live in the area, its original intended purpose was as an inclusive neighborhood space with a higher queer population* and to offer support and solidarity for these persons. 

Signs of Queerness*.

There are a few communities in place in the Gayborhood: those who physically live there (queer or otherwise), as well as the imagined queer community that goes in and out of the physical space. These communities interact here because of the history of the Gayborhood and the plethora of LGBTQ-themed/focused spaces. This ties in with the notion of linguistic landscape because some of the signs and flyers in the neighborhood convey acceptance and provide necessary resources for the LGBT population. Still, other signs and symbols seem to be capitalizing on the newfound “trendiness” of queerness, and were not necessarily as “LGBT-friendly” as they initially claimed. 

Semiotics of Gentrification.

Our field experience led us to murals, coffee shops, health clinics, and clubs, all clustered in close proximity. We spoke with a straight white woman who does pedal bike tours, a straight black man who worked at the Methodist church nearby which boasts a social justice-committed congregation, and a gay Irish immigrant man who works in a historic LGBTQ bookstore that collaborates with Philly AIDS thrift.

​Additionally, we spoke briefly with an employee of an Army/Navy supply store with a rainbow flag hanging in its second-story window. The employee stated that the store had put the flag up a few years ago for a Pride parade, and they had essentially just never bothered to take it down. This incident offers another aspect of the landscape, suggesting that the level of underlying support offered by visibly equivalent signs (such as the myriad rainbow flags flying across the Gayborhood) may vary, based upon the intentionality behind them.

Is the Gayborhood Truly a Physical Space?

​We also spent time in Cafe 12, a coffee shop that won an award for best LGBT shop for a few years which is on the same block as the Mazzoni Center, an LGBT health clinic, and a large mural commemorating the struggle for LGBTQ and healthcare rights on the side of a gym building. It was very surprising to see the plethora of different reactions and attitudes to the Gayborhood as a physical space, especially as the majority of people that we interviewed were straight, which doesn’t necessarily reflect on the Gayborhood as a whole, but definitely speaks to who is consistently present in the space despite the overt rainbow presence.

*We are using queer to be an umbrella term for LGBTQ+ individuals, not seeking to put labels on the residents of the neighborhood, and being aware of the history behind the word queer.

About the Authors.

Rhiannon Smith is an Astrophysics and Linguistics double major. She dances in the student dance collective, Terpsichore, at Swarthmore College.


Gretchen Trupp is a candidate for a Special Major in Languages and Linguistics. They are a board member of the Swarthmore Queer Union, and the Title IX Student Liaison Board at Swarthmore College.