The first in a series of blog posts, Kate takes us through their stories of Brighton, what the city has meant to them, and how we should look back at our shared past.

You know how it is. You’re a 21 year old baby dyke flirting your way through a night at Venus Rising at the Fridge in Brixton London on Wednesday March 7^th 1990. (I’m an autistic archivist, I like to be precise). You meet woman called Alex. You end up back at hers, in erm.., Godalming. You wake up the next morning, the springtime sun is shining so you jump into their car and head down the A23 to this place by the seaside called Brighton. You quickly fall in love, with the city not the lass, as the seaside air begins working its salty magic. The first day of thirty-four years, a lifetime in Brighton, in the city I’m so proud to call home.

As DJ, as campaigner, as partner, as writer, I’ve made Brighton my perfect fit. For love, laughter, dancing and deviance, tears and treats. It’s been the place where I fell for the deck life that is DJing, where house music became my obsession, where disco delivered the dancefloor bliss and where clubbers and DJs become my glittering family. It’s where I’ve studied, worked, crashed and played. It’s seen me march against Section 28, ACT UP, fight for safer sex provision for lesbians, be part of beginnings of our city’s Pride movement, rail against Putin’s persecution of LGBTQI+ Russia, campaign for better mental health services, celebrate the different, become a proud-as auntie, exhibit those special interests, help nurture the wonder that is Brighton Pride though 30 years of words and (disco) deeds, lift others through the pages of GScene, DJ Magazine, Diva and Gay Times, study our queer nightlife heritage, demand equality in nightlife, find my tribe, discover my identity, unravel my neurodivergent thinking, create my family and never (knowingly) kiss a Tory. 

Brighton’s been the salty backdrop to my DJ life in some of the city’s most glorious queer nightclubs and parties – The Escape Club, Wild Fruit, Sunday Sundae, Rebel, Audio, DSD, The Candy Bar, Queer Nation, Wet Pussy, Patterns, Monkey, Zap Club, Love Is The Message, Horse Meat Disco, Charles St, The Zanzibar, Rebel, Bitch, Please!, Dykes on Decks, Traumfrau. It’s airwaves have become my home, be it those nervous beginnings at Radio Reverb or the family I now call 1BTN radio. It’s been my place to play – enabling me to put the music, design and people I love at the centre of women only night Shameless Hussies (co-founded with Tiz Cartwright and the Brigton Pride campaigning group Lesbian Strength 1992), and LGBTQIA+ club nights Housewife’s Choice (created with Michele Allardyce and Josephine ‘Queenie’ Bourne in 1994) or our later Wildblood and Queenie adventures Love Lounge, Majesty, Electronic Disco and Decent. And it is the city that brought me the love of a queen as the kid who never fitted in found a home where I could always be me – regardless of the blips and bangs my neurodivergent wiring sometimes caused me.

Becoming a Community Champion for Queer Heritage South, finding a place to tell those tales and being empowered to encourage my queer peers to do the same feels as if I’ve come full circle. Seeing my city anew once more. That baby dyke who fell in love with Brighton thirty-four years ago gets to hear all your queer and lesbian love stories this city has help create. With each other, our community and ourselves. Confident that the salty air we’re so proud to be made of is giving life to the sweet queer tales we all have to tell. One at a time, in no particular order, attention to your details, all made with queer love. See you at the (sea)front.