Baker was friends with Harvey Milk, the political trailblazer who was the. He created the flag with a dark pink top stripe, a blue bottom stripe. The first Rainbow Flag made as a symbol of gay pride was introduced by Gilbert Baker, an artist living in San Francisco. When hung vertically from the lamp posts of San Francisco’s Market Street, the center stripe was obscured by the post itself. Using an older symbolism of bisexuality as inspiration, Page overlapped pink and blue. began selling a surplus stock of Rainbow Girls flags from its retail store on the southwest corner of Polk and Post, at which Gilbert Baker was an employee. Also, San Francisco-based Paramount Flag Co. As Baker ramped up production of his version of the flag, he too dropped the hot pink stripe because of the unavailability of hot-pink fabric. To meet demand, the Paramount Flag Company began selling a version of the flag using stock rainbow fabric with seven stripes: red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, and violet. Popular since 1979.Īfter the assassination of gay San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk on November 27, 1978, demand for the rainbow flag greatly increased.