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[0:00] Tom Hanson: Oh my God, I was 15. So the thought of a gay community was like so new to me because prior to this, it was all about sex with men. I had no concept that, you know, people went to dinner together. You know, I really didn't. So this was like an education and I was soaking everything up. But that was the first time I heard of it. And it was like, poof. So this talk about this island and it's gay was like, I gotta find this. I gotta find this. This is Tom Hanson, better known as Pansy. Pansy grew up in Jersey City and came out really young. But it was only 30 cents and 20 minutes away on the path train from my high school in Jersey City to Greenwich Village, which everyone in Jersey City used to call it Homo Haven. So the thought of a Homo Haven being 30 cents and 20 minutes away was like, I've got to go. And I did.

[1:10] Tom Hanson: When he was 16, Pansy started seeing an older man and all he talked about was Fire Island. Pansy had no idea what it was or where it was, but it had already made a huge impression on him. He was a straight man who was on a break with his wife. So he was really bizarre. So he decided to impress me. He was going to take me to Fire Island. He rented a limousine, fully stocked bar, and picked me up in the village to go to Fire Island. I mean, this was my entrance to Fire Island. This was the early 1970s. Just a few years later, Pansy would cement his legacy by spearheading the invasion of the Pines in 1976.

[1:55] Tom Hanson: At that time, the only way to get to the other communities except walking was to take a dune buggy. Back then, the dune buggies were the taxis that you were allowed to take. And I'll just never forget it. It was a full moon. The ocean was as calm as could be. I'm riding along in this mystical land I've heard about on the beach. It was just beautiful. It was like, oh my God, this is Fire Island. This is like heaven.

[2:26] Jess Rothschild: Fire Island is a thin barrier island reachable only by ferry just 60 miles from New York City. It's linked by boardwalks, beach, water taxis, and natural dunes. And here's the clincher. There are no cars. It's also home to the oldest gay and lesbian communities in the United States, Cherry Grove and the Fire Island Pines. I am Jess Rothschild. I'm a writer, producer, and a devoted patron of Fire Island, both of the gay parts. Yes, I love to spend my nights in Cherry Grove, but wake up in the Pines. I'm a native New Yorker having grown up on Long Island, about 60 minutes to the Fire Island ferries. For the last several years, I host and produce my podcast, Hot Takes and Deep Dives, where I interview writers, comedians, and TV personalities who were formative to my identity as a gay person in the late 90s, early 2000s.

[3:23] Jess Rothschild: In finding Fire Island, we're going to take you behind the curtain of the mystique, the legends, and lore of the island told by those who lived it. Queer history has often been told through the lens of loss and disappearance, but Fire Island has transcended that to survive as a stunning fantasy world and cultural touchstone. We're going deep on the ritual of tea, the invasion, the rivalry between Cherry Grove and the Pines, and even hear from those who stay on through the winter. I started this process by collecting interviews with notable Fire Island figures, past and present. Nearly everyone I speak to likens it to summer camp.

[4:00] Zach Stafford: It is gay summer camp. It's just gay summer camp. Yeah. Like you arrive knowing like a few people, and you come in having the expectation you're going to meet a lot of new people. They all arrive in the same entry point. You kind of get off the bus or for this, the boat together, and then you like find your lodging. And a lot of people rent places that they'd never been to before, which feels very camp, where you're like, I'm in lodge, whatever.

[4:23] Zach Stafford: Zach Stafford is a journalist, former editor-in-chief for The Advocate, a Tony award-winning producer, and a former executive at Grindr. Zach discovered Fire Island in his mid-twenties, and even though he started going to the island for work, he sensed it was a place for people to let loose. With Fire Island, they're like, I'm on Block Duck Lane or wherever. Like, there's like, these are kind of ridiculously funny names for streets, or like, they're not even streets, because that's the other part of it that feels like camp, that there are no roads. It's just like a bunch of boardwalk and a lot of nature. And I think the animals also make it feel like camp, because there's like that Disney vibe of the deer come up to you and like let you pet them, which feels like you're a kid and very fantastical.

So yeah, it feels like camp, but this is a very adult camp. This version of camp, there are drugs. Gay summer camp is a great way to think about Fire Island. It's like the summer camp experience that I wish I had.

[5:21] Ben Rimalower: Ben Rimelauer is a writer and theater director, best known for his one-man shows and directing Countess Luanne's cabaret show. Although if I had gone to one of the more gay summer camps, like Stage Door Manor, as I should have gone, I probably would have been extremely popular. Although maybe not, I mean, whatever. It's like a therapy session. But I certainly was not that popular at Jewish camp is the point.

[5:45] Ben Rimalower: Ben first heard about Fire Island from his family, his gay uncle, and even his grandparents. See, his grandparents had friends who had houses in the straight sections of the island, and they would reminisce about spending the weekend going to dinner, how there were no cars. As a kid, it just stuck in Ben's mind. Well, first of all, it does kind of remind me of Jewish camp in a way. I mean, it reminds me of Israel. It's like you walk around Israel and like everybody's Jewish and it's just kind of like taken for granted. Fire Island feels that way and that everybody's gay. I mean, I think that that's one of the ways that it's like summer camp.

[6:20] Ben Rimalower: Aside from his family connection, Ben also devoured tons of gay novels in college and was thrilled to discover vivid descriptions which really painted a picture of what awaited him. Then in college, I was reading all these books by Edmund White and Felice Peccano and, of course, famously Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Halloran and many more that, you know, even if Fire Island was just incidental, I felt like I treasured each mention of and some of them. I mean, really, the Felice Peccano books, I would say, Like People in History. It's so incredible. Edmund White called Felice Peccano's Like People in History the big gay gone with the wind we've all been waiting for. And there's a lot of stuff in the 70s and 80s set on Fire Island. Really, someone should adapt that into a film. It's so cinematic.

[7:10] Jess Rothschild: At any Sleepaway camp, you have counselors and staff living among the campers. On Fire Island, this manifests in the form of cocktail waiters, bartenders and, of course, performers on the island. The last week-ish of June, all of July, all of August and like the first week of September are like the 10 main weeks where like the island is like popping and everything is full force. Everything is full out. Everything is running all day, every day. Once Memorial Day happens, you just pretty much have to hang on and keep drinking water and sleep as much as you can because it's just a never-ending marathon until pretty much Labor Day.

[7:45] Boudoir LeFleur: Boudoir Lafleur is the head of the House of Assassins, a premier drag troupe in Manhattan and Cherry Grove. Boudoir, a.k.a. Buddy, works tirelessly in the summer, spending half the week on island and half in the city for gigs. So it's just a go, go, go, go, go, go, go. You see a queen around August and there's nothing behind her eyes because honestly, even though it is really fun, you feel like part of your soul is sort of floating away after two or three months of six or seven shows a week. And most of the queens that work, especially at Cherries and in Cherry Grove, most of the queens are full time. And so they go from a full-time schedule in the city during the winter to a two or three or four more shows on the island. So everyone is on like triple duty. The schedule for performers can be grueling.

[8:31] Boudoir LeFleur: So I'll travel from the city out to the island, do the show at 8 p.m. on Saturday night, then a show on Sunday night at 9 p.m. And then my Sunday show is with all four of the assassins. Then Monday night I have a double act with Yasmin Delano at 9 p.m. Then I get on a ferry Tuesday morning. I come back to the city and then I do Tuesday night in the West Village at Pieces. I do Wednesday night in Hell's Kitchen at Hardware. For now, I have Thursdays off and then I do Friday night at Playhouse and then Saturday morning back on a ferry back out to the island.

[9:03] Boudoir LeFleur: And just like Sleepaway Camp, the staff lives together on the island. Housing for Cherry specifically, Jackie has like five or six different houses. She tries to make it so that queens live with queens, you know, servers of servers. We have a house that's just the House of Assassins. It's on Maryland Walk right down by the Belvedere. So it's Kimmy Moore, Nick Gaga, Camila Cochran, Yasmin Delano, myself and Brie Bordeaux. And it's just like the Assassin's House. I know it's going to turn into the assassin's sort of romper room. I can see it right now. So if you ever hear 5678 down by the Maryland, you know it's the House of Assassins rehearsing.

[9:40] Margaret Cho: Jackie and Margaret Cho has been doing summer gay life since 1986, when she began to perform in Provincetown and later Fire Island. My entrance into Fire Island was rather late. I started going to Fire Island in 2008. I think that there's just always been not a rivalry, but like a preference. Like either you go to Provincetown or you go to Fire Island. And at that time, the entire island shared one drag queen. It was Portia, who is a legendary drag queen who actually sang. Portia is not a lip syncer.

[10:14] Margaret Cho: Wait, the whole island shared one drag queen? That's right. The whole island shared one drag queen who was just moving across at lightning speed would run across the meat rack from the pines to Cherry Grove, show after show after show all night. So, you know, I mean, that's really incredible that we could survive on just one.

[10:37] Jess Rothschild: Summer camp always starts with a wake-up call, breakfast, and activities. And a schedule is definitely in place here as well. So on Thursday, you'd like come out. Thursday night would be usually pretty chill. Then like Friday, you like hang out, go to the beach, whatever. Everyone starts filtering in. And then around seven is she starts at five, but you can't show up before seven.

[11:06] Brian Moylan: Brian Moylan is a Pines veteran. He wrote the book The Housewives and is a legendary recapper over at Vulture. And like everyone comes to the same time. You go at seven, you go to tea, you go to low tea for an hour or so till like eight-ish, 830. And then in the early years, we'd go to Lena Tea because she was the DJ at the Sip and Twirl. And you'd go upstairs to Lena Tea. The demographic would be a little bit older, more disco-y music, but fantastic. So you go to Lena Tea till like 10 and then you'd go home and someone would be in charge of cooking dinner. So you cook dinner at like 10. I mean, hopefully dinner's over by 11, depending upon how drunk whoever was cooking was. And then at midnight, you go back out.

So on Friday night, you go to the underwear party in Cherry Grove. You either take the water taxi or walk over. On Saturday night, you go back to the Sip and Twirl. You go to the Pavilion if there's a big DJ. And then you like wake up late on Saturday. You talk to all your housemates. Who'd you fuck? Where'd you go? When'd you get home? Blah, blah, blah. Then you like kind of recover. Maybe go to the beach a little. Three, four pool parties start. So you get in your pool party outfit, go to the pool parties, go around town where you've been invited. You hear music just pop in.

[12:18] Unknown speaker: We would always have a friend named Eric. Is Eric here? Is this Eric's house? Oh! Oh, there must be another house. And then you just stay and drink their booze and eat their food and go on your way. So then, like around 6, 6.30, you go home, shower, tea outfit, go to tea, go home, again, around 10, hope somebody cooks dinner, go out around midnight, come home God knows when. Sunday, you just, like, lie around, recovery, recovery, recovery. And then you either take the ferry home, or Sunday night was showtunes night, and all the Broadway kids would come out, like, Sunday night. But the last ferry was, what, like 9? So if you weren't gone by 9, you were fucking stuck until Bucket of Blood on Monday morning. We called it Bucket of Blood because it was, like, fucking destruction. It was like Carrie. It was like the end of Carrie on that fucking ferry. Everyone just, like, a disaster.

[13:12] Catherine Grainger: Catherine Granger has been renting a house in Cherry Grove for years now. With high-profile legal and teaching positions in the city, she balances work and play by going back and forth throughout the weeks. So I, unfortunately, or I guess fortunately because it helps me pay for the share, have a job where I travel and I have to be in the city. So usually how it works is I go out Thursday night and I'll come back either Sunday night or I come back on the first ferry Monday morning, take the train into Penn Station, and I'm at my desk by 9.30 with sand still between my toes. I heard they call those Monday morning ferries the Blood Buckets.

[13:50] Bob Levine: Bucket of Blood. Yes, it is. I don't take that one. I take the 7. It was like the 6.30 Bucket of Blood that my friend Heidi takes, and I just think that's terrible. My introduction to Fire Island was with friends on July 4th, 2008. Yes, the first time I stepped foot on the island was during the invasion. In those early days of my obsession with the history of Fire Island, my summer life with my partner of eight years was actually spent in the Hamptons. She, ironically enough, hated it, so I often went without her. Over the next decade, I rarely missed a summer without making the pilgrimage, always finding time to skip off to see Margaret Cho at the Ice Palace or my queen, Sandra Bernhard, perform under the disco ball at the Pavilion.

Cut to February 2020. My relationship of nearly a decade abruptly ended just weeks before a global pandemic would upend the world. I was left without as much as an explanation or any sense of closure and still devastated going into that summer. In June of 2020, I got a text. A friend was inviting me to the Pines. He was spending the entire summer running a guest house. That summer, I bounced between the Hamptons, which only intensified my loneliness, and the Pines, where I was finding community and incredible inspiration. Out on Fire Island, I kept running into a familiar cast of characters that I knew from the city, like my Barry's boot camp trainer at the beach or an old co-worker at the pantry. This is where my people are now and probably have always been.

[15:37] Bob Levine: Folks started discovering Fire Island, particularly Cherry Grove, to be a safe haven since the 1950s, a time pre-Stonewall when saying the words, I'm gay, was unheard of. Bob Levine is a Cherry Grove legend. A.K.A. Rose Levine. A.K.A. Rose Levine. How are you today? OK, fine. Fine. Bob grew up in the Bronx, was never in the closet, and his mom always encouraged his interests. I lived in the Bronx, took the subway, and my mother never said you couldn't go. I went to the theater on Saturday and I just always hung around the theater group. But I had heard of Fire Island, but I never went until 1955. And when I went out there, I never left.

[16:29] Bob Levine: Your first season on Cherry Grove. Do you remember how much the season rental cost? Yes. I came out there and stayed for nothing as a guest. And I stayed there for three or four weeks. And my friend says, you have to leave because we have other guests. So I rented a bed for five dollars a night, a bed, five dollars a night. So the weekend would cost with traveling and all 20, 25 dollars. It was 1956 or 57. And my friend said, if you see a house, would you rent it for us for Memorial Weekend? And I found this house. It was brand new. 30 dollars for the weekend. Three people, three bedrooms, gorgeous house. But it was 30 dollars. The boat was 75 cents. A beer was a quarter. There were parties. There was no electricity and no telephones.

[17:39] Bob Levine: He's been a drag performer on the island since he arrived in 1955. And he still performs there today. And by the way, he just celebrated his 90th birthday. When I came out to Fire Island, someone had already called me Rose Levine. And I didn't even know why or why I didn't do drag. So when I came to Fire Island, my friend who invited me put a sign up. Welcome, Rose Levine on the dock. And so from the day I came there. There was a crowd welcoming me and I didn't know what it was. And then it just developed. And here I am, 50, 60 some odd years later.

[18:22] Bob Levine: I really tried to get to the bottom of how Fire Island slowly became this escape. Like who were the first group of gay people to visit and claim Fire Island as their refuge? Bob Levine told me about a woman who worked as a Broadway dresser. And she would bring a lot of designers and Broadway actors to Cherry Grove. And it just became a snowball effect. Word of mouth. No newspapers or no telephones. So people came there and it was like a hideaway. Like when I started to work, I didn't tell anybody I went to Fire Island. Where are you going? Oh, you're going to the Hamptons. The Hamptons was the excuse for going on a weekend. Because when you said Fire Island, it labeled you as gay. I worked with someone who said he was going to the Hamptons. Meanwhile, I met him. He had a house in Cherry Grove. I said, I thought you were in the Hampton. So that's how it started. It was very private. And we had no newspapers for publicity. It was a private community.

[19:34] Bob Levine: As Bob explains, it wasn't until the raids in the 1960s that Fire Island began making headlines. But those headlines often ended careers. Everything exploded in the 60s when we had raids because they were raids from the mainland. And they raided the walks. There's a section called the Meat Rack. I don't think that was even there then. No, they didn't call it the Meat Rack, but it was the walks. And there were young policemen in plainclothes men that looked like everybody else there. They were young and good looking and they would cruise. And if you touch them, I was never arrested, but I knew people that were. So if you touch them, they arrested you. And I knew many people who were arrested, taken off the island and spent the night in jail.

And all those newspapers would headline on the front page raids on Fire Island in Cherry Grove, listing all the names of the guys who were executives. That's how I bought my house from an executive who was raided. He was fired. So he didn't come back to Fire Island.

[21:10] Unknown speaker: Everyone's path to Fire Island is incredibly unique to them. Some come for a day trip. Others feel pressure from friends to make this the greatest vacation week of their life. Fire Island had really been on my radar from social media. I followed DJ Lena Bradford somehow, some way. And I would look at Lena's Instagram and I would see this woman playing an amazing DJ set to like a hype crowd somewhere out in New York on the beach, somewhere that didn't look like New York City. And I was just like, how do I get there? I want to go there. This is Tomek Dash referring to DJ Lena Bradford.

[22:00] Tomek Dash: For 10 years, DJ Lena ruled the deck at the Sip and Twirl in the Pines. Lena was kind of a phenomenon. So it's not surprising that Tomek sought her out. And I remember I even DM'd her. I was like, hey, where are you? What are you doing? How can I get there? And I never got an answer. Of course, it's very popular and legendary. But yeah, I was working in a salon and one of my friends was also new to New York. And we had decided together that we're going to figure out how to do a day trip to Fire Island.

[22:23] Unknown speaker: For some, it's a bit intimidating to be this visible and vulnerable. A friend of mine took me. She was a straight woman. I still is. And she thought that I was gay, but I guess didn't want to ask me, but was trying to bring me out of the closet. So she took me to Cherry Grove. Somehow we made it to a house that was filled with lesbians, which was my dream.

[22:42] Jeanette Cincotta: Wait, were you out at this time? No, I was not out. Did you know you were gay? I knew I was gay when I was like five, but I didn't want to admit to it and wasn't okay with it. And I was playing the life of a straight woman. Jeanette Sincada has been visiting the island for over 20 years. But her first experience was a bit intense, to say the least. So we ended up at this house with a bunch of lesbians, and they started asking me questions. And I was telling them about my feelings towards women. And one of them finally leaned forward, looked at me and said, You're gay. And I absolutely lost my mind. I had a complete meltdown because this was something that I had known about myself for a long time, but I never wanted to admit to myself. And here I was getting confirmation from seven lesbians telling me that, yes, I am, in fact, one of them.

[23:36] Jeanette Cincotta: So that was your entry to Cherry Grove. That was my entry, and I ran screaming from it for several years. I didn't return again until 2009. Like me, actor and comedian Matt Rogers also grew up on Long Island. Matt definitely knew of Fire Island because his sister had a summer job in Ocean Beach, the community located just on the other side of Cherry Grove. If you're not familiar, Ocean Beach is basically the Long Island equivalent of the Jersey Shore. I thought of Fire Island as being Ocean Beach, Ocean Bay Park, you know, all these sort of straight destinations. I didn't think of it as a place where gays, lesbians, queer people were going to vacation because I went there all the time. I was constantly surrounded by the straightest people in America.

[24:21] Matt Rogers: Like Jeanette, Matt was too self-conscious and consumed with hiding his gay identity to even deal with the gay sections. And so to sort of understand, as I got older, that there were these gay beaches.

[24:34] Parker Sargent: It really was enticing for me, but it was something that I was also a little bit afraid of. Because 2000-2001, I believe I was 10-11 years old when I realized I was gay, my reaction to discovering this about myself was, let me keep it a secret. Let me batten down all the hatches. And so there wasn't any opportunity for me to ask questions of family and friends about the gay part of Fire Island, about the Pines, about Cherry Grove, just because it was something that I had to at least pretend I was not interested in. That's kind of a funny story because I feel like I have come to Fire Island twice in two completely different incarnations of myself and also two very different experiences of Fire Island.

[25:20] Parker Sargent: I'm a filmmaker. I've had the incredibly unique story of finding Fire Island during two very different times of my life. And I'm currently one of the very few trans homeowners on the island. I first visited the Pines as a self-described twink with my older boyfriend at the time and found it to be very unfriendly to us. And so in my head, I thought, oh, well, then I don't like Fire Island. And so for 10 years, I never went back again because I didn't understand that there were two different gay communities, that the Pines was where I was, but there was another community called Cherry Grove right next door that was much different.

[26:06] Parker Sargent: One day after I had started my transition, I was watching PBS and randomly turned on a documentary called Where Ocean Meets Sky. And they were talking about this event called the Invasion of the Pines, which happens every July 4th. And it was a day where everyone dressed up in drag. Everyone was very celebratory. I thought to myself, wow, this could be a really safe environment to be in because we were wanting to go to the beach and wear bikinis, but didn't really feel that that was safe. And we didn't really know of a place where we could do that. So we said, well, this seems like a day where we could go out there and no one would give us any shit.

[26:53] Daniel Nardicio: God, I think it was probably 25 years ago, this friend of mine, Andrew, decided to go out for the day. We couldn't afford to stay there.

[27:03] Daniel Nardicio: I'm a New York nightlife impresario, having produced events all over Manhattan and Fire Island for Lady Bunny, Liza Minnelli, Alan Cumming, and Carol Channing, just to name a few. I co-owned Club Cumming in the East Village, and I just took the reins over the iconic Ice Palace on Cherry Grove this summer. I had a lot of preconceived notions like everyone, right? You know, you read Dancer from the Dance, Andrew Halloran's book, and he says, after 30, Fire Island bathing suit season is over. We had to sleep in front of Tommy Toon's house on the beach because I couldn't afford to stay anywhere.

[27:36] Daniel Nardicio: And I remember waking up dew all over me because it gets really dewy. And I slept in the dunes, which is really like, you should never do, but I fell in love with it. And my friend who went with me, he just fell apart like a house of cards. Oh, my God, all these guys are so hot. Everyone's so muscular. I feel fat. And I was like, this is my fucking Shangri-La. Like it was like men dressed as women, women dressed as men, dykes, fags, you know, femme, high femme, masculine, just everything, you know? And then I went into Cherry Grove and it was like one business owned by a trans woman, one by a lesbian, another one by a straight guy, you know? And I just thought, this is the way the world should be. And everyone gets along and they don't get along, but no one's shooting each other. They're just sniping you behind your back.

[28:26] Ben Rimalower: Cost and finding a place to sleep has always been an issue when it comes to spending the night on the island. And while sleeping on the beach isn't ideal, stuff like this seems to happen out here. Where homes used to cost about $50,000 to $100,000 just 20 years ago, they're now going for millions in the Pines.

[28:44] Ben Rimalower: People that have been to like P-Town or Key West or Palm Springs that think this is like an equivalent of that, in certain ways, it is very much not. And that's part of what I love about it, too. It's like I go to P-Town, I make sure I get to P-Town at least once every summer. And I like to go. I like to stay in a hotel. I like to eat every meal out. I like to see two shows a night. At least one of them better be Dina Martina. P-Town to me is like a vacation. I'm happy on Fire Island because I've embraced it for what it is and what I do there is very different.

[29:17] Ben Rimalower: And the way Fire Island tends to work is this share schedule where you could get a quarter share or a half share or you could rent a house for a whole summer. But you and your share group have that if it's a quarter share, you usually have five weeks that are spread out through the summer, kind of like one week every month. Half share would be twice that. And you go and you're splitting the cost of the house, splitting up the bedrooms based on however many of you there are.

[29:43] Ben Rimalower: The high price of summer rentals led to the practice of share house culture, which is how many find consistent housing with friends. You basically are buying groceries either at the fabulous, adorable little grocery store in the Pines, the Pines Pantry, or now you can get them delivered through different services that then have to be coordinated with freight boating. And you're basically cooking in the house all your food. I mean, I love to cook. I love hosting dinner parties in my apartment in the city anyway. But to me, that's what it is in the Pines. I'm just like with people that I love, that I chose, that I want to spend this time with.

[30:16] Ben Rimalower: Prior to me having a proper share with my friends, I was an up-and-coming theater director and first visited the Pines with my friend, cabaret performer Lance Horne. I was working in theater. I was so broke. I mean, Fire Island, I wasn't even going to Coney Island, you know. But anyway, Lance got this gig in 2005. So they had given him a suite, so they called it, at the Botel, which was still the same rat trap with new throw pillows. And we both got scabies that weekend.

[30:43] Brian Moylan: The Botel is the historic name, smells like blue cheese. It’s, you know, the only hotel in the New York area where rooms are $600 a night and you share a bathroom.

[30:54] Brian Moylan: I had a share in the Pines from 2008 until I moved to London in 2018. Have you ever run into a housewife?

[31:01] Brian Moylan: Yes. I saw Jill Zarin getting the ferry home once from the Pines on a Sunday, and I took a picture of her from behind. She looked phenomenal. After 10 years of summer shares on the island, I'm heading back this year for my triumphant return. So get ready.

[31:19] Brian Moylan: I mean, thank God for Ozempic. Most of the houses are like three bedrooms or four bedrooms. So you had between like six and eight people. They're usually sharing a bed. There was usually like one couple. And if there was a queen size bed, the couple would get the queen size bed. And so that always made hooking up difficult. So you're trying to come home and then your roommate's asleep and then you get sexiled to the couch and like, oh, my God.

[31:48] Brian Moylan: Each group has a house mother designated to keep the kids in line. The house mother was in charge and you would take everybody's money. You would kind of set the rules. You would see who was in and who wasn't. You talk to the realtor, you deal with the grocery orders and the receipts and like all that kind of stuff. So I did that because I like control and also I'm organized and I am sober. So it helps because my friends were not. So I also reminded them how they got home the night before, which was a very valuable service for a house mother.

[32:23] Brian Moylan: As a house mother, I tried to keep the rules to a minimum and the rules were essentially no high heels in the pool because it breaks a pool liner and no guests on the couch. That was a big one. They need to be behind closed doors if they're staying the night.

[32:42] Brian Moylan: Obviously, a group of six to eight people sharing a house all summer is not without its share of drama. Kicking someone out of the house is treacherous because you're like essentially ending your friendship. Like if you kick them out of the house, it's like I'm never talking to you again. And that happens, I mean, more than once. And some of them have since come back after, you know, 50 years later. But yeah, definitely some of them are like goodbye forever. See you later.

[33:13] Joel Kim Booster: When I first made it to the island as a broke 20-something living in New York, my group also had to cut corners to make it work. I had been living in New York for a couple of years and I finally had the opportunity to go in 2015. My friend had a room open in his house and we split that one room between three people just so that we could afford to go. It was a four-bedroom house and I think we fit 12 people into it. And that's not even the record. I think the following year we fit 16 people in a four-bedroom house.

[33:47] Joel Kim Booster: That was my Fire Island experience for the first couple of years that I went, was seeing how many people we could shove into one house so that we could afford the house. There's so many other things other than the rent. There's like food. And how do you survive on the island? How do you party on the island? How do you bring looks to the island?

[34:05] Tomik Dash: It can add up quick, even if you're just day tripping. For Fire Island, it's almost like $40, $45 round trip when you calculate the cost of all the modes of transportation to get there. You spend that and then you get off the ferry and God forbid you want a sandwich and a soda, then you spent another $20. And then you want to go to tea and you want to get to like the specialties punch that they sell. It's like another $15. All of these things like add up really quickly. And that's just the day, you know, it could be like the first couple of hours.

[34:36] Tomik Dash: And this cost can act as sort of a gatekeeper. Who comes to the island is who can afford to come to the island. And that ends up being a lot of cis white gay men.

[34:46] Zach Stafford: Okay, so I have to tell a privileged part of my life. I don't think I've ever paid to go to Fire Island because it was work. I feel like a fraud, where it's just been like a lot of queer elders taking me in to be like, hey, come in, we want you to be here. And that happens there. I mean, there are people that pay and then there are people that the community brings in. I know a lot of people who would do day trips, like for the past decades, just to sleep on the beach and go. And I think Fire Island people just clamor to try to get there no matter what, no matter even if they can't afford it, they're going to find a way.

[35:27] Zach Stafford: I wrote a piece for The New York Times last year diving into the demographics of the island. The most beautiful white gay men in the world enter Fire Island and it is like a fantasy. And I know black queer men who enter Fire Island and it feels like a nightmare sometimes.

[35:42] Zach Stafford: Why does it feel like a nightmare? If you're like me and you grew up in the South and you were dealing with racism and homophobia and all these things and you know, you hear this dream told to you that one day you'll be able to move to a big city and there will be queer people, you'll go to gay bars and everything's going to be great. And you grow up and you go to these gay bars and you go to Fire Island and you arrive and it's not great. There's a lot of racism. There's a lot of sexism. You're feeling isolated. It feels like high school times ten. And I think that's what queer people do feel really sad in these spaces because they're like if I don't feel good at home and I don't feel good here, like where do I feel good?

[36:21] Zach Stafford: And then you have representation around you of certain types of people feeling amazing. You just feel left out again.

[36:27] Joel Kim Booster: I replayed my formative experiences alongside Bowen Yang in my film Fire Island. There's a scene in my movie where the main crew of characters show up at a party and someone says, I think you're at the wrong party. And that is ripped from the headlines of my own life. I didn't have a phone and I was going to meet a friend who had invited me to a house party and I show up at a house party and everybody in the pool.

[37:21] Victor Jeffries: I co-run BEBEC, the Black and Brown Equity Coalition alongside Tomic Dash.

[37:51] Joel Kim Booster: I have a theory. Try and change the culture around Fire Island. And I've been trying to do that with the houses that I go with for the last couple of years. Like we're not rich, we're not all white, we are not all the physical ideal that you might see on Fire Island. But I think you're starting to see a sea change in the types of people that are going to Fire Island. Like I see a lot more trans people coming to the island, Brooklyn, queer, starting to see a little bit of a turn from just hard G, capital G gay guys to like some queer people coming in, people who are a little left of center who aren't these musclehead gay guys that normally come to the island.

[39:05] Brian Moylan: After a decade of my summer shares, I began to notice the evolution as well. In my late 20s, early 30s, when we'd go to tea, it was like we knew everybody, you know what I mean? It was like all the kids from town would be there and you, oh hey girl, hey girl, hey girl. And then as I was in my later 30s, the kids who were coming seemed like cooler, more diverse, not only in terms of like race and ethnicity, but in terms of like style. It was like less of that monolithic circuit boy, big muscles type of guy. So it was, you were starting to see more, what I would say like cooler, maybe a bit more alternative, Brooklyn-y gaze coming in. And I think that was really great to see. And even though they didn't want to talk to me because I was old and boring by that point, you know, it was nice to see like, okay, the kids get it.

Because we always felt a little bit like the outsiders because we weren't buff, we weren't ripped or rich or whatever, the A-gays, you know? So it was nice to see that there was another generation of misfits coming in to replace us.

[40:18] Ben Rimalower: Last year, I interviewed comedian Leah Delaria, best known for her role on Orange is the New Black, about her favorite gay destination spot, Provincetown. And she essentially said queer vacation spots like P-Town are less needed these days because, quote, why go to Provincetown when we can go to Paris? No, I hear the argument a lot. I mean, we live in New York City. Queer people are all around us. I need Cherry Grove. I feel like when we turn the corner and you see the big flag, it's like my spine realigns. That's special. And that's where I can go and feel the joy, feel the freedom, have fun with it. Yes, we can go to Paris. But when I go to Paris, I'm going to find the lesbian bar there too. And I think that coming, being in Cherry Grove and being able to find a home base like that, it's spiritual for me.

[41:08] Katherine Grainger: I reflected on my time on the island during COVID, when Cherry Grove became a sanctuary from the outside world and being safe took on a whole new meaning. It was a very hard time for New York. I don't want to belittle that. And from a spiritual place, it was one of the most important times that's ever happened to me. I can go for walks at night. I wasn't going out, so I was cooking at home, getting fresh vegetables delivered on the ferry. There's something about not having cars. You slow down. There's something about being able to hear the ocean, seeing whales when you go out for a quick walk in between meetings. One of the things that I do is I teach at NYU Gender and Sexuality and U.S. Policy.

And I was teaching while I was out there. So I would literally finish my day job. I'd go for a walk. I'd come back, have bikini bottoms on, and I would teach for two hours about queer culture. Right? It just, it doesn't happen like that anymore. I'm always on airplanes. I'm running from one dinner to the next and for there. I got to be still in a place that I love and be self-contained there. Man, I'll never forget it.

[42:23] Ben Rimalower: I was born in 1976. Gay people really weren't kind of invisible in mainstream culture when I was a child. And the way that they became visible was via AIDS, which was such a dark cloud over gay identity as I was coming out and everything. So I don't know if the younger generations feel differently than I do, but I am not comfortable, even in New York City, even in the Village or Chelsea or Hell's Kitchen, if somebody wants to hold my hand or make out with me on the street. Why not? I have a fear that I'm going to get gay bashed or something. It's not necessarily intellectual. If somebody does that, I'm not like, stop, they'll see us. But it makes my little cat hairs come up on the back of my neck and I'm not comfortable with it.

But I think about this, when I'm in line at Starbucks and I see a straight couple just holding hands and she's leaning her head on his shoulder and stuff. And I think that they take it for granted how comfortable they feel, quote-unquote, flaunting their sexuality in this public space. And I think I take it for granted. It's on a subconscious level. I think that there's a whole level of not being safe that I experience in the world always and not on Fire Island. And I think that's part of why when I get on that boat, there's just this level of relaxation, of this tension that's lifted from me and this anxiety and this fear and this wall that it comes down. I mean, it sounds ridiculous because it's not that conscious, but it's like something changes in me chemically when I'm going to Fire Island and for my entire time that I'm there. And it's such a powerful feeling. And I'm so drawn to feeling that way.

[44:14] Joel Kim Booster: The greatest thing about Fire Island sartorially is that it is a platform to be as gay as you possibly can be. You can show up to tea in a caftan, in a dress, in short shorts, in a jockstrap, in a leather harness over a dress. It's a place where you can look as silly and as gay as you want or as sexy as you want without feeling sort of, I don't know, uncomfortable about the level of gayness you're bringing because everyone around you is gay. I'm one of those people who like, I love to dress up for pride, but then as soon as you're away from the pride parade and back on the subway wearing your, you know, your tightest shorts and your harness and whatnot, you suddenly feel that moment of like, oh my God, straight people are looking at me. And there's something really powerful about going to a place where the straight gaze does not exist.

[45:07] Jeanette Cincotta: I think that because of the current political climate, for a while, it seemed to be safe for LGBTQ people to exist in mainstream America as human beings with less fear. We heard from Jeanette before, who spent many years off Island because being confronted with her own sexuality was just too uncomfortable. With what's been going on for the past several years, all the anti-LGBTQ legislation, I think that people are going to seek out, of all ages, refuge. And Cherry Grove started as a space of refuge for gay people. And I think that it's going to go in that direction again and that young people are just going to happen upon it. I don't think we're going to have to do a whole lot of seeking them out. I think they're going to seek us out.

[46:05] Tomic Dash: I founded the Black and Brown Equity Coalition, aka BABEC, where we now host Juneteenth events, among other initiatives for trans folks and people of color. Well, because when you think about the gay getaway destinations, Fire Island, white as hell. Provincetown, even more white than Fire Island. Key West, Palm Springs. What are the options for Black queer people who want to have a gay getaway destination trip? They're all predominantly white places, the most popular ones. So, you know, I feel like somebody has to do the work to make them more accessible and make them more diverse. And I never thought I would be that person when I came out to see DJ Lena that one day with like a six pack of Coronas and a bestie.

[47:07] Matt Rogers: I think the takeaway is Fire Island isn't the perfect place and it's not a monolith. It's still changing and growing, just like the rest of the world. As actor and comedian Matt Rogers says here, it's a choose your own adventure. You can host dinner parties in your house with friends or find a stranger to hook up with on the beach. In the same way that I used to get anxiety about going to summer camp or doing, you know, any type of sleep away activity. I got that way about Fire Island because it just started a lot of anxiety in me. And I think the pressure that gets put on this week being the best vacation week of your life, it's touch and go. It's day to day. Some days you'll be like, oh, my God, I had the best time of my life.

Or some days you're like crying because no one will look at you with my club and you're too fucked up or are just feeling like it's going to take you forever to get home and you're exhausted and your serotonin is gone. I mean, it's a lot. So, you know, something I really want to stress is that this is a make your own experience type situation. It's make your own adventure, choose your own adventure, if you will. I mean, you can wake up early in the morning, get a coffee, take a beautiful walk. And it's also a really great place to meet people in surprising ways. You know, the connections that you make and the little dalliances that happen and the friends that you end up popping around with. I guess what I would want people to know is what my experience is, is you really can create your own Fire Island experience. And I've done that each and every time I've gone.

[48:31] Jess Rothschild: Thanks for listening to Finding Fire Island. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen today so you don't miss any episodes. Check out findingfireisland.com for all the tea and definitely follow me on Instagram at JessXNYC. Next, we're heading over to Cherry Grove, where we'll hear from folks who don't quite fit the brand of the neighboring pines. Cherry Grove would be like the West Village or even like Bushwick. It's very the cubbyhole. See you next time on Finding Fire Island.