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[0:00] Jess Rothschild: This is Finding Fire Island, Season 2, Episode 4, DJs and the Dance Floor. I'm Jess Rothschild.

[0:12] Jess Rothschild: We're tracing how a Pines fundraiser unknowingly became the blueprint for circuit parties around the world. And we go behind the booth with the DJs who turned the island's dance floors into church.

[0:27] Chris Levito: Where the pavilion currently resides, there was a bar that used to be called the Sandpiper, more of a late night venue. And during the day, it was a restaurant. Across decades, Chris Levito, Bob Howard and Mike Balaban have watched the island's dance clubs evolve. Push the chairs back, push the tables back, and that was the dance floor. The ceiling was maybe eight and a half feet tall. If you put your hands above your head, if you were dancing to a disco tune, which was just starting around that time, you could touch the lights. That's how low the ceiling was in the Sandpiper. It was a band box of a disco, meaning a square box with windows along each side that opened. There were wooden shuttered windows that were held open by a wooden stick.

And that allowed the heat to escape because there was no air conditioning. And it was really sweaty in there. But the Sandpiper is a place you should have seen. It was part of our history, our lore. Probably one of the best things that came out of the Sandpiper was a DJ who was once a bar back and waiter, Robbie Leslie. And Robbie Leslie still to this day spins at the Blue Whale, spins at the Ice Palace and travels the world.

[1:41] Jess Rothschild: We met Robbie Leslie last episode. But how did he wind up on Fire Island and become one of the hottest DJs with no experience? Well, it's 1975 and Robbie's waiting tables in Florida. One day, the owner of the Sandpiper walks in and plucks him out of the restaurant with a job offer to wait tables in the Pines.

[2:02] Robbie Leslie: My entire future changed that night. It's absolute serendipity. It really is. And when I think about this was the beginning of my career, I really was just sort of idling. I really had no direction when this fell in my lap. I had no idea what I was getting into. So they picked me up on the Fire Island Pineside and showed me my dormitory room. And the head waiter sort of started, you know, showing me the ropes. And that was my beginning out there. And he was a kid that got the job because one day the DJ didn't show up. And Robbie said to the owner, he says, look, I could do this. I've been watching. Let me can I go play? And the guy was like, yeah, sure. And that was it. Career was launched. And here he is 50 plus years later, still playing the classics, still playing the venues, being the house DJ at Studio 54. He played all the greatest venues and is still playing.

[3:03] Robbie Leslie: There was no live DJ until 1976. And then in '76, we hired Tom Savarese and Larry Sanders, and they would work in rotation, but they were the best DJs going. They were the best around and the talent that I was exposed to. And I mean, I can't possibly dream of a better entree into my career than to listen to these guys, these like top of the field talents, because I'm the, you know, the little kid behind the bar. And what they didn't know, I guess, is they were kind of nurturing me, getting to kind of absorb all their taste and talent and then redefine it myself.

[3:38] Jess Rothschild: So what did the Sandpiper use for music before the DJ? Well, a jukebox. You pick your song and inside a carousel of 45s would spin around, then play the song. Later, DJs started making their own cassette tapes, curating the night song by song. But there was a problem. Pop songs were short, two, maybe three minutes. And every time one ended, the dance floor would empty. Transitions were fumbled and the energy was lost. One day, longer extended mixes started drifting through the island. That was the work of Tom Moulton, a hungry young DJ right here in the Pines.

[4:19] Robbie Leslie: When I started working there, the first music I started hearing were tapes made by Tom Moulton. And it was such a smash hit that in the middle of the night, they called Tom in the city at like two in the morning and said, we want more of these tapes. You've got to make us some more. A 15 minute extended mix meant there was no release. The ecstasy just kept building and building. And that's what people wanted. And so this started, I think, in '74, '75. So by the time I started there, I was listening to Tom Moulton my first year. And these were these nonstop tapes. They were not made with turntables and mixing and a mixing board. They were made by playing a record and then stopping the tape, moving the reels a little bit to pick up the beat and then starting another record.

I mean, I have a lot of the actual tapes from the Sandpiper from that period, and they're fascinating to listen to. He definitely had an ear and he would work for hours to make a three hour tape. He would work for like a week to put it together, nonstop.

[5:18] Jess Rothschild: Today, Tom Moulton is widely credited with inventing the 12 inch extended dance single heard first in the Fire Island Pines. As technology advanced, the DJ's ability to mix live became the draw and DJing became performance. And so the Sandpiper closed on Halloween night, 1979, with one final all night party DJed by Robbie Leslie. It was the end of an era and the beginning of another, because late night in the Pines moved on. And in the '80s, the pavilion became legendary.

[6:04] Chris Levito: When the Sandpiper closed and they reopened the pavilion, it was like a new face in town. And I think just because of the fact that it was a new club, everyone gave it a lot of interest and credence. And because it was more focused on dancing than a restaurant that turned into a disco after midnight, it was a little more serious. The '90s were the peak of New York nightlife, an explosive mix of mega clubs, club kids and a diverse underground scene that thrived before social media flattened everything. You kind of had to be there in the middle of all that chaos and spectacle. A new DJ cut through a woman behind the booth, commanding rooms full of men.

[6:54] Susan Morabito: I came up through a record store in the village, then broke wide open at the pavilion. By 1984, maybe '85, I moved into the gay male culture. And that's because musically we were like-minded individuals. I wasn't a like-minded individual with the majority of lesbians. Lesbians wanted to hear a lot of pop and they liked to make requests. That's okay, but I'm not a pop person and I don't want to take requests.

[7:25] Jess Rothschild: What would they be requesting?

[7:26] Susan Morabito: Well, I started playing in 1982, so probably Madonna and Prince. I'll never forget when I played "Love is a Stranger" for the first time when Annie Lennox was a nobody and it cleared the dance floor. Now, within a month, that changed because she started getting radio play. But my point is playing for the lesbians, if I played something they didn't know, they ran off that dance floor. Gay men don't do that.

[7:56] Jess Rothschild: Why not?

[7:57] Susan Morabito: I don't know why, but it's my show. It's not what they're dictating. I mean, I would go to the lesbian club and at two o'clock in Cleveland, when that club closed, I'd be off to the boys club because they'd be partying till six in the morning. The boys knew how to party. The boys were very serious about their music.

[8:22] Susan Morabito: So when I first moved to New York in 1987, the club that was sought after that everybody wanted to work at was either the Garage or the Saint. I used to go to the Saint. It was 99.9% gay men. Men support those kind of clubs. Men will stay out till noon, three o'clock the next day, dancing. Why is that? Sex. That's a big part of it. Women like to nest. Drugs. That's a big part of it. And I'm not saying women don't like to do drugs, but they're probably not doing K, right? And that was the drug back then, cocaine, MDA.

[9:05] Jess Rothschild: How much of it is also economical?

[9:05] Susan Morabito: I think that's a little bit of it. I think sex is a huge part of it. Nearly everyone I spoke to called the Saint the greatest nightclub ever, period. It opened in 1980 in the East Village, and it became a feeder for the Pines in DJs and clientele. So you dance all winter at the Saint and all summer at the beach. You know, you're talking about one of two of the greatest clubs in existence ever. By the time the Saint opened in New York City and the DJ roster was permanent there, which would be Alan Dodd and Howard Merritt and Jim Burgess, the pavilion started importing those DJs. And because the Saint was such a spectacular success right from the get-go, having the DJs in the Pines was the draw itself. The Saint was a lot slower in the summer because everybody was out on Fire Island. Right back then, all those Saint boys were out on Fire Island.

[10:03] Chris Levito: Playing the pavilion back then was a springboard to getting into the Saint and the clubs in New York. They were all intertwined. So I was blown away. Everything about the club was absolutely flawless. The lighting, the sound system, the flow, it was a circle. You couldn't smoke on the dance floor. You couldn't drink on the dance floor. The dance floor was for dancing. The sex was for upstairs in the balcony. The drinking was for downstairs. That's the way a club should be. It all should have separate purposes because flow is everything. I was beyond impressed at how well done this club was.

[10:42] Susan Morabito: The circular dance floor was topped by a planetarium dome. In addition to hiding the speakers, the dome served as a spectacular palette for the lighting effects. The Hayden Planetarium has the star machine. What the star machine did was it would project stars on the dome. OK, they had all this fabulous lighting, but at one point the star machine would come out and it would project stars on the dome and it would spin around and you would really feel like you were outside underneath the stars.

[11:19] Billy Porter: I'm a club kid. I will still go to the club. I remember the first DJs I saw after arriving in New York. Junior Vasquez is the one that comes, that seared. I mean, CNC, Cleveless and Colt, when I got here were still alive and they were DJing a bit still, even though they were record producers. But Junior was the biggest one. You know, if Madonna calls when he fell out with Madonna, I'm not here. I'm not here. She got mad at her. But, you know, but Junior was the is the one that is in my memory at the forefront the most.

[12:04] Billy Porter: Let's put it this way. Every DJ who wanted to play the major gay clubs from the world to the studio, all of those places that no longer exist, John would pay them nickels based on what they got paid in the city. So the pavilion was on their resume. He didn't pay Benitez or those guys. They were getting back then probably fifteen hundred dollars, two thousand dollars to play their venues in the city. They came out, they got four hundred dollars and they begged to play. They begged to play. They needed to be there. They needed to address that audience. And you got to realize these DJs played over 12 hours. They play from 11 o'clock at night, sometimes till three o'clock the next day. So that's more than 12 hours.

That was the norm. You didn't have two, three, four or five DJs playing in that span. So these DJs had the capability of taking you on a journey. They knew drama. They knew how to conduct. They knew how to curate. You came to New York, you know, to do this kind of thing. If you wanted to be a gay man, this is where you found community. This is where you found the experiences that you dreamed existed but didn't know if they were real.

[13:16] Varun Rampersad: Through my gym, I began to hear about people going to the black party or the white party, which were held at Roseland Ballroom. And I got curious about it. And we spent from like 11 o'clock till two in the afternoon dancing the morning away. And what enabled us to do that was not the drugs. I am a drug-free person. I always have been. But it was the energy brought on by the music of DJs like Michael Fearman, Susan Morabito, Robbie Leslie. Those are the DJs who took us forward. They basically choreographed a show with lights and props. And they took you on a journey. And that journey was something that was just you felt transported. And you could go for hours. And back then, we can do what is called the downtrip.

[14:01] Varun Rampersad: What's that? Well, after four o'clock in the morning, you kind of start bringing the music down a little bit slowly. And it's a little sexier, a little more intimate. And then, you know, back then in the '90s, we would on a holiday weekend, sometimes play till 10 in the morning. With those last two hours, we would really bring it down. 102 beats per minute. That might not mean anything to anybody, but that was huge for me. B-52s, Deep Sleep, Ray Vista, Don't Let Go, Rose Lawrence, American Love, much more emotional music. It was a specific crowd. But to me, that's the best part of the evening. It's very old school. I think this generation now out of

[14:55] Lina Bradford: In those days, the art of the DJ meant studying tempos and keys and figuring out what could blend seamlessly together. And actually finding the records, that took obsession. DJs hunted rare tracks that gave their sets personality and created a signature sound. Cause a great DJ set, whether in the Pines or a club in the city, had an arc, slowly lifting the dance floor higher and higher.

[15:44] Lina Bradford: I think that that's something that all DJs who were coming up came from that school. It's like, you make it your home. You take them to your temple. You take them to your church. And also, back in the day, performers wanted to outperform other performers. Like, bitch, listen to this track and look at how I'm going to turn this out. You know what I mean? Now it's like so homogenized. Everybody's doing the same thing. Everybody looks the same. But back then, you really wanted to turn your peers out. Like, look, look what I found.

[16:16] Lina Bradford: I remember it was about two o'clock in the afternoon. We were beat. I mean, our feet weren't moving. But my friend actually had baby powder, which he sprayed on the floor. And baby powder, when you put it on a dance floor, enables you to glide. You can dance for hours gliding. It just takes away the friction. And the group of us just kept dancing to that. And our arms went around each other. And it was Robbie Leslie spinning. And Guy lowered the lighting fixture over us under the ball. And we just felt this emotional lift. Our feet got lighter. We didn't levitate, but we felt we were levitating. And this was like 20 years ago. It stays with me to this day. My friends who were there, we still talk about it.

[17:04] Lina Bradford: Now, every generation of the Pines has its DJs. Robbie Leslie, Susan Morabito, but Lina Bradford, she casts a spell. The crowd gathers around her like a congregation, completely locked in. By the end, it feels less like a party and more like collective worship at the altar.

[17:24] Unknown speaker: Lena definitely created a, God, I want to be careful about this wording. I don't want to say a cult following. You and I were like the first two ladies out there. I mean, she was definitely the first before me, you know what I mean? But back in the day, there were very few female DJs. Susan was breaking down fucking walls. And this is one of the reasons why I'm here as well. She's everything. I love her, but she's right. It did become very cultish. Became a very sexual love fest of music and debauchery of good times.

[17:59] Unknown speaker: And I honestly would then come back into my body afterwards because when I'm spinning, I don't know what the fuck is going on. All I know is that my witchcraft is just taking over and putting a spell over these children. And I'm somewhere else. I'm literally levitating on another frequency. And only do I ever know is when I see photos and videos, but still that doesn't even really capture it, but it gives me an idea. So then to see it. And then afterwards, after I'm spinning, I'm like, what happened? It was like a hexercism, you know?

[18:27] Unknown speaker: And I hear all the time, people just feel free and they let go. And they're like, I feel like I literally got into a time machine and I'm somewhere else. But Lena also makes you feel like a million bucks. When you walk in, she showers everybody with love. And that's part of what Lena's all about. Pays really close attention to everybody who walks in that place and really makes you feel special.

[18:54] Lina Bradford: I make certain that everyone in that room knows each other. For me, that is the most important thing. And also people like to be close to me when I'm spinning. I never forget a face. I will remember a face and energy. And they come for that sermon of good love and light. I'm a performer before the end of the day, honey. So if I'm not getting off and feeling my music, you're not going to be. And if I'm in that DJ booth carrying the fuck on throwing it down, bitch, you know you are too.

[19:28] Unknown speaker: If you ask any longtime Pines person what they miss most, the answer is always the original pavilion. The one we know today is actually the third version, rebuilt after fires. And while Pines people love to debate everything, on this they're united. The first pavilion got it right. The secret of that pavilion versus the pavilion we have today was that there was a catwalk around the interior of the dance floor. So all the guys could cruise so they could look down on the crowd, pick out the guy that they thought was hot and flirt with or go down and dance with. It was magical.

[20:04] Unknown speaker: And it had little crevices and corners and stuff. You could weave in and out of the dance floor as a bar once again off the fucking dance floor. You should never have a bar on a dance floor. It gets in the way. A club has to please different types of people. It has to please the dancer. It has to please the drinker. It has to please the boy who wants to cruise. It has to please the person who goes out by themselves. Pavilion one provided that.

[20:49] Unknown speaker: The timing was very, very different. Nobody went out until two o'clock in the morning. I mean, dinner was late. People came out from the beat from the city. You got here eight, nine, 10 o'clock. You ate 11 o'clock. You went out at midnight. Nobody went out before midnight. And the people who really like to go out dancing would take a nap and then go out at 2 a.m. That's when the serious people showed up. It was my favorite place to work. The island was my favorite place to be. And I would give up gigs all throughout the country because I wanted to stay and work at the pavilion. Nothing like playing for a New York crowd.

[21:23] Bob Howard: There's been some amazing parties here back in the 70s, and they were given just for the sake of giving a party, Bob Howard. And I think probably the best example of that was a party that ironically called itself just a party. And it had absolutely every name that you could think of from New York, including just during the Studio 54 era, including Steve Rubell himself. Calvin was here, of course, and Disco Sally, who was never seen outside of Studio 54, but she was seen here in the pines.

[22:01] Bob Howard: And that was maybe 2000 men at a home called Utopia. That was the biggest home in the pines at the time. Unlike the costume and house parties that came before it, Beach 79 had a greater purpose. In a place notorious for disastrous fires, the volunteer fire department needed to come up with $50,000 for a new fire truck.

[22:22] Bob Howard: And the entire community came together, and it was probably the time that any animosity that ever existed among the original straight settlers here and the gay people who moved in was put aside to do this one thing that we needed because the botel had burned down and we didn't have a fire department. And that is what brought the community together. We raised the $50,000, we bought the pumper, and we have one of the great volunteer fire departments anywhere.

[22:52] Ron Martin: By the time 1978 came along, Jimmy was established enough with the straight people in the fire department that when they were talking about the need to raise money or to come up with the money to buy a new fire truck, he just threw out the idea. Jimmy Meade was Ron's housemate and best friend. He said, you know, because we were always giving parties back at our house and we knew other our friends who did the same thing.

[23:20] Ron Martin: And it was he said, well, let's just have a big party and we can raise the money. He said, I'll organize all of our friends who do it all that we'll we'll make it happen. The vision was clear. We're going to throw the biggest party ever on this island. It's going to be all night next July 1979 on the beach.

[23:41] Ron Martin: They would pull off an event that would be called the party of the decade. People always refer to it as Beach 79 and the 79 is useful, I guess, in that it dates it. But it was clearly I mean, the decision was made when Jimmy Meade asked me what the theme should be, I said immediately there should not be a theme other than beach because it was going to be on the beach and that was enough of a theme.

[24:09] Ron Martin: Well, the party itself was unique and it was probably two thousand people and it was like a mirage. The people who put it together were designers, architects, window dressers from Saks Fifth Avenue and the people who were at the top of each one of those professions. I remember when Jimmy first said, you know, we're going to do this. And I said, you know, you have to run electricity and power to the beach.

[24:30] Ron Martin: And I said, it's not like you can't just run an extension cord from somebody's house. You know, you're talking about a major event. I don't think we fully understood the impact it would have on the community. It just seemed like it was a good thing to help the fire department buy a new fire truck.

[24:50] Ron Martin: The party would change the politics and culture of the Pines forever. It created a community and a volunteer fire department that would have never seemed possible 20 years earlier, back when the straights and gays were clashing over whether the Pines should be a family community. Suddenly, the brightest gay minds in the Pines, Ron Martin, Scott Bromley and their creative team were schlepping out to Long Island in the dead of winter to review party plans with the still mostly hetero fire department.

[25:21] Ron Martin: The straights were contractors and builders. They did their job and the gays did theirs, making the magic. One of the designers and a good friend of ours lived in a loft on Lower Broadway in Soho at a time where not many people were living in lofts except artists. And so we hosted the fire department crowd on Saturday night at his loft, which for them was like something that was beyond anything they had ever experienced to come into Manhattan and go to a loft party in early 1979 down in Soho.

[25:59] Ron Martin: There was a culture clash for sure, but in the course of those having those meetings working together, we started realizing that they were having fun with us and we were appreciating them in a new kind of way. The visual statement would be the setting itself, the beach, dunes, ocean, sky and moon.

[26:22] Ron Martin: The basic plan involved creating the illusion of tented pavilions built around 30 foot high poles sunk five feet into the sand. Light towers would surround a central 3000 square foot dance floor with an elevated stage and DJ booth. At the height of the party, there was also entertainment. There was a young girl, I think she was 19 at the time named Fran Jolie, and it launched her career as a singer.

[26:48] Ron Martin: The wild card really was was Fran Jolie because she was only 16 years old and nobody knew who she was. And so she actually made her debut at that party and with the song that kind of blew up and became one of the all-time classics. It was called Come to Me, I can sing it for you. I can dance to it, but I can't sing.

[27:10] Ron Martin: When I say career, she had one song hit that she's lived off of for the rest of her life. Pretty amazing actually. And then we had Bonnie Pointer who ended up closing the party. She had left the Pointer sisters at that point and had gone solo. So she was big at the moment.

[27:29] Ron Martin: More than anything, we wanted Donna Summer to close the party at sunrise. She was the queen of disco and had three number one records that summer. And we had the connections with Casablanca Records too. We thought we could get her there and we thought we could bring her by helicopter from Atlantic City and have her land on the beach and that would have been the finale of all finales.

[27:54] Ron Martin: But it didn't work out because she had some kind of commitment. And strangely enough, we were personal friends with some of the guys in the village people and they were huge, but we didn't take them seriously because they were kind of like a campy joke, but they were huge.

[28:13] Ron Martin: And in retrospect, we should have had them. Two of the guys, I mean, Randy and Glenn, hung out at my house that weekend as we were preparing for the event. The anticipation was palpable. One week before the party, Page Six reported, the Pines probably has more talented residents per square foot than any other community in the world.

[28:36] Ron Martin: They've marshaled that talent for an event that will be a landmark fundraiser and a party that will be talked about for years. Well, after Beat 79, there was this thing that had happened, there was this amazing thing that had happened. Suddenly, we were in the New York Times. I mean, you know, The Flat Island had never been publicized before.

[29:01] Ron Martin: It was the beginning of the end of being a very, very, very private place. In some respects, that's good. But some respects, it was very bad, too. Once you get discovered, you can't get undiscovered again.

[29:15] Unknown speaker: After the astounding success of Beach 79, circuit parties took off around the globe. These are essentially gay raves, and their origins can be traced back to Beach 79. As AIDS tore through the community, these parties became benefits. In 1983, the Morning Party was started as a fundraiser for gay men's health crisis. And today, that lineage continues with the Pines Party. It's the pinnacle of every season and raises money for the Stone.

[29:51] Guy Smith: So, Fire Island has been in a heyday for every generation, non-stop. But most people hearken back to whenever it was that they first came out to the island. 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. Guy Smith is a master of lighting and technical direction. Guy has been the Pines Party producer since 2013. Now, what I think is interesting, though, is that for the last three or four years, Fire Island has really been in a renaissance that I think is beyond maybe even the 70s. He manages the logistics required to create a nightclub on the ocean. Then scrambling when a storm threatens to erase the beach right before 3,000 people arrive. It is an island with no roads, completely made out of sand with one freight company that brings everything to it through one dock that only can accommodate a 26-foot truck.

And it's also run by monopolies out there. Whatever people charge you to do a service as a vendor or a contractor is what you have to pay. It is probably, for what it is, the most expensive event that you could possibly throw. The Pines Party is largely volunteer run, which means about half the people who sign up actually show up and even more disappear as the night goes on. It's hot. It is really, really hot. And we were outside on a beach. We are somewhere in between the height of summer and hurricane season. And the beach can become suddenly 30 percent narrower after you've already built the dance floor with one little storm. And it's you know, there's a lot of electronics out there. A lot of sensitive electronics can't get wet. So, yeah, it's really it is really something. The Pines Party is, at its core, a community party. Sure, people fly in from Los Angeles to London, but it's really for Pines people and New Yorkers.

[32:01] Guy Smith: Now, this year, I discovered that Randy Wojciech, who was one of the executives at GMHC, had produced the morning party and he was sick. And he knew that he wasn't going to be there for the next morning party. So in 1993, I think it was, he wrote a Bible how to produce the morning party step by step with all of the names and all the politics. Things like if you meet someone who wants to volunteer, assess their personality. If they are this kind of person, they belong in this department. You should put them in ticketing. You should put them in tech. Here are the people who provide, you know, the freight. And here's how to talk to this person. And here's how to talk to that person. And here's how to put the two of them against each other so you can get a free boat. Like brilliantly, brilliantly written, 65 pages, single space typed with charts.

[33:01] Guy Smith: What are the logistics specifically? Getting things painted out there. You have to lay them out somewhere to paint them. Getting all the carpentry done. There's no carpentry shop on Fire Island. So, you know, you have to just find space like on the deck of Whitehall or you have to build a tent and then you have to put a generator out there. Because not only is it really difficult to find a house that will supply you with water and power for the beach. But you have to run a 300 foot extension cord and then somebody will charge you $1,200 to plug it in. How do you solve the problem of no electricity on the beach? We bring out a 13,000 pound generator. And because the beach is so sandy, we get things called skid steers, which are basically like small tractors with tank treads on them.

Which I learned how to drive and some of my employees have learned how to operate as well. And it's got a forklift on it. And it's the only thing that can drag a 1300 pound trailer with a generator on it out to what the location needs to be on the beach. We have to be really, really careful who drives them because it's dangerous. And if one of them breaks down, we are really behind.

[34:12] Guy Smith: Do you enjoy the party at all? Oh, enjoy it. I mean, I'm somebody who's kind of awkward at parties if I'm not producing them. So I actually enjoy the role of providing the experience for other people. The Pines Party is absolute chaos. It is a nuclear reactor at the very edge of full meltdown the entire time. And I'm just sitting there trying to crank the carbon rods and just enough because I can't control it.

[34:47] Guy Smith: What can't you control aside from weather? Listen, there's thirty five hundred people on the beach and there are people who have kind of outlier personalities and people who get too high. We have a medical team that really, really takes good care of people. But sometimes people just get crazy. And luckily, I have a degree in psychology and I have to sit them down. And sometimes they are people who are my employees and they have like a total meltdown, an anxiety attack. They're triggered by some trauma. They have like a sexual encounter with somebody else. And it's like five minutes before door. And they're like, I can't manage this right now. And they're in a position that's important. I need to talk to you.

I'm like, OK, in five minutes, we are going to resolve this thing because your problems are really important. But the experience of the thirty five hundred people that are about to come through the gate are more important. So we're just going to try to figure out how to kind of like make you realize that everything is fine and that you are OK. And I chose you because I trust you and because I know that you're really skilled at this. And tomorrow or the next day, we will sit down in my H.R. office out in the back deck and we will talk about whatever this is. But right now, I need you to get to work. It's a lot of that.

[36:13] Guy Smith: What else have you had to deal with? Let's see this year. One of my volunteers who I house in one of the houses decided to throw a sex party on the Thursday night before the party for his birthday. He did not inform me that he was using my staff house that I had rented for this purpose. He did not invite me to this party, but he invited pretty much the rest of the staff. And there was my whole staff that was supposed to be at work at 10 o'clock in the morning. It's now one thirty in the morning and they're all like naked and hilt deep in somebody else. And I walked in with my assistant. It's like my assistant says it was like, you know, the Deadwood Saloon, like suddenly like everyone froze.

It was like tumbleweeds. And I was like, can I speak to whoever's in charge? And I had a very calm, if tense conversation with this person basically said, I don't know where you got the unmitigated gall to think that you could throw a sex party in my house that I rented for my staff. But if everyone that's here is not gone and everyone that is supposed to be here is not in bed. When I come back in 30 minutes, I can't be held responsible for what I do to you. Do you understand? And he did.

[37:48] Guy Smith: Where are you storing the sound systems and generators year to year, like the staging scaffolding? That's a secret. We have places on Fire Island where we squirrel things away. I have storage units, various places. It's all pretty scrappy. Things are stored in gate houses on Fire Island. Things are stored in closets. Everything has a place. And there's probably two or three people that know. No, sorry. I'm the only person that knows where everything is. And I probably should write that down.

[38:29] Guy Smith: If the Pines party is the most expensive event you could throw on the island, I believe we've also found the polar opposite. 5HTP is also a beef party, but stripped down, DIY and completely free. It's named after the supplement that boosts serotonin in the brain. The party was founded by Joey with the Mustache, a rising DJ who in just a few years has become a real visionary in the Pines. Joey's mission is clear. Immerse yourself in the natural surroundings and leave no trace behind. I think one of the great mysteries about Fire Island is where and how stuff happens. And honestly, I kind of like it that way. A lot of people think that I have some mysterious cord that goes to some house and like some house is powering it or I have like a generator that's on the corner. Well, I don't do that. I will accredit that to people like Joey with the Mustache who has become a Fire Island institution and like through his service to the island.

[39:34] Cody Rigsby: Peloton star and dancer Cody Rigsby. I think that comes from his probably burner culture of going to Burning Man. 5HTP does not happen without the 50 to 80 people who are involved in picking up a piece of trash. So it's like you're setting up with like makeshift stuff and making this great experience. But I think he's also very adamant about picking up the trash, leaving it like we found it. So, you know, I think that just comes from that burner culture of having to do that while they're in the middle of the desert and implementing that into the Pines.

[40:09] Grant Rudder: Grant Rudder and Julio Torres are regulars at 5HTP. With 5HTP and meat rack parties, those are always special and those are something like you have to do. It feels so specific to Fire Island Pines. I mean, for starters, it's really beautiful to look at. The night, the nature, the lights. It's very enchanting to be in. I like that it's open. I like that anyone can walk up to it. I think the free component is very important.

[40:45] Julio Torres: So what's the difference between Joey's 5HTP and the far more elusive parties in the meat rack? They have like parties in the middle of the meat rack and it feels very like Lost Boys, Lord of the Flies. I think it's probably like a little bit illegal, but it's fun and like you're getting away with something. It's also like no man's land out there because there's no houses, so you're not disrupting anybody. Meat rack parties are something that have been happening kind of mysteriously in Fire Island for a very long time. In fact, they're so mysterious, I'm kind of nervous to talk about podcasts, but it is part of our history.

[41:11] Grant Rudder: Do you view it as remembering the generations that came before us? I have never thought about it that way before. It is so interesting to think about how we celebrate these people. I always think of them living and dancing. The parties in the meat rack are more sex positive and sex friendly. You see cell phones flashing in the dunes and I'm like, I'm not going all the way over there. But a lot of people do and they'll disappear and they'll come back. Where on the beach with 5HTP, it's just more of a community party, but it's a little more sex light. And because it engages with the terrain, it does feel like, oh, this is very specific to here.

[41:56] Julio Torres: People sign up through volunteer shifts through the website, which Joey then coordinates before the sun goes down. By 9 p.m., they've built a mini electrical grid and set up the signature lighting structure. So we have been very clear that 5HTP is a leave no trace gathering. So whatever we take to the beach, we take off of the beach. And we also spend a lot of time at the end of each 5HTP making sure that the beach is clean. So I'm literally walking around with my flashlight and the last person on the beach making sure that the beach is clear, that we found it.

[42:29] Joey with the Mustache: Joey made two things clear. One, the meat rack parties are not organized by him. And two, he considers 5HTP to actually be a form of activism. We are absolutely, under Brookhaven law, legally allowed to be doing 5HTP because it is a protest, technically.

[42:50] Guy Smith: What is it a protest for? Our rights and freedoms to express ourselves and be ourselves. I mean, in 2025, when we are faced with challenges to our existence, challenges to our rights and freedoms, us celebrating and being ourselves is, in fact, a protest. A full dance floor with queer music by queer people is a protest. Joey's vision taps into something deeply Pines. The idea that anyone can move from observer to participant to creator. Anyone's welcome to help build the experience itself. That's the Fire Island Pines.

[43:30] Joey with the Mustache: I remember my first time to Fire Island. I came by myself on a weekday with a book, sat on the ferry, went to the beach alone, and then left on the last ferry because I was too nervous to ask anybody if I could spend the night on their couch. So by the time you get to Fire Island, trying to navigate these established social circles can also be intimidating. And what I love about what we've built through 5HTP is that 5HTP has become this extremely easy way to get involved. You do not have to come with a dollar. You do not have to come with anything but a smile and a willingness to be a part of the magic.

[44:23] Jess Rothschild: Finding Fire Island is created, executive produced, and narrated by Jess Rothschild. Co-produced with the Pines Historical Society. Sound design by Caitlin White. Video editing by Evelyn Dar. Special thanks to the Pines Foundation and Sage USA.