While other gay and lesbian enclaves exist around the world, mostly they are suburbs, often on the way to gentrification. With the development of PrEP and greater awareness about sexual safety, the island’s culture of sexual experimentation has largely returned, though concerns remain that digital cruising apps such as Grindr and Scruff put these historical queer sites at risk. It is within this culture that the film Fire Island places its action. Once a place of primitive living conditions, without running water or electricity – a real retreat – the island now features cutting-edge architecture, pumping clubs and a vibrant party scene, from “tea dances” at the Blue Whale to the infamous underwear parties at the Ice Palace. What once represented sexual freedom became largely a site of care, a place to politically mobilise and grieve. The AIDS epidemic saw the devastating loss of many island residents. Dubbed the first “invasion” the event is repeated every 4th of July, though to a much warmer reception from the Pines locals. Grove residents dressed in drag, boarded a water taxi, and stormed the Pines in protest. In 1976, Cherry Grove drag queen Teri Warren was denied service at a Pines restaurant. Tensions stirred, however, between Cherry Grove’s established population and the affluent community of the Pines. Pines DJ Tom Moulton revolutionised the clubbing scene with the invention of the extended mix, first played at the Sandpiper discotheque. The island’s impact extended further throughout the golden years of disco. Warhol examined this atmosphere of open sexuality in his 1965 film My Hustler, and Hockney experimented with photography while staying on the island. Contrary to Auden’s fears, the island offered a site of both sexual and artistic exploration.Īs gay men cruised the Meat Rack, the wild terrain at the edge of Cherry Grove, Andy Warhol and David Hockney sought creative inspiration in the island’s erotic and visual cultures. Gay vacationers began to reside in the Pines, Cherry Grove’s conservative neighbour. In a poem as early as 1948, Auden ridiculed the “bosoms and backsides” that paraded across the beach, the “great” masses who “will be drunk till Fall.” Disco to meat rackĬherry Grove’s queer reputation only grew in the 60s and 70s. This drive to create was occasionally at-odds with the island’s emerging party scene. In 1955, Capote drafted Breakfast at Tiffany’s while staying at Carrington House.
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Its catalogue of queer writers included WH Auden, Patricia Highsmith, Tennessee Williams, Frank O’Hara, and Truman Capote. Far removed from the noise and distractions of the city, the island’s serene and quiet landscape offered a place to read, reflect, and compose.
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In the 1940s and 1950s, Fire Island emerged as a creative and literary space. By the 1940s, the island’s small contingent of gay theatre personalities grew to a vibrant queer majority, and Cherry Grove earned its name as America’s first gay and lesbian town. Amassing large debts in the effort to rebuild, straight locals rented their properties to a younger metropolitan crowd, a crowd who heard whispers of the island’s untamed beauty throughout New York’s downtown gay scene. In the Great Hurricane of 1938, two thirds of the island’s cottages were destroyed. To New York’s gay theatre personalities, the Grove’s relaxed policing suggested freedom and safety, though they remained outnumbered by the island’s wealthy heterosexuals. In the Prohibition years of the 1920s, Fire Island’s remote location attracted a new crowd of thirsty mainlanders. Taking respite from his 1882 American lecture series, Oscar Wilde enjoyed several days at Cherry Grove’s Perkinson’s Hotel. Overlooking the Great South Bay in 1857, Walt Whitman contemplated the “wrecks and wreckers” of Fire Island. Fire Island always attracted history’s brightest queer figures.