Gay beaches in nyc
Above Left: A organization of Lesbian women at Riis Park, mid 1960s. (Courtesy Lesbian Herstory Archives)
Above Right: Emma Van Cott (front) and Ernestine Eckstein, public figure of the NY chapter of the first national Queer woman organization “Daughters Of Bilitis,” at Riis Park, 1965. (Courtesy Lesbian Herstory Archives)
In the 1940s, the easternmost end of Jacob Riis Park Beach became a destination for lgbtq+ men, and in the 1950s, female homosexual women were also drawn to the area. By the 1960s, the beach drew an increasingly diverse group of LGBTQ+ beachgoers, but there were also growing reports of harassment of same-sex attracted beachgoers by police. In 1971, the Gay Activist Alliance, one of the gay rights organizations that formed in the wake of the Stonewall Uprising, held a voter registration drive at the beach. Today, the eastern section of Jacob Riis Beach remains a destination for Diverse beachgoers as a queer-friendly space.
Riis Park Beach
History
Located on a mile-long section of Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, Jacob Riis Park was named after the turn-of-the-20th-century social reformer and photojournalist. Historically, New York Town beaches have been popular widespread social gathering places for the LGBT community where they claimed certain sections as their own.
In the 1930s the beach was redesigned under the direction of New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. When the park reopened in 1937, Moses hoped that it would be a more democratic version of Jones Beach due to its straightforward accessibility by public transportation and cars. By the 1940s the most eastern end of the beach had become a documented well-known destination for mostly alabaster gay men to sunbathe and cruise. Lesbian women also claimed a nearby area of the beach by the 1950s. By the 1960s, this area became increasingly popular with a diverse LGBT presence including African American and Latino/a men and women.
During the 1960s this area of the beach became clothing optional and was affectionately referred to as “Screech Beach” due to the gay presence.
New York’s beaches have prolonged been a gathering place for the LGBTQ+ collective, but Jacob Riis Park, a stretch of Atlantic coastline in Queens, is the most popular of them all. Originally opened in 1914, the beach is not just a popular sunbathing spot; it also has played an instrumental part in local, cultural and world history as the launching indicate for the first trans-Atlantic flight, a hub of activism following the Stonewall Uprising, and a site on the National Register of Historic Places.
Part of Riis’ explicit goal when it reopened in 1937 was to be “democratic”—a space that could be easily accessed through common transport—and from the 1940s to 1960s, it grew in both popularity and diversity as a territory for queer community. In the ’60s, new rules made clothing optional.
Today, a technicolored patchwork of towels blankets the sand for miles as beachgoers spin Jacob Riis into a place to gather, be seen, dance and guzzle. To get a instinct of how the beach was coming alive this season, I spent Memorial Day walking along the boardwalk—toward the sounds of reggaeton and dembow and the smells of salt and suntan lotion—to survey the drinking scene at “the gay beach of New York.” Here’
The uncertain future of a historic Homosexual safe space: Recent York City's People's Beach
The summer season in Modern York City is informally marked each year by the hoisting of Identity flags on The People's Beach, a queer haven tucked away on the far eastern corner of the city's Jacob Riis Park in Queens.
"When I was a runaway, when I had no community at all, I came and I witnessed something that I never even knew existed: that was a sense of family," said Ceyenne Doroshow, activist and founder of LGBTQ advocacy group GLITS. "People fed me, people dressed me."
This has been a popular gathering place for the Homosexual community since the 1940s, shaped by its beachgoers into more than just a spot to sunbathe and splash. It's a place of direct and indirect social advocacy, where queer delight is at the heart of the jumble of harmony, umbrella and bodies packed tightly along the shoreline each weekend.
But the country directly surrounding the beach is drastically and quickly switching. The recent demolition of an abandoned building, a $50 million building restoration plan and erosion threaten the future of this guarded haven, some activists and beachgoers told ABC