Gay beaches nyc

From left: Emilio Vides-Curnen, Gobi-Kla Vonan, Jonathan Chay, Brandon Leo Beasley, Rob Dozier, Jay-Michael Wilson, and Justin Duckworth,Brooklyn. Photo: Wayne Lawrence

I’d lost my phone. To be more specific, I drank too much tequila, went to a party I didn’t like, drank more tequila, and, somewhere between an Uber and the front steps of my apartment, lost my new iPhone. The next morning, hung-over and depressed, I craft my way to Jacob Riis beach with one of my first lgbtq+ friends in New York, a bag of Ivory Claws in hand, hoping it would somehow produce everything better.

Riis is the city’s most democratically lgbtq+ beach, named in 1914 after the muckraking reporter (then recently deceased) who campaigned (using language that admittedly can seem a bit questionable today) to improve the lives of the city’s immigrant communities. It’s not as simple to get to by subway as, say, Coney Island or even the beaches at the other end of the Rockaways. Instead, you need to take

New York’s beaches own long been a gathering place for the LGBTQ+ society, but Jacob Riis Park, a stretch of Atlantic coastline in Queens, is the most famous 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 show for the first trans-Atlantic flight, a hub of protest following the Stonewall Uprising, and a site on the National Register of Historic Places.

Part of Riis’ explicit aim when it reopened in 1937 was to be “democratic”—a space that could be easily accessed through public transport—and from the 1940s to 1960s, it grew in both popularity and diversity as a territory for queer collective. In the ’60s, new rules made clothing optional.

Today, a technicolored patchwork of towels blankets the sand for miles as beachgoers rotate Jacob Riis into a place to gather, be seen, dance and beverage. To get a sense 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 same-sex attracted beach of Recent York.” Here’

Above Left: A community of Lesbian women at Riis Park, mid 1960s. (Courtesy Lesbian Herstory Archives)

Above Right: Emma Van Cott (front) and Ernestine Eckstein, chief of the NY chapter of the first national Female homosexual 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 queer men, and in the 1950s, queer woman 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 lgbtq+ 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 Homosexual 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 Urban area beaches have been popular common 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 simple 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 ivory 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.