New york gay beach
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, Brand-new York City beaches contain been popular public 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 easy accessibility by public transportation and cars. By the 1940s the most eastern end of the beach had develop a documented well-known destination for mostly white queer 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 contain long been a gathering place for the LGBTQ+ society, but Jacob Riis Park, a stretch of Atlantic coastline in Queens, is the most accepted 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 protest following the Stonewall Uprising, and a site on the National Register of Historic Places.
Part of Riis’ explicit purpose 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 vacuum for queer people. 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 cocktail. 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 male lover beach of Novel York.” Here’
Pelham Bay Park & Orchard Beach
History
Orchard Beach, located in Pelham Bay Park, is the only public beach in the Bronx and is sometimes called “the Bronx Riviera.” The beach and the park include long served as a well-liked recreational, meeting, and cruising place for the LGBT community, particularly for people of color.
There are several accounts of gay Puerto Rican men talking about the importance of Orchard Beach as a safe haven when they otherwise did not feel cozy being openly gay in widespread or when with their families. Bronx resident Ed García Conde on his website Welcome 2 The Bronx mentions that Hunter Island, a rocky section on the northern end of Orchard Beach, was typically a gathering place for sex. (The island itself had been separate from the beach until the 1930s, when then-NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses had them connected via infill.)
During the summer months of the 1990s, organizations such as Bronx Lesbians United in Sisterhood (BLUeS) and Gay Men of the Bronx (GMoB) hosted outdoor gatherings at Orchard Beach and Pelham Bay Park. Affirming the significance of
The uncertain future of a historic Queer safe space: Fresh York City's People's Beach
The summer season in Recent York City is informally marked each year by the hoisting of Identity festival 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 Queer community since the 1940s, shaped by its beachgoers into more than just a spot to sunbathe and snorkel. It's a place of direct and indirect social protest, where queer bliss is at the heart of the jumble of tune, umbrella and bodies packed tightly along the shoreline each weekend.
But the country directly surrounding the beach is drastically and quickly transforming. The recent demolition of an abandoned building, a $50 million building restoration plan and erosion threaten the future of this harmless haven, some activists and beachgoers told ABC