54 THE QUEENS COURIER • SUMMER FUN • MAY 25, 2017 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM summer fun A beginner’s guide to summer on Fire Island BY TIMOTHY BOLGER Long Island Press Special to The Courier With the return of beach season, so too fl ock the crowds to Fire Island, the barrier island simultaneously known as a popular tourist destination and a hidden gem full of natural wonders. But Fire Island is much more than that dichotomy allows. It’s home to Robert Moses State Park on the west end, Smith Point County Park on the east end and a national park featuring an eight-mile wilderness preserve. And in the middle, accessible by ferry only, are 17 car-free communities—most of which are strictly residential with a few having downtowns off ering shops and nightlife. “It’s a special place unlike any other place certainly within an hour and a half of New York City,” Suzy Goldhirsch, president of the Fire Island Association (FIA), previously told the Long Island Press. “It’s a place where time has stood still to a certain extent because there are no cars and because you still have a small town ambiance where you walk or ride a bicycle and you see people and you stop on the corner and you talk to each other.” Th e 32-mile-long, quarter-mile wide strip of sand—the longest of four barrier islands that protect the South Shore of Long Island from the Atlantic Ocean— has a history rich with tales of colonial era pirates, myriad shipwrecks and Prohibition-era rum-running. It has about 4,000 homes and its yearround population of about 400 residents swells to an estimated 20,000 during summer months—plus daytrippers. Without cars, the primary modes of transportation include bicycles, private boats, water taxi, golf carts and wagons. With Memorial Day weekend marking the unoffi cial start of summer, what follows is the fi rst of a two-part guide to Fire Island for fi rst-time visitors and novices that want to get to know the place better. (See the second part in next month’s Summer Fun guide) OCEAN BEACH Ocean Beach is the island’s most populous village and is home to its biggest downtown, making it the unoffi cial capital of Fire Island that’s also among the area’s most popular destinations for visitors. Aside from its lifeguarded oceanfront, bayside marina and family friendly small town charm, the village is additionally home to about a dozen restaurants and bars with at least as many boutiques and gift shops—all of which welcome bare sandy feet. “Fun in the sun” is scrawled across the village’s antique street lamp banners, although Ocean Beach’s many rules also made it known as “Th e Land of No.” Among the strict ordinances earning visitors summonses from village police are rules against eating on the beach, bicycling at restricted times and eating on streets outside of the downtown strip. Like its confl icting descriptions, the village has diff erent vibes depending upon the time. On summer days, children hawk painted seashells from red Radio Flyer wagons on street corners and bands play free concerts on the dock. Come sundown on summer weekends, the nightlife crowd packs the streets thirsty for dancing and Rocket Fuels—Bacardi 151-infused piña coladas invented in Ocean Beach. Th ere are no statistics for just how many visitors this village gets, but the largest ferry company serving the island has said that the majority of its riders go to and from Ocean Beach. Yet just like everywhere else on Fire Island, this quarter mile-long village turns into a virtual ghost town on what the locals call Tumbleweed Tuesday, a.k.a. the day aft er Labor Day. CHERRY GROVE & FIRE ISLAND PINES About four miles east of Ocean Beach are these two LGBT-centric communities neighboring one another, locally known as Th e Pines and Th e Grove, which together form a gay mecca of sorts. Arguably the oldest community on Fire Island, Cherry Grove is credited as being the fi rst community in America where gays and lesbians could be open about their sexuality, long before the modern gay rights movement helped make it more socially acceptable. Fire Island Pines came later but shares in the history. Solidifying its place in history, the Cherry Grove Community House & Th eater was recognized in 2013 as a National Historic Landmark. But much like the rest of Fire Island, life in Th e Pines and Th e Grove is more focused on relaxation than the past. Sometimes the history and party atmosphere intertwine, like in the annual Invasion of Th e Pines, when scores of men in drag fl ock to Fire Island Pines, emulating the protest that ensued aft er a bar in the area refused to serve a Grove resident in drag in the 1970s, when Th e Pines was more conservative. While both communities only have boardwalks as sidewalks, Th e Grove is only about a half-mile-long while Th e Pines stretches nearly a full mile. Th e Pines is also home to the majority of the private pools on the island. Besides its hopping nightlife at Cherry’s, Th e Ice Palace and elsewhere, Th e Grove is home to one of only two oceanfront restaurants on Fire Island— Th e Sandcastle at Th e Ocean. Revelers in Th e Pines bounce between Sip ‘N Twirl, the Blue Whale and the Pavilion.
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