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(ethereal ambient music)

- [Man] I always dreamed about Cherry Grove.

It was a gay Shangri-La.

- [Man] We arrived at the dock and I looked down

and I saw all of these beautiful men in speedos

and high heels and I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

- [Man] Cherry Grove was always the best kept secret

in the whole gay world for decades and decades.

- The first time I came to Cherry Grove

was the summer of 1943.

I wasn't born yet, but my mother came all that summer.

- As a kid I came over here.

The family had property here in 19-,

it was the end of World War II, back in late 1944, 1945.

- I first came here in 1951

maybe for a day or a weekend.

- 1954.

- 1955.

- 1956.

- In the summer of 1957.

- 1957, I was 20 years old.

- 1958.

- Probably in '58 or '59.

- About 1961, '62, it was about '63.

- I came in 1963, and I fell in love with it.

- I came for my first visit in 1968.

- The late 60's.

- First time, 1970.

- 1972, I was 17.

- Early to mid '70s.

- 1977.

- 1977.

I remember because that was the year after the bicentennial.

- 1982.

- 1983.

- I believe that I first visited Cherry Grove in 1999.

- In 2002.

- I came the summer after 9/11.

- 2004.

- My first day trip was in 2005,

and my first girlfriend brought me,

and it was incredible, and really eye-opening.

I had just come out as gay,

and it was really life-changing for me to arrive here.

- [Interviewer] One common story is that there were

pirates on Cherry Grove.

- Recently? - No. (chuckles)

- Pirates, recently!

That would be fun.

- [Interviewer] Years ago.

- I would imagine there could be.

- Well, there used to be shipwrecks along the coast,

and were there pirates?

Possibly, Fire Island got its name by people

that were shipwrecked here in the early days

and would light fires on the bay coast

to tell the people on the mainland that

they were here, and they were stranded.

- They claim it was called Fire Island because

the pirates would set fires on the island,

they'd lure the ships in and then murder

the ships and steal their goods,

that's one of the lores.

- Charlie Dickerson was a World War,

let's see, World War I veteran,

and he had a wonderful series of short stories,

and one of the stories that he had was

of a Mr. Smith, who was supposedly here

in the 1600s, who was a pirate,

and who lived someplace in this area

of Fire Island, we don't know exactly where.

- They say there is treasure on Fire Island.

People through the years have come up with coins.

- When I used to take my walks every morning,

which I can't do anymore, but I would always

be looking for the chest of coins or something,

but never found it, and no one else has,

as far as I know.

- [Man] When there's fog at night, the pirates come

into the Meat Rack out of the fog and murder people.

- [Interviewer] Have you ever seen one?

- Yes, I did, but he didn't kill me.

- In the old, old days, when there was no wagons

and no people, and there were just people over

here building, and I guess they were,

I guess they would harvest hay over here and ship it off.

I think that was one of the things that they did do,

and in order to do that, they had to have horses

to take the carts of hay to the, to the boats,

and there were a couple of guys over here

who had brought a horse over on a barge,

and the horse died, and they didn't know what to do

with the horse, so they were just sitting around

drinking quite a bit, wondering what to do with it,

and they decided they'd better bury it,

so they dig a hole, and they bury the horse,

but they didn't dig the hole deep enough,

and the four legs were sticking up out of the,

out of the earth, so these guys just sawed the legs off.

(upbeat guitar music)

- My grandparents first came to Cherry Grove,

like, 1918, and it was very rural at the time,

and they rented for six years,

and they realized that they had discovered paradise.

So, they bought the property where my house is now,

and we've been here ever since.

- Sayville families built the original cottages

and brought them over and bought huge

stretches of the community, the Duryeas

and the Greens, and the Gerards,

their family names, and they bought

whole stretches from the bay to the ocean.

- My aunt owned property here, and we came over

to help her open up the houses and close up the houses,

so as a little kid, it was mostly off season.

My jobs were to clean the chimneys,

because the kerosene was the only,

there was no electric, the only way of lighting

at night was the kerosene, and so,

I cleaned the chimneys, I got to dig the garbage holes.

Over here, we had outside burning,

the west end, if you dig in your yard,

all of a sudden, you'll hit crunch,

because you'll be hitting old, rusty cans

or whatnot, the things that were left over

from back in the earlier days,

before we had garbage service.

- When I first came here, we did not have electricity,

we did not have running water,

we had to pump water up to tanks on top of the house,

and we'd all be at the beach.

The first one home would have a hot shower,

the rest of us would not.

- I just find the fact that there was no electricity

until the '60s very interesting,

I can't imagine living without electricity.

I can't imagine putting on a drag show with

a generator in here in the community house.

Can you imagine putting your makeup onto that?

Mary, some of them are beasts as it is,

can you imagine without lights what they look like?

(soft piano music)

- The fire department consisted of everyone.

There was a post with a big, round ring on it,

which was a railroad tie bent into a circle,

with a hammer hanging, and if there was a fire,

you would ring this gong.

- Living with my family, it was kind of touching,

though I was only, like, 23.

So, we would go out to Ocean Beach for the day

and dance at the hotel, and then we moved

to Ocean Bay, and I rented there for two years.

I loved the whole idea of Fire Island.

- I don't think I knew what it was.

I think I, I, I knew that it was a queer community,

and I was a kid from the south Bronx who

knew I was gay, but didn't know what that meant.

(upbeat techno music)

- It was just different than anyplace that

I probably have ever been, and it was.

I stayed with Dick Hall and Michael DeSantis,

and I stayed there about four or five weekends,

but I was a guest that never wanted to leave.

- We would find Captain Hawkins, who had keys to houses,

and we'd get together and he'd find a house for us

for 20 bucks for the weekend.

A lot of people stopped using their houses in the summer,

and that's when the rentals started.

Next generation were the local people who

inherited the houses, began to sell them to the renters.

- Maggie and I rented with Tom Holden and a bunch

of the guys, and our share each for the whole summer,

starting in May through September, was 125 dollars.

- I met a guy, and he knew about Cherry Grove.

I hadn't even heard of the place,

so we came out here for a weekend,

and we stayed at the hotel.

And there was an awful lot of dancing in those days.

There was nothing but men out here.

You had one or two women, I think,

but essentially, it was nothing but a mass

of young men in their 20s and 30s,

and coming out here

with a boyfriend was like going

to a whorehouse with your wife.

- [Interviewer] Were women allowed to dance together?

- No, no more than guys were.

- [Interviewer] So, what was the policy?

- The policy was, then, when the bartender whistled

or Duffy, himself did, the women would quickly

find a male partner and get up and dance.

It was the same in the city.

- Like, up at the Ice Palace, they had a jukebox,

and when dancing, you had a dance with maybe

three guys and one girl.

There always had to be a girl in the dancing group,

and if the cops came in, the lights went on,

and then, right away, it stopped,

or you just stayed dancin' with the girl.

(jaunty ragtime music)

- I've been in the shows since 1955.

It's 60 years on the calendar,

but I've been performing for 61 years

in the, this is my 61st season.

It was very hard at the beginning,

because people, someone, I'm not even gonna mention,

called me The Singing Jew,

and then there was, there weren't that many

Jewish people out here then,

but I bought my house early on, anyway.

But there was somebody who was,

he owned a house on the ocean,

he was very wealthy, big shot,

with people around him all the time.

They came to the theater, and I was in a show,

and they were sitting in the first row,

and when I started to sing, they all put

their newspapers up in front of their face

and I stopped the song, and I ran across

the stage, and I grabbed the newspapers,

and I threw it at them,

and the audience went wild,

and then I started my song all over again.

* Keep your sweeties, I'll eat my Wheaties *

* With an all-American boy *

(crowd laughing) (upbeat piano music)

(crowd laughing and applauding)

* Soccer, baseball, tennis, hockey *

* Let 'em play ball *

* Gino, Tester, Slugger, Rocky *

* I love 'em all *

* Tease us, read us *

* I'm hot for Adidas *

* On an all-American boy *

(soft guitar music)

- When I was in high school,

my best friend told me that he saw in a magazine

a picture of two boys holding hands on a beach

in a place called Cherry Grove,

and I was very interested in that,

because I was gay, and didn't know it,

but I knew that I would be very comfortable

and very at home in a place like that,

so I went to the store where the magazines were,

and sure enough, there was a picture of two boys

on the beach in their little bathing suits,

going to the water, holding hands.

- [Man] In the '60s, it was amazing,

'cause you just get people coming to Cherry Grove

from all over, all over the world,

just to meet other gay people.

- [Man] Hello, Dolly was blaring out of all of the windows.

- [Man] I had heard that it was a gay party town,

and that it was very free and promiscuous and fun.

- To me, Fire Island was sex and booze.

That, you know, could have as much liquor as I wanted,

have as much sex as I wanted,

if I wanted it, was extraordinary.

- I was scared shit of it, in plain English,

'cause I heard this was an island of all gays,

and it was a sinful city, supposedly,

you know, you hear all these things.

(upbeat techno music)

- What is the Meat Rack?

- What is the Meat Rack?

- Well, there's many ways you could describe the Meat Rack.

The Meat Rack was a sex haven.

- We'd all start getting prepared to go out

to the Rack about 10:00 o'clock.

You'd do all sorts of cleansing and gargling.

Filing your fingernails. (laughs)

Getting everything together,

the poppers, the handkerchief, before you went out.

- I don't think I can really say what the Meat Rack

is because I have never been there.

- [Man] There's a little path that goes through,

because people who wanna go from the Grove

to the Pines use this same trail.

- Such a little trail that people can

go off and be alone.

Some people prefer not to be alone,

they like to show everything.

- I don't like that term, and I never have.

You know, it's like, Meat Rack.

- Before I came out, I heard the Ice Palace,

and I thought it was, like, a freezer,

and then I heard the Meat Rack,

and I literally thought it was a place where they hung meat.

- The Meat Rack's where we tell people who come to visit,

"Don't go there unless you're looking

"for a homosexual experience."

- It's like a circus.

You see all different types of things goin' on.

- It's known for havin' people that

perform sexual acts.

I think mostly at night, although I've caught

a glimpse in the daytime.

- When I first came in the '70s,

it was the time of, you know, liberation,

of course, and free sex.

- When I was younger, I used to go to the Belvedere

and walk up to the Belvedere, thinking I was going

to the Rack, and I wouldn't have the balls to

pass the lions. (laughing)

I would turn around and go back home.

- One Sunday morning, I came out of the house,

and there was a guy named Mitty Malleus,

and I go, "Hi, Mitty, how is everything,

"how was the Rack last night?"

"Oh, May, you don't know what I went through."

And I said, "What?"

She says, "There I was, working on a nice,

"big piece of meat, and some ditzy queen

"went and pulled it out of my mouth,

"so I bit him on the hand."

I said, "Oh," I said, "He's probably dead

"by now, with their portion in you."

And, later in the day, I met another friend,

Daphne, and I said, "Daphne, how was the

"Meat Rack last night?"

"Oh, it was wonderful, but some ditzy bitch bit me."

And I said, so I says, "I think you better

"go to the doctor and get a shot."

- We did go there once when we were living

here in the winter, and it was the dead of winter.

It was snow, the bay was frozen, there was snow

on the ground, and we went into the Meat Rack

expecting to find out what was there,

it was a pretty wooded area,

and we were amazed in January, there were a couple

of men in there, just mind-boggling.

- I know what it's like out here in the winter,

because I've been out here in the winter.

I spent, actually, Bobby and I spent

several Christmases here.

We always used to spend Thanksgiving,

but when his mother was alive, we were taking

care of her, so we had to go back,

but we did spend a couple of Christmases here

after that, and it was absolutely breathtaking,

beautiful, and lovely, with no people.

It was heaven, real heaven.

(soft ambient music)

- [Interviewer] There was this whole myth that

there was something called The Donut...

- Never. - Rack.

- Never. - So, it didn't...

- No, no.

- I heard that there was a Donut Rack,

but I don't know if it was true or not.

It certainly is a legend 'round here that there was.

- I don't think that's true,

'cause I'm not a lesbian.

- I heard about it also, and there were several

women who would exchange partners

after a party, but that was that.

- The Meat Rack was on, towards the Pines,

and the Donut Rack was towards Sailor's Haven.

That's where they said it was,

but I don't believe it, and I don't remember,

I mean, I remember the statements about it,

but I don't think it ever happened.

- Lesbians don't cruise publicly.

- No, there was never a Donut Rack.

There were maybe 24 lesbians in place

when we were there.

- I had a lover who was trying to impress me,

so he was, they were having the Bartender Awards

out here on Fire Island back in the day.

They used to have Bartender's Awards every month,

and they used to travel bar to bar and

have this big parties, and it was here

at the Ice Palace, so he rented a limousine,

and stocked with liquor and weed,

and all kinds of stuff, and we got in the limo

and drove to Fire Island, and went to the Pines

by mistake, and back then,

the taxi here on the island was in a dune buggy

as opposed to boats, so we had to walk to the ocean

and call a dune buggy and travel along this

beautiful beach in the full moon.

It was absolutely magical,

and then we landed at the Cherry Grove,

and walked up into the Ice Palace

to this massive drag show.

It was just a night I'll never forget,

it was just spectacular, and right away,

I knew this was the place for me.

(sentimental orchestral music)

- You know, drag shows were really nonexistent

anywhere else, and the people that came over

to the shows, this place was mobbed.

Even back in the early '60s, I worked at Pat's

Restaurant for a while, and the people

would come down from Ocean Beach,

and they'd all sit at a big table,

and they would keep saying, "When are the boys

"coming in with their funny hats,"

and I would make up stories, and I'd say,

"Oh, they're not coming in tonight,

"there's a big party down at the other end

"of the beach, so nobody will be in tonight,"

'cause they would sit there for two or three hours,

waiting to see people that were stranger,

I guess, then they'd ever seen.

- There was that feeling that this was our place.

And, back then, it was very important,

because we didn't have a place,

and we didn't feel like we fit in anywhere.

- This was before the Stonewall Riots,

and I worked the Stonewall before the riots

in 1968, so it was illegal to be gay,

and so we would come out here to Fire Island

to meet other gay people and everything without,

'cause we used to meet in the streets

in Manhattan, and three or four people

would be congregating on a corner,

talking friends, and we'd be arrested

and brought to jail for homosexual,

we couldn't congregate on a corner.

- The oppression against the gay community,

the lesbian and gay community, was so severe

that you couldn't tell your family,

you couldn't tell your job,

you had to be constantly closeted,

so the importance of Cherry Grove was that

it was a safe haven where people could come and be gay.

Hold hands with your boyfriend and hang out

with other homosexuals, as they called us,

and I think, in that, it helped to create

a community that didn't necessarily

exist in the city, for instance.

I mean, the major communities were either private,

upper-class communities, or the bars.

You know, there was always a network of gay bars,

usually owned by the Mafia, back in the '40s,

'50s, and '60s, and '70s,

and that's all there was.

- It was a very different world back then,

in the gay world, you know,

we were still hiding.

I was still jumping out of bathroom windows

from gay clubs that were being raided,

so the fact that this existed,

literally, 55 miles out of New York City

seemed like paradise.

- Maggie and I always palled around with much

older people, you know, and they just

welcomed us, as I said, Natalia brought me up,

and she was 35 years older than I.

A very good friend, I met Janet Flanner through her,

and a lot of the literary groups.

Maggie and I gave a party when our house was finished.

Natalia Danesi Murray called us and said,

"Darling, I'm not going to be here,

"I'm in Rome, but someone is renting my house,

"and I want you to go over and invite him

"to your party," and I said, "Who's that?"

And she said, "Tennessee Williams," and I said,

"Oh my God, how wonderful."

Went over the night of the party and said,

"Mr. Williams, would you like to come to our party,

"and it's our first night?"

"I would love to, and please call me T."

He was the first one to show up,

and the last one to leave.

During the evening, people would come over and say,

"Is that who I think it is?"

And I'd say, "Who do you think it is?"

"Tennessee Williams," and I'd say,

"Well, just keep it quiet."

- [Man] There was a tremendous emphasis

on home parties, house parties, themed parties.

- [Man] Well, when I first came here, there were these

huge costume parties, and, in fact,

our house, there were no trees at the time,

it was just sand, and they once had a party,

and they had a rope going from Belvedere

into our yard, and some queen came as Peter Pan,

but she got stuck in the middle

for about an hour, screaming.

Someone arrived in a barge shaped like swan,

pulled by eight muscle men.

They were really, very elaborate.

There was an MGM party, people would come

as their favorite star, one person I remember coming,

being covered in glitter, and had dry ice underneath

so there was smoke rising.

- I saw Sarah Vaughan here at the Club Atlantique,

which is the Sandpiper.

I saw, Della Reese was at the hotel.

- We always went every, on Friday and Saturday evenings,

to the Le Monstrum, we'd stand outside.

There were wicker chairs and couches on the side,

and we both had wicker row,

and we'd sit there, and there'd probably be,

like, 30 or 40 of us standing around outside,

and there was one guy there that we called

Popper Bill, and he opened his vest,

you'd talk to him, he had all these little pockets

in it, with all these amyl nitrate and poppers

and things there, that you just bought 'em

off him there, on the spot,

and it was, like, wide open.

- [Interviewer] How important do you think Cherry Grove

was to sexual liberation and the LGBT movement in general?

- Well, I think it was very important in terms

of sexual liberation, but it was absolutely

missing from the gay rights movement.

- Well, certainly, Cherry Grove was gay liberation

before it happened in the city, there's no question

about that, people came out here from the city

when they were living a very confined gay life

in the city, and you came here and you were able

to be gay or lesbian on the walks,

and you felt a kind of wonderful relief

from social pressures you might be feeling

at your job, or in any other part of your life in the city.

- I suspect the Mattachine Society and the people

who were active in that type

of movement, and of course, Stonewall,

was what led to gay liberation more than Cherry Grove.

- I personally found the residents of Cherry Grove

wanted nothing to do with the LGBT movement

back in the '70s and '80s,

they wanted to be complacent in their little gay haven,

so I personally found it as a youth,

gay youth back then, that it was a challenge

getting people involved into the movement

or wanting to do anything, even with the AIDS crisis.

They just wanted this to be the perfect little haven.

I think many famous people stayed here and visited here.

Gilbert and, you know, Larry Kramer,

and different people, but as a community,

I think that, individually, people participated,

but as a community, it did not.

(soft orchestral music)

- We were sitting on our deck and saying, you know,

"Why are gay people upset?

"Everything's fine," and not realizing that,

in a way, we were in our little ghetto.

- I think it was very important,

and I was then involved with Sage,

I was one of the people who were found

at the women's dances, and the freedom

that we had that night, the very first dance,

and all of it together, Stonewall,

and then the march in Washington,

for women, was very important.

- I had read about Fire Island in a book

when I was in middle school or high school.

The book was called Rainbow Boys,

and it was all about gay men on the east coast,

and they talked about going to an island where

everyone was gay, and I was like,

"This doesn't exist."

When I first came to Cherry Grove,

I slept on the beach, in a tent.

I was 16, and I lived at the hotel

when I started working here.

- I had a girlfriend in high school who came

with her family once to look at the drag queens,

and she told me a story on the phone once,

like, saying, "There's men there who dress like women,

"and everybody gets really drunk and they have

"sex with each other."

I remember her telling me the really long story

on the phone and me thinking, "How am I gonna

"respond to this without giving myself away?"

- There was something to me about Fire Island

that I had this kind of preconception that

it was a little played out, it was a little

kind of, like, passe, and something from

the previous generation.

- I first came to Cherry Grove as a visitor.

I was staying in the Pines, and I wandered

down to Cherry Grove, and gave it just the once over.

It just seemed like a bunch of, you know,

fat queens in dashikis and Judy Garland music

and a lot of drunk people, and it looked kinda tawdry.

(upbeat techno music)

Over time, I began to understand that it was

the people in Cherry Grove that ultimately won me over.

- This is Jana Mooger, and I'm in the beautiful

backyard palatial gardens of Que Sera Sera.

(upbeat synthesizer music)

- [Man] Every house had a name back in the day.

- Bangkok. - Bottoms Up.

- [Man] Spank You Very Much.

- My house now is called Bella's Passion.

Before that, it was called The Cuckoo's Nest.

- Something and the Wolf.

Dennis and the Wolf.

- My name, Mae's Bush.

- [Man] Fairy View, because you can see

the fairies from the house.

- Well, my house is called Roseland,

because of my persona out here, Rose Levine,

and I've been Rose Levine since I arrived here

in Cherry Grove, so when I bought a house,

I put a sign up, Roseland,

and it's still Roseland.

- We had a home called The Valley of the Pods,

which, that was because everyone in the household

joined AA, and at 6:00 o'clock, at that time,

everybody slowly left the beach and left

their homes and kinda wandered, like that movie,

Valley of the Pods.

- The one Judy and I live in is called Happiness Is.

The little one around the corner that was an outhouse

back in the 1800s, before they barged it over here,

it was called Small Comfort, it is small.

- [Man] Other names, Boys in the Attic,

Above and Beyond.

- White Swallow, which they made them change.

Lickety Split, which they made them change.

- [Interviewer] Who made them change it?

- The community, they said,

"Ease it up a little bit."

- I see people stopping in front of Pride House,

and they're taking pictures.

I heard some people say, "This is the house that was

"named after the Gay Pride day,"

and I stopped and I said, "No, it's not,"

I said, "It was Pride House and Prejudice House,

"and Prejudice House is the one down at the foot

"of the dune, right next door."

- Oh, Hansel and Gretel.

Roman Holiday always had a big crowd and nice people.

You see, years ago, a lot of people stayed

in groups and kept comin' back every year,

so everybody became friendly and family,

so we got to know who was who and what was what.

- Some old-timers have come up to me, says,

"I remember this wonderful party,

"this wonderful orgy, if you will,

"that happened in this house," my house.

I guess before it was named O'Lay,

where there was this leather group

and this black room, and it was called

La Maison du Pain.

- Well, if I sell my house, I'm taking my sign down.

Years ago, I was very friendly with a hairdresser

who had a long braid in the back of his hair,

and he wore a hat, and he had an accent.

I cannot ever reveal his name today

because he wanted to sue me,

'cause I told the story on stage using his name.

So, I could tell the story, 'cause it's my story,

but I can't use his real name,

so I just refer to him as Asshole.

So, the asshole came to me on the beach and said,

"Darling, I'm having a dinner party,

"and I'd love you to come,"

and he used to always walk around with this

little capuchin monkey that was this big.

It was beautiful, and I loved it,

and it used to always come sit on my shoulder,

I used to pet it, I never had a problem

with this friggin' monkey, can I curse here and there?

- Of course. - Okay.

So, he invites me as Bella to go to his house.

All right, Mary, I can't eat that much when

I'm dressed as Bella, you know what I mean?

I want to enjoy myself.

So, I go to his house, and I've been to his house

other times, for a pool party,

but this was a special dinner,

a big party, you should say,

and he's telling me who was going to be there,

Liza Minnelli, Claudette Colbert,

and this one and that one, I said to myself,

"He's so full of fucking shit, I know that he does hair

"to famous people, but this," but I had to go.

And, sure enough, all these people were there,

Liza Minnelli, Claudette Colbert,

the writer of some big movie,

whatever it was, whatever he said,

and the food was delicious, and the shrimps were this big.

So, after I made a pig of myself, eatin' all the shrimps,

I had to go fix myself up, because Bella was coming apart.

So, I went upstairs to the bathroom,

and I started to fix myself,

and all of a sudden, I look down,

and what do I see on the side of the bed,

out of the bathroom, was this cage with a blanket.

It was the worst thing I ever did in my life,

to take off the blanket.

I took the blanket off, and when I took

the blanket off, I see the little...

(mimics monkey sounds)

You're sweet, that's a good pea,

I went, "Oh, oh," and he remembered me.

So, I opened up the door, and he just jumped into my arms,

and this monkey was just delicious.

All right, Mary, enough is enough.

I had this monkey in my arms 15 minutes, at least.

I go to put it in the cage, and it doesn't wanna get off.

So, I says, "Come on!"

I go to put it in the cage, and I go to slam the door on it,

and the monkey held onto the door and the cage,

and with one second, became a vicious bastard,

because he opens his mouth, and I saw these teeth

that I never saw before.

(hissing)

Oh, I jumped back, I said, "What the fuck

"am I gonna do now?"

And I go to pick it up, and he jumps up in the air,

and it lands on my head.

Into the wig, the nails were, and I couldn't

get him out of my hair.

I couldn't do it, I didn't know what to do.

I was startin' to freak out now.

I was on my hands and knees, and I said,

"This is how it has to be."

I took him, still on my head, and I threw him forward

so he would land on the bed.

He landed on the bed, broke away from me and the wig,

had to see the wig when it was done, it was horrible,

and I threw him in the cage, when he went

(hisses) again, I said, "Fuck you,"

and I slammed the door, and his arm went limp,

and I see him crying and holding the arm.

I said, "Oh, dear God in heaven."

I covered him, I fixed the Bella up beautiful,

all over again, I went downstairs,

and I says, "I'm leaving now, I have to go."

He was like, "Oh, no, Bella, we're having this,

"we're having that," I said, "Well, maybe I'll stay

"a couple more shrimp."

I'm on the beach the next day with my

Bain de Soleil #4, and I'm tanning my whole body,

and all of a sudden, I see Asshole

walking with his monkey in his arm.

And I put my head down, made believe I was sleeping,

but I'm looking out with the little corner of my eye

and I see the asshole, the monkey,

and the monkey had a sling.

I says, "Oh, dear Jesus, oh, dear Jesus."

"Bella, Bella!"

I says, "Oh, hi, yes."

"Look what happened!

"Do you know anybody went upstairs

"in my room last night?"

I said, "I did, to fix myself up,

"but I didn't hear nothing strange."

I said, "Why, where was the baby?"

"Right there", "Oh, I didn't even notice."

"Right there", "Oh, really?"

"The monkey's arm, and (babbling)"

I said, "Oh, that's a shame."

Well, all of a sudden, somebody that I didn't know,

must've been a big shot, calls this asshole's name,

and he gets excited to see them, I had to think

it was somethin' to do with California and

a whatever show he was gonna do.

He turns around, and he says, "Here, Bella,"

and throws the monkey in my arms.

The monkey looked at me, and I looked at the monkey,

and I knew the monkey remembered me.

Well, I got the biggest (hissing),

freakin' out all over me.

She grabs the monkey back, she said,

"You, you broke my monkey's arm,"

and I never saw her again.

- At one time, this was in the '60s,

you had to show that you were staying with somebody

here in Cherry Grove before they'd let you off the boat.

They just wouldn't let anybody off the ferry.

Part of the thing was trying to protect the community.

The reason why they were doing this was to prevent

the Sayville types from coming over

and beating up the guys, the gay guys.

The guys used to come by on motorcycles and

in automobiles and scream out,

"Oh, fuckin' faggots," and stuff like that

at the train station.

(upbeat electronic music)

- [Man] Drag queens used to have to hide their clothes

underneath the boards of the houses in order to,

because it was illegal to dress like a woman.

- [Interviewer] Have you ever heard any horror

stories about Cherry Grove?

- Horror stories, yeah.

Some guy was murdered on Doctors Walk.

- [Interviewer] Why?

- In Limerick, do you know the house Limerick?

Rough sex, he was the piano player in Le Monster,

and they were having rough sex,

and the guy that he, it's not funny,

the guy that he was with stuck a sock down

his throat, and he gagged to death.

- [Interviewer] And that's true?

- But they never found out who it was.

- [Interviewer] And it's true?

- Yeah, it's a true story.

What do you think, I make these things up?

- When I was working at The Monster,

there was this guy going around setting fire to houses.

He would set a fire on one side of town,

then go to the other side of town

and set a fire under somebody else's house,

and it had everybody in a total state of panic.

A maid in the Ice Palace was cleaning his room

and found flammable fluids under his bed.

The police came and arrested him

and quietly took him off the island

early in the mornings, before anybody

could see who it was, 'cause if they had,

they probably would've lynched him.

- Years ago, there was a young man who was

robbing people, and he was finally caught,

and fairly kicked around by some of the local

residents and was very glad to have the police

come and take him away.

The evildoers over here are meted a very strange justice.

- [Interviewer] Were you ever worried about

getting in trouble in Cherry Grove?

- No.

Just once, there was said that they were doing

a thing on the boat, checking everybody's bags

for drugs and marijuana, so yeah,

they didn't have sniffing dogs at the time,

so I put my little wig on my head,

and I stuffed an ounce into my wig inside,

and I just looked like I had a bubble hairdo.

What can I tell you?

- There was an author out here one time,

and he was gonna do a, write a novel

about murder in the Meat Rack.

And we all went crazy, "Don't you ever do that,

"because it'll give some nut the idea to do it."

- [Interviewer] Do you remember people being

arrested in the Meat Rack?

- Oh, yes, I remember people being arrested.

Three guys that lived with us.

(somber piano music)

- In 1965, I had a guest,

and I was doing a show,

and he was supposed to meet me at 2:00 o'clock

in the morning, after the rehearsal,

that's how we used to rehearse here.

I'm waiting and waiting, I go home.

Anyway, he never showed up.

The next morning, since we never had telephones

at that time in the house,

I got a telephone call from the telephone

booth downtown, and he was in jail on the mainland.

He went out last night and he did a little cruising,

I guess, and they were plainclothes policemen,

and he might've touched him, boom, he was arrested.

I had to send $1,000 over to the mainland

to bail him out, and he was terrible.

- [Man] During the '60s, there were raids

by the Suffolk County Police Department.

It was something that happened with some regularity.

In those days, the Meat Rack

was all the way up to Marilyn Walk.

- Well, we found out there was going to be a raid,

we just was upset, and "Why don't you just

"leave us alone," you know, they,

we don't do it in front of them, and,

but they have come on our territory now.

- [Interviewer] Were you ever worried about

getting in trouble in Cherry Grove?

- Yeah, I was, and in a way,

this doesn't, I don't think speaks very well for me,

the danger of the Meat Rack was one of the things

that attracted me to it.

- Frankie McNamara, he was a queen that lived out here,

he's since passed, and I'm very friendly with him,

and he was 10 years older than me.

There were times that people would go to the Rack,

that was the known place, of course,

and one time they came, all the cops,

not the rangers, the cops,

with flashlights and floodlights and whatever,

and started to grab the people and handcuff them.

Half-naked, half-undressed, whatever it was.

Frankie was naked in the Rack,

completely bare-ass naked, and I thought,

"Girl, you have no sense."

And she laid under the walk that leads you into the Rack.

Under that, she was, completely naked,

in the water, hangin' out.

Then, she floated herself out to the bay

and floated herself down to Aeon Walk,

and she saved herself.

- It was very disheartening to see these poor boys

just sitting on the dock at 7:30 in the morning

waiting for the police boat, in handcuffs,

they would do it on purpose,

so people would see them.

- They used to take you downtown,

chain you to the post,

the telephone pole, and arrest you,

but they humiliated you.

That was humiliation, and then,

the next day, in the newspaper,

they would write a whole article about

who got caught in the Rack.

Your name, your address, your telephone number.

That was real discrimination.

- I was out in the Rack, and all of a sudden,

headlights in a row off

of the beach just went on.

There were two, four, six, eight headlights,

just went on, I knew it was a raid,

and I could just see my career going up

in smoke if I got caught,

and I got, maybe it was my legal mind that went to work.

I said, "Well, I know you can't go south,

"because that's where the headlights are,

"and I don't know whether," I didn't know

whether there were trucks, automobile,

Jeeps, or what, all I knew that there were

these headlights shining from the dunes

into the Rack itself.

I also thought that

if this was this well-prepared

that maybe there was somebody at each exit.

There was a eastern exit that came into the Grove,

and there was a western exit that exited into

the Pines, so there might be a cop

standing there at the exits to catch you

as you tried to get out.

So, that left only one direction to go,

and that was north, and the only thing

north was the bay, so I headed for the bay,

grabbed a couple reeds, broke 'em off,

and got into the bay, and sat down in the

muck and mud of the bay with the reeds,

and I sat there until the sun came up.

I did not get arrested.

(chuckles) So, I don't know who did that day,

but I never did, thank God.

- I remember one morning in August,

this friend of ours, knocking on the door,

very excited, couldn't get his words out,

and he kept stuttering, and we yelled,

"Say something, what is it,"

and he said, "The Meat Rack was raided last night,

"and Marilyn Monroe died."

(somber violin music)

- When I first came, there were still a lot of the

old timers that had gone through that,

and what struck me was that they could

talk about it with humor.

There was one that, I knew him because

he was the lover of a good friend of mine.

Years later, I heard the story that they had met

by taking refuge under the basement of a house

due to the raid of the Meat Rack.

- The guy who ran the Sea Shack kept a box

of money that, whenever somebody

was arrested, he had his lawyer in Sayville

go and bail them out.

- There was a wonderful straight couple out here,

Jim and Marie Fallon.

Marie came out when she was two years old,

to Cherry Grove, and she died at 92,

so for 90 years, she come out here.

Jim was a lawyer in Sayville,

and he represented the gay men who were arrested.

- Thank God for some of the locals

that would go to bat for them and

bail them out, but of course,

by that time, the newspaper had your name.

- Ed McCarthy, mainly, he took care

of a couple of people and got them out of jail,

and Jim Fallon, and these were straight men,

they were not gay, and they were protecting,

as they said, that, "We're protecting the boys."

- [Interviewer] Tell me a little bit about the invasion.

- The invasion, well, the invasion started in 1976.

It started, there was a drag queen named

Terry Warren who was an icon out here.

She was a great performer in the bars and

in the theater here, and she went

to the Pines for dinner one night,

and John White, she went to the Blue Whale,

and John White asked his maitre d'

to ask her to leave because it was a family restaurant,

and they wouldn't allow her in because she was in drag.

Terry, more or less, lived in drag,

even when he wasn't in drag, he Looked like

he was in drag, and he came back,

and it enhanced the rift between the two communities.

I mean, people always looked at us, like the Pines

was the upper East Side, and the Grove was

the West Village, and there was always that

competition that went on, and I think that

sort of enhanced the feeling of distrust

and dislike between the two communities.

I mean, it just inflamed it.

On July 4th, we were having a party,

and the subject came up, and I remember

we were watching television, and it was during

the Bicentennial, and they had a massive flotilla

going up and down the Hudson River, it was spectacular.

(somber music)

And the conversation went on about John White

and what he did and how disgraceful it was

and how could someone in a gay community

be so closeted and close-minded,

how could he do that to his own,

how could anyone do that to their own,

and it just sort of inflamed everybody.

I don't know who said it,

but someone said, "Well, we should go and show them,"

and "Why don't we have a flotilla of our own

"in our bay," and it just went on and on,

so we all decided to have a little Pansymonium,

as we called it. (upbeat techno music)

When I was homecoming queen, I used to decide

to do something, and I would call everybody up and say,

"We're all meeting at the pool,

"and we're all gonna be Esther Williams today,"

or, "We're all gonna meet in the Meat Rack,

"and we're gonna have lunch,"

so we use to have a lot of these events.

So, now, this was to become an event,

and we all got on the phone and said,

"We're going to invade the Pines,

"everyone has to be in drag,

"meet so-and-so at the dock,

"we'll order the water taxi."

So, it was sort of an event,

and everybody dressed in drag,

and there was a small number of us,

and we went to invade.

To show, how dare you do this to one of our own,

and we had no idea what to expect,

but we went, and it was very well-received,

it was rather an exciting happening,

and we just decided to do it every year,

and now it's grown to what it is.

- Terry Warren and Suzy, they were the only ones

that Jimmy married, let go in drag.

Her and Suzy did drag shows out here before

the rest of them did it, I mean, they always

had the ball, and everything.

Terry died 25 years ago.

(somber ambient music)

- Before the Pines had the Pavilion

and the dancing before that,

everybody came to Cherry Grove

to the Ice Palace and dance,

they all came from the Pines,

and so, liquor was turned off at 4:00 o'clock,

but everybody stayed and continued dancing until dawn.

Sometimes, I mean, I, myself, would run down

to the ocean, throw yourself in the ocean, come back.

A good number of us were on minor drug kind of things.

You had the energy to keep going,

and in the mornings, I remember walking out to the beach,

and here it seemed like 500 guys walking back

into the Pines, the sun was coming up.

They all kind of glowed, it was just, it was marvelous.

- [Man] It hit here like a nuclear bomb.

- [Man] Whole houses were wiped out.

- [Man] When we come out on a Friday night from working

in the city, we'd hear, "Joe died, Al died,

"Steve died," five or six of our friends

had died that week, and any of us were vulnerable.

- We used to keep track of the people we knew

who died of AIDS, and we stopped counting

when we reached 100.

- I think it devastated the community.

It was such an eye-opener to so many people,

that early, early times, to start seeing

everybody change, I mean, people were

changing physically, and it was such a visual.

I mean, if you lived in New Rochelle

or Jersey City, or something, and read about

the AIDS epidemic, it might not have affected

you so much, but out here, you saw your neighbors

losing 100 pounds or getting Kaposi's sarcoma

on their face, and I think it was devastating.

People didn't know what to do or how to handle it.

- People felt that if you got off the boat,

you were gonna get AIDS.

- There were definitely people running around here, scared.

- A lot of people at the time looked the other way,

especially at the beginning of the epidemic.

We didn't know what caused it.

It was then, later on, established to be bloodborne,

and there are a lot of people that thought that maybe

mosquitoes would carry it.

- We invited some straight relatives out here,

and they came home thinking it was sort of a leper's colony.

They saw people very, very sick.

- The fact that I'm 87, I'm damn glad to be here,

because there were an awful lot of my contemporaries

who didn't make it, I can assure you.

I could go right down Lewis Walk, practically,

and I'm sure I could give you

a half a dozen names of people who died.

- My friend Paul.

Paul, he was in a house on Fire Island,

people were in that house for a long time,

Bella and I, and a bunch.

My friend Joey, Joey Yvonne.

Aljean, and all the, Jackie Morrell,

many, many, I could go on, I could go on.

- The guys I spent so much time with,

they were good friends,

and it was heartbreaking when they died.

- Boys started dying, all the men who owned homes

started to die off.

Women were making a lot more money in their jobs.

- And there was a slogan at the time,

"Men die, and the women buy."

- Women started to have the kinds of jobs

where they made the money to be able to come out here,

and there was more opportunity to do that,

because of the demographic changing.

- There was a real time when this town was torn.

Gay men were dying of AIDS, and lesbians were moving in.

- I remember the memorial service,

the listing of people, you know,

60 names long, that had passed along.

- Two pages of names for the memorial service every year.

Two pages.

Lost a lot of friends.

And all I kept saying was, "It is not fair

"to die from sex, that's a ridiculous reason to die."

- Oh, I think it put us through a protracted

mourning period, and a period of cohesiveness,

of coming together, we discovered a sense

of responsibility and caring for each other

that we were less aware of prior.

- Well, hello, buddies.

Welcome to our beautiful island.

Today is your day, please use our island, use us.

We can't say how.

Have a great time, we love you, thank you.

(crowd applauding and cheering)

- I think we, out here, more than in the city,

felt a lot of compassion for AIDS and HIV people.

I don't know why that is, but that's how

I found it, I know on the invasion, for instance,

people who were ill felt very free to come

and participate in the invasion, it was a free day

to have fun, and I know in the city

people often didn't go to public events

because they were so self-conscious,

but I think out here on the island

we all loved each other so much

that there was a certain freedom about the experience.

- The thing I love about the Meat Rack is,

that I've heard from other residents here,

is that so many people who passed away

had their ashes spread there,

and that, to me, just speaks volumes, like,

that is the final place that they wanted to be.

- I probably was lucky, because I did

have a long-term relationship,

and that's probably what, why I'm alive today.

- [Interviewer] Has the Meat Rack changed over the years?

- Yes, it has.

Well, I haven't been there lately,

to be perfectly honest, so I don't know

how much it's changed, but I remember in the '70s,

it was packed on both sides of Cherry Grove

and the Pines, and a very active place,

and I think the activity lessened over the years.

I don't think it is what it was,

but it's still there.

- People are still joking about the Meat Rack.

There's five people out there, there's 20 people.

You know, it's not like in it's heyday

of gloriousness, I thought.

- I mean, it used to be a complete free-for-all,

in the best possible way.

And I think, you know, that was probably tempered

a bit with the AIDS crisis.

- My fear is that the Internet

has made the Meat Rack obsolete.

- It has changed over the years,

and I feel like with Grindr and Scruff

and all of, like, the gay apps,

no one really needs to go out and see each

other anymore, and it's all just social

media interaction, and they police it now.

- [Interviewer] What do you think about

people not being able to lay naked on the beach,

or them writing tickets in the Meat Rack?

- It's not the free

island that we had.

- There's a lot less freedom allowed here

in Cherry Grove in certain ways.

I find that any of the freedoms that

used to be enjoyed for free,

you can still enjoy, but they're mostly

in venues like the bars and restaurants

in towns have nights where you're allowed

to take off your clothes and have sex onstage

and do whatever you want, as long as you pay

the cover or you're participating in somebody

making money off of it.

I find that there are much less opportunities

to do that in the traditional places that

that was done in Cherry Grove, like the Meat Rack,

or even on the beach.

- If nudity upsets you, you shouldn't come to Fire Island.

This is our place to be free,

and that includes taking our clothes off if we feel like it.

- Recently, it seems that there has been

a kind of heightened enforcement of

regulations about nudity, about loitering

in the Meat Rack, and it seems like very,

on the surface, it seems a little homophobic.

- Because you're goin' right back the way things were,

what, 50 years ago.

- The more that we, as gay people,

become assimilated into the rest of the population,

the more the subversive or the underground

or the things that we did

that straight people object to

and still object to will be cracked down on.

- I don't consider the Meat Rack public.

That's the way I look at it.

It's like, I know about that from,

you know, like, the first season I was here,

and we didn't go there.

It was that simple.

- Government, and governmental agencies love

to exercise their authority.

It's the only reason, sometimes,

that they feel like they're in existence.

- Why don't they go find some of these terrorists

instead of bothering us?

I think the terrorists are doin' more harm than havin' sex.

- I do wonder, like, what is the trade off

that we have now, that we are so much more accepted,

that we can get married in every state,

you know, like, there used to be a kind of renegade

quality to being queer, and as that lessens,

you know, I feel like those kind of liberties

that we can take might get diminished.

- [Interview] Do you think that Cherry Grove

is as important now as it was in the '50s?

- To me, it's very important.

I survived it here, through all the years.

I felt that I was accepted in this community

of Cherry Grove, and this is where I live.

I may not live here 12 months out of the year,

but for the six-and-a-half months I'm here,

this is my home, these are my friends,

and this is my community.

I just love it here.

- The biggest argument that you'll hear

or discussion that you always hear is that

gays can go anywhere in the world,

so they don't need a destination,

and I actually disagree.

The reason I come here is because

it's a community of my fellows.

- Even though there is more widespread

LGBT acceptance, you know, it has been

really powerful for me as a queer woman

to be here, and to all of a sudden be like,

oh, even in New York City, where I live,

I don't feel as fully comfortable

being out as I do here.

When I'm out with my partner at dinner at a restaurant,

even in the part of Brooklyn I live in,

which is very progressive, there's still

a layer of shame and a layer of, like,

that's so subtle and so deep,

I don't even notice it until it's removed,

and when I come here, it's sort of, like,

in the negative, the absence of that

makes me aware that it was there in the first place.

- Now, you can kinda be gay anywhere,

is what people think, but even, you can't.

In the streets of New York, you can't be gay.

You'll get called a faggot and this and that everywhere.

- You don't have to worry about the judgment

quite as much, and I feel like that's always been the draw.

- I think it still retains its tradition,

its importance, simply because it reflects,

I think, the entire history

of the gay movement.

- I've lived in New York most of my adult life,

and I've seen neighborhoods gentrify and change

and shift the value that they bring to a community,

and I feel like that is happening here,

but I don't think anyone knows what the next

era will be for Cherry Grove, like,

it might become a straight community, it seems to me.

- Being the majority is a different kind of experience,

and it's important, I think, that we have that experience,

and I think it's important that we preserve and honor

and build upon the culture and the roots

that were laid down in the 1950s.

- I really appreciate what the people

did 50 years ago, you know, to maintain

this for us, so I would just say,

you know, like, keep it for the next set of kids.

- I remember my parents telling me they walked

to school barefoot, and I always think

when I'm talking to young gay people,

it's the same thing, you know,

when I'm telling them what it was like when I was young.

So, I try to avoid saying something like that.

Because, in 50 years, it's going to be something

completely different, and it's gonna morph

into something wonderful, but probably very

different than we know it today.

(soft piano music)

- One of my favorite things is,

like, walking on the beach at night.

I get to connect with nature, it's quiet,

there's no one around, it's just, like,

you and nature, so I feel like if I could

never come back, the last thing I would want

is, like, a night beach walk.

- If I could never return to Cherry Grove,

then I would die. (chuckles)

- I don't know, maybe start writing

little notes to myself, memoir.

- Watch the sunset on the Great South Bay, mm-hmm.

- I would wanna kiss the little

chameleon that I have on the door there

and wish it luck, wish the house luck.

- I think have my ashes thrown in the bay.

That would be it.

- I would have to walk to the beach to see the ocean.

- I would just look back and think of all the good times.

- The best thing that I've ever gotten out

of Cherry Grove is the relationships that

I've formed with other people, so I think that

that's how I would enjoy my last time here,

is being with the people here.

- Kiss my house goodbye. (chuckles)

- I don't know what it would be,

because I hope that day never comes.

(music swelling)

- The last thing I would like to do

in Cherry Grove if I can't return.

I'd keep singing.

Keep writing my column, I don't,

I'm not leaving. (laughs)

* I feel a song comin' on *

* It's a melody full of the laughter *

* Of children out after the rain *

* I hear a tuneful story *

* Ringin' through ya *

* Love and glory *

* Hallelujah *

* And now that my troubles are gone *

* Let those heavenly drums go on drummin' *

* 'Cause I feel a song *

* Comin' on *

(laughter and applause)

(soft ambient music)