When I learned that the eastern end of Riis had been a gay haven as early as the ’40s, or even the ’30s, I was stunned by the longevity of the site, and of what we had inherited. I’d imagined it dating back mere decades, not the better part of a century. The people who first frequented the beach were white gay men, of course. Lesbians (white) came in the 1950s, and in the 1960s queer Black and Latinx people staked a claim to the beach too.
