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Brigid Bergin: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin in for Alison Stewart. Thanks for spending part of your day with us, whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on-demand. On today's show, we'll talk about the new Broadway musical version of Back to the Future, and we're going to talk about three different podcasts that have three very different subject matters. We've got Susan Burton joining us today. She's the host of The Retrievals, which looks at what happened when a nurse at a fertility clinic swapped out fentanyl for saline.

We'll speak with two people behind the upcoming episode of More Perfect, the details the recent Supreme Court ruling on an Andy Warhol copyright case. That's the plan. Let's get this started with the new podcast, Finding Fire Island.

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Take the ferry from say, the Long Island and head south, and you will approach a long narrow strip of land. That 32-mile barrier island can mean different things for different communities. For parents, it's a place to send their kids to summer camp, but for queer folks, Fire Island is a safe haven. More specifically, the ones sleepy beach towns of Cherry Grove and The Pines have become a queer destination for LGBTQ folks. Since the 1950s, people from the city flocked to these secluded sections of the island and built homes, theaters, bars, and clubs.

It also became the place where writer-producer Jess Rothschild found her community. She called Fire Island, "intrinsically formative to my identity as a gay person." So formative that it inspired Jess to create the Finding Fire Island podcast a nine-episode series, that it's part oral history, part documentary. Jess chronicles the life of trailblazers like actress Peggy Fears, who in the 1950s was one of the first queer people who settled in The Pines. She also speaks to drag artists and DJs from the '70s and '80s, who ran the disco and drag scene in Cherry Grove.

She also tackles the island's complex relationship with race and class discrimination that persists to the present day. The podcast features star-studded guests like Margaret Cho, Matt Rogers, and Joel Kim Booster, and LGBTQ+ elders and activists, who helped form Fire Island into the queer capital that it is today. With us now to talk about her new podcasts and answer your questions about Fire Island, is Jess Rothschild, creator and executive producer of Finding Fire Island. Jess, welcome to All Of It.

Jess Rothschild: Thank you. That was an incredible description of Fire Island. I am so impressed. You really did your homework.

Brigid Bergin: Well, we listen to your podcast, and we're so excited to invite our listeners, especially our queer listeners to join this conversation. We want to hear from you. Have you been to Fire Island? What are your memories from your time there? Maybe you summered in The Pines, or you and your friends partied at the ice palace in Cherry Grove. Or maybe you're thinking of visiting Fire Island this summer, but you're not sure if it's right for you. We're here. We've got you. We can answer your questions with Jess Rothschild, the creator of the Fire Island podcast. We want to hear your stories.

Give us a call at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC, or you can send us a message on our socials, that's @AllOfItWNYC. Jess, you grew up on Long Island. What did Fire Island mean to you when you were growing up?

Jess Rothschild: I first went to Fire Island-- I actually know the exact date, digging back in my Facebook galleries. I first went on July 4th, 2008, which coincidentally, July 4th is the annual celebration of the invasion of The Pines, which is a huge annual July 4th celebration. It's been going on since 1976. That was my introduction. It happened to be this holiday, this very celebratory annual event in Cherry Grove. As the years went on, I just kept going, I would do day trips. I lived in Queens for a long time so it was easy to just go out for the day.

Then once I moved into Manhattan for the past decade or so, I really just started trying to consume every piece of media about Fire Island, about the history. It's not the type of place where all the information is laid out for you. There are a handful of documentaries, many of them are very hard to find. There were a few books. It really was through meeting people, through meeting the older generation, and having a lot of conversations, just asking so many questions. It was the history that really turned me on to it. I could not believe it.

Brigid Bergin: When you made that first trip, did you go because you knew of its queer history, or did you discover that when you arrived there?

Jess Rothschild: Oh, no. Fire Island is synonymous with gay. Actually, when I chatted with Joel Kim Booster, who was a comedian, he talked about how coming up as a comic in New York and in Chicago, that a lot of the street comics would actually use Fire Island as a shorthand for the gay homeland. [laughter] Yes, of course, I knew.

Brigid Bergin: Before we dig into some of the episodes of your podcast, I wonder if you could talk just a little bit more about the geography of Fire Island, and what about its location in relationship to the city in this general area really made it now and historically, an ideal getaway for the queer community?

Jess Rothschild: The reason why it is so ideal is because unlike places like Palm Springs or even Provincetown, which are gorgeous and lovely, Fire Island is right there. It's just 60 miles from Manhattan. Most people get out there by the Long Island Railroad. If you have a car, you can just drive, and you can be there within an hour and a half. You get on a ferry, which is only 20 minutes, and you're there, and there are no cars so it's this great antidepressant in a way because there's no noise. It's just walking. There hardly are even any bicycles.

That is why it's so attractive for New Yorkers because it's so easy to get to. In terms of what happened back in the '40s and the '50s, particularly, we're talking about Cherry Grove, it was this quiet underground community. It really came up through the Broadway scene. A lot of Broadway dressers and backstage hands would talk about it. It was just through word of mouth.

Brigid Bergin: I love that. That idea of you had to be in the know to know and go there. Jess, you're probably not going to be surprised that we have a lot of people who are calling in to tell us about their Fire Island experiences. I want to go to Danny in Chelsea. Danny, welcome to All Of It.

Danny: Thank you. Can you hear me?

Brigid Bergin: What's your Fire Island memory? We can hear you.

Danny: Well, I went in 1977. I was visiting from San Francisco before I moved here in 1980, and I was like a kid in a candy store. It was July 3rd, 1977. I went into an area called The Meat Rack, and I saw and experienced-- Well, I just experienced, just more voyeuristic. I just saw that-- I don't know. I couldn't believe it. It was like [unintelligible 00:08:16]. Then I had shares starting in 1980, and unfortunately, and sad, and it's fate, is that most of the people I had shares with on the island have succumbed to AIDS. I'm one of the very lucky people who has the experience from 1977.

What I see now, and I'll tell you quickly is incredible diversity. There's far more African Americans and Asians and Latins than I've ever seen in Fire Island, and particularly The Pines. It's a changing world, but unfortunately, it's getting very expensive to go out there. Most visitations to stay over, engage Airbnb, and most owners are doing that now. They're not giving shares, and it's becoming-- They're going to price me out of there, and I don't want to leave it. I don't want to keep going.

Brigid Bergin: Danny, thank you so much for your call and sharing that memory, and really, some of how the history of the AIDS epidemic that hit New York City also hit Fire Island. Jess, I see you nodding. Thoughts on that call?

Jess Rothschild: Fire Island was ground zero. They call it ground zero for the AIDS epidemic. Following week's episode, Episode 7 of the series is centered on how Fire Island was affected by the AIDS epidemic. What's most interesting is how particularly in Cherry Grove, the AIDS epidemic coincided with the second wave of feminism. Women were making more money, they were staying in longer relationships, and so, as the men were unfortunately dying, these homes were suddenly available.

The families of the men who had passed away wanted to sell these houses. They didn't even want to go to the houses because they were ashamed of their gay family members, even their gay sons. They sold the homes very quickly, and the people who were buying the homes were women. This is how lesbians and women really got a stronghold, particularly in Cherry Grove. If you ride along the wave of the AIDS epidemic, it does coincide with women buying up all this property. It's a fascinating story.

I have firsthand, like this gentleman who just called in, I wish I could've got a chance to chat with him exactly what he said how so many people from his share are now gone. You're going to hear firsthand accounts of that. It opens the episode next weekend. It's extremely powerful.

Brigid Bergen: I want to go to some of your earlier episodes as well, where you set up the context for these neighborhoods that have played such a pivotal role in the queer community of Fire Island, Cherry Grove, and The Pines. Just really briefly, how do these two neighborhoods differ from each other?

Jess Rothschild: There's this great rivalry between the two, which is quite delicious. There's always been a rivalry. Since day one, there's been this rivalry. Very quickly, Cherry Grove was this safe haven that was established in the '40s and '50s. It started out as this fishing village. As we chatted about earlier, through the underground party scene in the city, that's where the gay people first established in Cherry Grove. In 1953, a company started developing lots in The Pines, which was undeveloped.

It was just this open area. The Home Guardian Company purchased these very large lots. The gays who were hanging out in Cherry Grove realized that they could get a lot more space, and most importantly, they could get a lot more privacy. It drew the more wealthy people from Cherry Grove, but also a lot of wealthy people from Manhattan. The biggest difference is that while The Grove was always very queer-friendly, always a big drag hangout, always welcoming to trans people, to women, The Pines was behind locked gates, behind these mansions.

It was closeted until the mid-70s. The owner, you mentioned Peggy Fears, after Peggy Fears she was bought out-- By the way, Peggy Fears started out initially in Cherry Grove. She was a lesbian who started The Pines. She had a lot of money. Eventually this model, John White, he became the owner of The Pines. He bought everybody out. He was a closeted, very conservative gay man. He liked that it had this undercurrent of gay. It wasn't until post-Stonewall that everything exploded.

Brigid Bergen: Let's play a little clip from Episode 2 of the podcast about Cherry Grove. In this episode, community organizer, longtime resident, Diane Romano, tells the story about the Queen Cottages that are part of this enclave, and a little bit about the vibe in this neighborhood. Let's go ahead and hear that.

Diane Romano: The cottages, years ago, people used to say Cherry Grove is a little funky. It probably was because Cherry Grove started to have-- It turned out to be like fishing shacks. The people who were fishing, they would build these little shacks. They started to become these cute little funky places because we were much more of the artist community, outrageous artists, gay guys and women, and dressing up and being funny and being silly. That was more our vibe. The more successful wealthier people wound up in The Pine so it had that different vibe.

Brigid Bergen: You hear that little description supporting what you were just saying there, Jess, about how these two communities have this different feel because of how they got their start. At this point, what are you hearing from Cherry Grove residents about the influx of tourists and visitors during the summer? Is it a welcoming vibe or are they feeling a little stretched thin?

Jess Rothschild: The honest truth is no, the business owners welcome it. The fact is you need it. You need the day trippers from Long Island and from Manhattan. The businesses thrive on the weekends. Of course, the locals who live there, they don't want that. The bachelorette parties that happen on Saturday afternoons and Sunday afternoons at the drag shows, it's annoying to the homeowners and the renters who are renting full shares and seasons. You need it because you need to drive money into the community. We do a whole bit about that in Episode 2.

Brigid Bergen: I am speaking with Jess Rothchild, the creator and executive producer of the Finding Fire Island Podcast. So far, five episodes are out and there are four more. Is that right to go?

Jess Rothschild: Yes.

Brigid Bergen: We're going to talk about more of the podcast that's out. We're going to take more of your calls coming up on All Of It on WNYC just after this. Stay tuned.

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You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergen in for Alison Stewart. I'm speaking with Jess Rothschild, creator and executive producer of the Finding Fire Island Podcast. Jess, we have some calls and some texts that have come in I want to share. One of the texts is from a listener who says, "I discovered the Ocean Beach, non-gay section of Fire Island about 20 years ago and did not know about the gay history until later. I do think that parts of the island are very separate from each other. It may be worth mentioning."

As we did mention in the intro, Fire Island is 32 miles long, and right now we are focusing on two specific communities, The Pines and Cherry Grove, which are really important to this LGBTQ+ community. It's a big place. Is that right?

Jess Rothschild: Oh, yes. There are about 15 or 17 different communities. She just mentioned Ocean Beach which is very popular. There's Ocean Bay Park, Fair Harbor. Tina Fey has a house in Fair Harbor. I've actually never been to any of the straight communities. I don't know really what the history is there. Cherry Grove and The Pines really have this deep, rich history. That's really the history. It's queer history.

Brigid Bergen: Well, let's go to Joe in East Harlem. Joe, thanks so much for calling All Of It. Thanks for holding. Welcome to WNYC.

Joe: Thanks so much. I just want to say I've learned a lot from your conversation so far, and I'm excited to hear the podcast. I'm 40. I have been going to Fire Island about 15 years. Started out going with lesbian friends in Cherry Grove in the late 2000s. More recently have gone to The Pines. The reason I'm calling is I want to tell a relationship story. I met my husband, my now husband, in 2019 at the Blue Whale at the Afternoon Tea on July 4th after the drag invasion. We met talking in the bar.

Relationship went from there. Two years later, I was able to propose to him in the exact same spot on the exact same day, July 4th, 2021. We're married and it's his 39th birthday today, and it is our second wedding anniversary on Sunday. Shout out to Tiago for a very happy birthday to my lovely husband.

Brigid Bergen: Oh, happy birthday. Happy anniversary. Thank you for calling with your love story. We love a love story on All Of It.

Jess Rothschild: That's unbelievable. [laughter]

Brigid Bergen: Those types of stories are things that you found as you were doing the reporting for this podcast, these connections that span decades in this case a new love. The importance of this place and this community seems that's part of why you did this podcast. Is that right?

Jess Rothschild: Absolutely. This is a place where we're able to find each other without having to go into a bar. When he is talking about we met at the Blue Whale, it's an outdoor. You're under the stars. You're not in these dark clubs the way you are in Manhattan, which even for me, that's not appealing. Maybe that even is part of the reason why I love Fire Island so much is you're just walking around during the day and it's rare.

It's nearly impossible to be in a place that is say 90-plus percent gay filled with men and women in the daylight taking it out of the gritty nightclubs. It's a wonderful, such a unique special place.

Brigid Bergen: I thought it was so interesting the way you explored the history of The Pines. You talked a little bit about it before, its origin story, that it was purchased by a single individual who was a very conservative closeted gay man. One of the things I think you also do that's important to talk about is you deal with the reputation of The Pines being a haven for more rich, white gay men. You speak to Tomik Dash who explains that some of the discrimination he faced as a Black man who visited The Pines, I want to play a little clip of what he said.

Tomik Dash: It's times when I've needed sunblock or something, it's like, "Well, I thought Black people don't need sunblock." Or one time I was staying in somebody's house, and they had to leave all of a sudden to go back to the city because they had an emergency. I was left to take care of the house and one of their friends popped over and for some reason, assumed I was the cleaning person, which was really weird to me because I was relaxing in the house.

Brigid Bergin: Just these microaggressions propelled Tom to take action. What is he doing now to make The Pines more inclusive?

Jess Rothschild: Tomik is unbelievable. He alongside several other community members, he created BABEC, which is short for the Black and Brown Equity Coalition. He is the president and spearheading this initiative, this coalition. In the past several years, they have spearheaded Juneteenth events. They do a tea takeover. The tea that the caller before where he met his husband, they do four days of a tea takeover around Juneteenth that they're bringing in Black and Brown DJs, performers, drag artists to celebrate those individuals.

I think the biggest takeaway I want people to have is while The Pines has this reputation for being, as you said, relentlessly male, white, cis, the more people like myself and people like Tomik come out there, the more people who are the minority or the more diverse version of the "The stereotype of what a pines boy is," the more we will show up. That is really what I'm trying to do with this series because I'm a woman in The Pines, and I love it. I feel celebrated there and other women should be going out as well.

Brigid Bergin: I think you're getting to this, but there's also responsibility for these white folks, The Pine boys, et cetera, to take their own action to using their privilege to make The Pines more inclusive. Do you see some of that as well?

Jess Rothschild: Absolutely. In the past two years, I have never seen so many women in The Pines and also, I'll tell you, when you're hanging out at tea, I see a very diverse crowd. Not only in ethnicity, race, ethnicity, I see it in the way people are dressing. This Pines boy aesthetic used to be the muscly gay guy. It's a lot more gender-bendy and fluid. They're taking a cue from Cherry Grove, which was always this gender bendy, as Diane says, Honky Tonk funky vibe, every day it's becoming more of that. Every day, it's a little bit better.

Brigid Bergin: I will say full disclosure, my only trip to Fire Island was to The Pines with my friend Richard Hake, who I miss. Let's go to Nate on the Laurie side.

Nate: Hello, how are you?

Brigid Bergin: Great. Welcome to All Of It.

Nate: I love this conversation and I love what she was just talking about, where The Pines was a little more cisgender male. Back in my day when I was going, this is about 2010-2011, I used to refer to it as being more The Pines Chelsea boys and Cherry Grove was more like the West Village and it has a funkier vibe to it. The reason I was out there was because me and my husband, we had gone to Provincetown the prior year and we loved it out there. I lost my job and I didn't want to go back into the corporate world and I thought I saw an opportunity there to have storage.

I called Fire Island day trip or storage. In Provincetown, everybody stayed houses and whatnot, but people would come out to Cherry Grove, and it became this subcategory or culture where people would come to my shop and drop off this stuff on Friday night. It would just be a bag or something like that and they would come back the next morning for a toothbrush or something like that. They would just leave it with me for the time, so they didn't even have a place to stay in hopes that they might meet someone and be able to stay out there.

The whole class situation out there was very tricky sometimes. When I first got out there, I was ostracized like, "Oh, what are you doing here?" I didn't even really think about the race issue so much, but I think that may have played into it also but it took a lot of time for people to warm up to me and see, "Oh, this is someone and something that is possible out here."

Brigid Bergin: Nate, thanks so much for your call. Let's go to John in Brooklyn. John, thanks for calling All Of It.

John: Hi. I'm calling with a question about an emerging narrative of more straight people buying homes and property in Trigger from The Pines. I've heard a fair amount, for example, of rumors of Jenna Lyons having sold a house in Cherry Grove to a straight couple. I'm wondering if Jess knows if this narrative or this story is true, and that this is a real emerging phenomenon of more heterosexual folks buying up homes in Trigger from The Pines? If so, what's [unintelligible 00:26:07]? Thanks.

Jess Rothschild: Okay, first of all, I love you for evoking Jenna Lyon's name into the conversation. That's hilarious that you're doing this. For all my Roni fans out there, I do not know of Jenna Lyons ever owning property in Cherry Grove. She has a house in the Hamptons, and in Soho as I'm sure you know. I believe she actually only visited Fire Island one or two times and I know that she rented in The Pines because she wanted a place with a pool. Moving away from Jenna Lyons, although I could talk about it all day.

The narrative that more straight people are buying up property, believe it or not, I would say the Grove is more diligent about queer people buying up the queer-- Keeping the community queer, we'll say that. I know that the homeowners and the community that is extremely important to them. Now, as far as Pines homeowners, I think there are a lot of straight homeowners who then rent out their properties to gay people. Most Pines homes, they're not actually lived in by the owners. These are rental properties. This is a business move for them to just own the property and as the other caller said, rented an Airbnb and make a killing. It's a very smart real estate decision.

I would say there is that narrative, and there's an-- I've heard this conversation, I do not think this is going to be a reality in practice.

Brigid Bergin: Okay, so no fear that Cherry Grove or The Pines will suddenly lose their identities, these queer havens. Good to hear the rumor stamped out.

Jess Rothschild: I personally don't think so. If you go there today, I think you would agree with me.

Brigid Bergin: Jess, in our final moment here, we've teased that there are more episodes to come. Anything that listeners should tune in for in your upcoming episodes? Any little teasers you want to give us?

Jess Rothschild: Yes, so in this week's episode-- New episodes are every Thursday. There are a total of nine episodes. In this week's episode, the title is Legends and Lore and it's because there are a lot of rumors about Fire Islands heyday. We get into did Jerry Herman right Hello Dolly at the ice palace. We hear stories about Madonna coming. I heard her brother wrote about it in his tell all. We hear about Andy Warhol who wrote about his time in The Pines with Calvin Klein. He writes about it in the Andy Warhol diaries. Lots of stories.

I spoke to the woman who rented out her house as they filmed A Normal Heart, which was a Broadway play that became a movie starring Julia Roberts, directed by Ryan Murphy, of course. That episode is this week. Of course, there's the AIDS episode, which is very powerful. Then what I think is a very cool episode, I did an episode centered on the year-rounders.

Brigid Bergin: People who survived the winter.

Jess Rothschild: It's all about surviving the winter and also about the fires, the hurricanes, people who lived through Hurricane Sandy there. We're talking about the offseason and I think it's very interesting.

Brigid Bergin: Well as someone who also lives in a community that has a different vibe in the summer versus the winter, I will be sure to check that out. We're going to leave it there for now with Jess Rothschild, the creator, executive producer, and host of the new podcast Finding Fire Island. As I said, the first five episodes are available now wherever you get podcasts. Four more to go, check them out. Jess, thank you so much for being with me on All Of It.

Jess Rothschild: Thank you.

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