Fire Island 2010, part eight

Written earlier today while listening to music on my bed in Ocean Beach and eating eggs and drinking coffee.

The increasingly steady drum beat of complaints about the heat and humidity was a dominant theme of yesterday’s conversations on the beach—it was 105 degrees in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday so I have little sympathy for those who “sweltered” here on Fire Island last week. A welcome downpour, however, broke the sultry weather’s back (at least temporarily.) And today dawned sunny and far less humid.

The post-July 4 weekend found this reporter running back and forth between Ocean Beach, Cherry Grove, the Fire Island Pines (and a few places in between.) My travels brought me to the annual Lambda Legal fundraiser in the Pines, the Fire Island Pines Fire Department’s block party, a rain-soaked pool show at the Ice Palace in Cherry Grove, Jeanne and Anita’s 45th anniversary party at Cherry’s, Low Tea and Sip n’ Twirl, a “Boys in the Sand” screening at Whyte Hall, a meeting with Fire Island Association President Gerry Stoddard in Ocean Bay Park with my reporter Tim and a fundraiser for state Sen. Diane Savino [D-Staten Island] in the Pines. In other words, it was a typical July weekend on the beach.

The blisters on my feet from last weekend’s Invasion have mercifully healed, but here are a couple of noteworthy items from the last couple of days. Walking the same catwalk Casey Donovan did in “Boys in the Sand” in the summer of 1971 (I was fully clothed in case anyone is curious) is one of the experiences I have had on Fire Island I will treasure. Any drunken fool who dares to call my sarong a dress in an attempt to prove something to their equally stupid friends will learn very quickly how sharp my tongue can be. And it is arguably unwise to publicly object to a part of a specific community's history that helped to put it on the map.



Swans and their cygnets in the Bay Shore ferry terminal on Saturday, July 10.



Riding the Ocean Beach-bound ferry on Saturday, July 10.



From the water taxi to Fair Harbor.



A downpour approaches Fire Island around 3 p.m. on Saturday, July 10.



Hunter celebrates his friend's birthday at the Grove Hotel.



Cherry Grove dock after the downpour.



The beach in Cherry Grove on Saturday, July 10.



The original "Boys in the Sand" poster.



Looking west towards Ocean Beach from the roof of one of the houses in which Wakefield Poole shot "Boys in the Sand."



Looking out to sea in the Fire Island Pines on Sunday, July 11. An oil tanker passed a few miles off-shore when I shot this picture around 3 p.m.



Some law ornaments at the intersection of Ocean and Beach Hill Walks in the Fire Island Pines on Sunday, July 11.



The setting sun on a Bay Shore-bound ferry on Sunday, July 11.