This is the sixth post in the Succession III: Queering the Environment series, edited by Jessica DeWitt, Estraven Lupino-Smith, and Addie Hopes. For this series, contributors were invited to explore ideas of queer rebellion as interruption and resistance.
On a sandy barrier peninsula at the far edge of New York City lies an iconic public beach and queer landmark. Jacob Riis Park is a palimpsest of jurisdictional boundaries, social and ecological communities, and development projects, but at its far eastern end is The People’s Beach, where queer New Yorkers have gathered since the 1940s to swim, cruise, read, party, or to simply be in the full and undisturbed joy of their bodies under the summer sun.
(Left) “Three friends on the beach at Riis Park”, 1940 – 1945. The New York Public Library Digital Collection, Frank Thompson albums. Courtesy of NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division. (Right) A group of Lesbian women at Riis Park, mid 1960s. Courtesy of Lesbian Herstory Archives, Photo Collection. @lesbianherstoryarchives.
However, this utopia has not been without contestation; many years of police harassment have led to a culture of collective care and maintenance by LGBTQ+ beachgoers, many of them Black and Latinx, who have made The People’s Beach a safe and inclusive place for all queer and transgender New Yorkers. Despite the gentrification of the Christopher Street Piers and the West Village, The People’s Beach remains a place of refuge and joy for all bodies and sexualities.1 The threat of present and future development at Jacob Riis Park forces the question of how to protect places like The People’s Beach at Jacob Riis Park (also referred to simply as Riis Beach), and whether schools of thought such as queer ecology can serve this cause.
The People’s Beach remains a place of refuge and joy for all bodies and sexualities.
(Left) The People’s Beach on a summer day, 2022. (Right) Cory Walker, left, and Justice Jamal Jones bask in the sun at Riis Beach, 2022. Photos by Yael Malka.
A Queer Beach Haven is Born
The formation of Jacob Riis Park by the hands of tides and humans alike is marked by crests and troughs as waves of public investment and collective community maintenance advance and recede. The land was purchased and developed by the city in 1912 only after tireless advocacy from social reformers led by Jacob Riis, a photographer and activist for the working class. After many years of delay and large-scale infrastructure projects to stabilize the beach, the park opened in 1937 and featured grand promenades lined with ornamental plantings, a bathhouse with restaurants and lawn games, and a boardwalk. Reports document the thousands of flowers, perennials, shrubs, and trees brought in to beautify the space from its initial construction through the early 1950s.2 In the decades following, white flight and suburbanization shifted the urban demographic of NYC, and in the 1970s budget crisis, NYC Park maintenance was one of many public services to be reduced at the same time that Jacob Riis Park was increasingly used by Black and Latinx residents. Queer use of the beach proliferated as well, and Riis Beach was well known to be a cruising spot for gay and transgender men and women.3
(Left) Aerial view of Jacob Riis Park and the Jacob Riis Parking Field with Marine Parkway Bridge in background. Photo dated Aug 12, 1956. Courtesy of Flying Camera, Inc. Property MTA Bridges and Tunnels Special Archive. Creative Commons 2.0. (Right) Tree and Shrub Planting Plan, 1937. Source: Historic Structure Report, p.148. 1981.
In 1974, New York City abdicated management of Jacob Riis Park to the National Park Service.4 Reading NPS reports on the condition of Riis Beach – such as the Historical Structures Report of 1981 and the Cultural Landscapes Report of 1992 – the tone is not one of utopia and belonging, but of neglect and urban decay. The presence of queer beachgoers is framed as a “problem” to be solved, even implied as a safety concern.
The report lists both assault and homosexual activities in the bathrooms in the same sentence, seemingly implying that gay people at the beach pose a physical threat and that queer existence and violent crimes are of equal concern to park management. The report goes on:
“One [problem] has been the question of how to handle topless, nudist, and homosexual bathers at the beach. In July 1974 it was reported that about 100 such bathers congregated at one end of the beach every weekend…a judge in the Brooklyn federal court suggested that the beach be closed if such activities were tolerated.”
“Since local custom had allocated that end of the beach to such groups since the 1960s, Park Service personnel continued to allow those individuals to use the beach provided that they remained at their end of the beach and minded their own business.”5
The Cultural Landscapes Report of 1992 follows a similar narrative: that the park facilities fell into a state of disrepair beginning in the 1960s, and that the reputation of Jacob Riis Park as a congregating place for queer people “tended to keep families away.”6 Whether queer people brought their own families to Riis Beach was not considered, or whether queer people were forming nourishing and loving families that did not superficially resemble the norm. When queer bodies existing in public space are seen as a rebellion against the status quo, the language of invasion and threat can be levied against queer people and space. The implication of danger associated with queer bodies and sexuality, and the use of thinly veiled homophobic language about “family values” discredits the real community care, freedom, safety, and joy found in radical queer spaces such as The People’s Beach at Jacob Riis Park.
(Left) Two young men at Jacob Riis Park, 1950s. Photo by Richard Peckinpaugh. Courtesy of The LGBT Community Center National History Archive. (Right) Two lovers lie on the beach together. Photo by Yael Malka.
(Left) Three friends – Jon Joni, Marcos Antonio and Unique – at Riis Beach after a dip in the ocean, 2022. (Center) Ayana Lockett holds a sleeping Xen in their lap. (Right) Casper Capers, left, and Michito relax in the shade at the People’s Beach, 2022. Photos by Yael Malka.
Policing the Queer and More-than-Human
The discourse around “proper” behavior for queer bodies in public space—and how those bodies and spaces are surveilled, valued, policed, and regulated to fit the values of a cis/het-normative society—bears a strange similarity to the discourse concerning plants considered “out of place.” This includes the ever-shifting aesthetic and moral opinions of what plants are considered “weeds,” and the intense debate among scientists and academics on the usefulness and morality of whether to classify flora and fauna as native vs. alien species. Such discussions show how scientific thought and the policies they affect directly or indirectly are laden with metaphorical allusions, cultural biases, and moral judgments about non-human life that resemble or mirror debates over value among humans; for example, metaphors used to describe non-human ecological behavior can be and often are weaponized against social minorities and groups that deviate from or disrupt hegemonic power, justifying brutality and social exclusion.7 Similarly, native vs. exotic paradigms can lead to poor policy at best, and at worst, be used to bolster eco-fascist ideologies.8
This point is not to discredit documented evidence of the ecological importance of endemic species or protecting intact ecosystems from being displaced by human development, which are important considerations for landscape architects, urban planners, and land managers. Rather, I make this point to insist that we carefully consider the paradigms and metaphors we use to discuss ecology and queerness. For example, many advocates for ruderal urban plants point to the overly simplistic dichotomy created through native-exotic classification paradigms and advocate for new systems of value to guide plant selection by designers and policymakers that prioritize use-value and adaptability. Native plant advocates often cite the specific nutritional values of certain plants that have evolved relationships with specific animal species, a system based on relationship value. Focusing on “invasive” plants also pulls focus from the human horticultural practices that intentionally brought the “alien” or “exotic” plants to new lands, or extractive economic practices that weaken ecosystems to the point of introduced or ruderal species outcompeting established, late successional species.
(Left) Beach Rose (Rosa rugosa) at Jacob Riis Park. Photo by iNaturalist user @citizensmalls, May 2023. CC-BY-NC. (Right) Bittersweet Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara) at Jacob Riis Park. Photo by iNaturalist user @musicalchairs, July 2024. CC-BY-NC.
Similarly, many emergent plant species thrive in urban habitats based on the environmental conditions that urban development creates, despite the negative attitudes held towards many of the resilient species that are well adapted to human disturbance. Historically, this can be seen in what species are even documented, and which are expendable in the face of development.
Another Kind of Wildness
When the plot of land to become Riis Beach was first speculated upon by developers in the 19th century, the ecology of the Rockaway Peninsula was documented mostly through the conceptualization of “vacant land” to be “improved.”9 In May of 1914, only weeks before his death, Jacob Riis published an editorial with a vision for the site he worked so tirelessly to establish, describing the land condition as “a country of tumbled sand-hills overgrown with beach grass and fragrant bayweed that may easily be transformed into attractive park land.”10 This may reflect the progressive ideals of the time, centering human use over nonhuman, but it is of note that the ideological erasure of the plants and animals that lived on and used the peninsula and the surrounding waters mirrors the erasure of Indigenous land tenure by the Canarsee, Munsee-Lenape, Rockaway, Merrick, Massapequas and others of the salt marshes, dunes, bays, and channels of Jamaica Bay and Long Island.11
Fort Tilden hosts a different kind of wildness; a landscape where not only humans, but also a diversity of plants and animals can thrive in the summer sun.
While often well intentioned, designers and environmental historians alike should question the unchallenged “good” of development, because to develop a landscape at the scale of a public park is to first raze it. No cedar swamps remain in the Rockaway peninsula, and the only notable habitat for non-humans is the beach of the adjacent Fort Tilden, a former army base that together with Jacob Riis Park and several other federal properties in the NY/NJ Harbor area are managed under the umbrella of the Gateway National Recreation Area. On the beach at Fort Tilden conservation organizations advocate for the protection of shorebird nesting sites while nude or topless beachgoers—seeking the privacy of beachgrass covered dunes and a backdrop of lush, salt-tolerant shrubs—find as much sanctuary as the patrolling National Park Rangers will permit. A counterpoint to the joyful riot of music and queer merriment at The People’s Beach, Fort Tilden hosts a different kind of wildness; a landscape where not only humans, but also a diversity of plants and animals can thrive in the summer sun.
(Left) Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) at Jacob Riis Park. Photo by iNaturalist user @milopyne, July 2024. CC-BY-NC. (Center) Northern Seaside Goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens) at Jacob Riis Park. Photo by iNaturalist user @caedocyon, July 2023. CC-BY-NC. (Right) Japanese Spindle Tree (Euonymus japonicus) at Jacob Riis Park. Photo by iNaturalist user @urbanwoods, July 2022. CC-BY-NC.
The same reports that frame the presence of queer people at the beach as problematic also document the “loss” of horticultural plantings at Jacob Riis Park with a series of diagrams showing observed changes in vegetative cover based on site documentation in 1991 and from historical photography and analysis of the planting diagrams from the 1930s. The Cultural Landscape Report notes the decline of the Japanese Black Pine and the disappearance of ornamental woody shrubs and annual flower beds and describes how the shift in plant life has changed the intended use of the space; grasses well adapted to disturbance succeeding ornamental woody shrubs allowed both picnicking and crabgrass to proliferate, compacting the soils underneath the shade of the pines.12 In this case, picnicking under the pines is not aligned with the “intended use” of the planted edges that were originally meant for recreational walking.13 The report appears to use a narrative of decline in hopes to garner funding to restore the horticultural wonder of days past, when New Deal investment buoyed public works projects. Framing Jacob Riis Park as a dystopian ruin allows for redevelopment projects without considering what social and ecological communities are currently thriving in the space.
Weeds and Queer Culture Thrive at the Margins
Today, development is returning to Riis Beach. In 2022, the NPS announced that it had signed a sixty-year lease with developers to renovate and operate the bathhouse at Jacob Riis Park. The $50 million project will feature an indoor pool, restaurants, and a hotel, and is described as returning the building to its “former glory.”14 In 2023, NYC Health and Hospitals demolished the abandoned Neponsit Hospital with the intention to transfer the property to NYC Parks in order to build a new playground, dissolving the physical barrier between the community of Neponsit and the joyful nudity at The People’s Beach.15 At the same time, queer and trans organizers have mobilized to attempt to purchase the site from the city and establish a community land trust where an LGBTQ+ health center can serve The People’s Beach for present and future generations.16
What will these changes mean for the social and ecological communities that now occupy the beach? Can development serve the queer beachgoers that love Riis so dearly? Will the presence of a playground be used by opponents of the People’s Beach to validate increased policing and harassment of queer beachgoers by law enforcement under the guise of indecency? These are real concerns voiced by queer and trans people at Jacob Riis Park.17
Similarly, the language of loss describing the former horticultural plantings in imported topsoil belies the fact that a number of early successional plants are thriving at Jacob Riis Park and nearby Fort Tilden, cooling the hot sands, providing habitat, and in some cases creating a welcome screen of privacy for beach visitors. These novel ecologies of the sand dunes may be seen by some park managers and landscape designers as “weeds” and in many cases “invasives,” but a closer inspection of the relationships between the flora and fauna in these liminal ecosystems is needed. Considering any future development of the park, enlisting species that some designers might see as weeds but that are already thriving at Jacob Riis Park could help restore privacy to The People’s Beach while reducing future maintenance costs and reframing the story of who is allowed to exist in public space. The People’s Beach is an oasis for people who hegemonic society has pushed to the margins; our plant allies can help us engage in the rebellion of existence in the face of those who would eradicate all queer bodies and spaces.
Our plant allies can help us engage in the rebellion of existence in the face of those who would eradicate all queer bodies and spaces.
In conclusion, using different metaphors to describe Riis as either a neglected public space or an ephemeral mecca for queer community creates radically different ideas of what value the space has and what could or should be done with that space presently and in the future. The metaphors which we choose can have real impact: Is Riis Beach a garden of queer self-expression and earthly delights? A rare ecosystem of queer culture found nowhere else in New York City that deserves protected status? On the margins, opportunistic communities of plants and humans form that have not been allowed to thrive elsewhere; and who are we to dig up utopia?
Feature Image: The Peoples Beach at Jacob Riis Park, 2020. Photo courtesy of Tim (Teal) Nottage.
Notes
1 Veterans of Riis Beach tell of how police used to ticket gay men for the size of their bathing suits and target queer beachgoers with arrests for nudity. For context, see Labowitz, Dean. “Turning the Tide”, Urban Omnibus. June 1, 2023; Hannaham, James and Melissa Guerrero, Jeffrey Furticella, Tanner Curtis, and Rebecca Lieberman. “Is This The End of the People’s Beach?”. New York Times. September 15, 2022; and Sayers, Jah Elyse. “Black Queer Times at Riis: Making Place in a Queer Afrofuturist Tense”. Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s & Gender Studies: Vol. 22: Iss. 1, Article 4. 2021.
2 Lane, Frenchman & Associates, “Cultural Landscape Report: Jacob Riis Park Gateway National Recreation Area”. Prepared for Denver Service Center, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior. 1992. Ch. 2, p. 8.
3 Photographic evidence and journals can be found in the digital collections of the New York Public Library and the LGBT Community Center National Historic Archive (Gratitude to Lou for your assistance accessing the latter).
4 Unrau, Harlan D. “Historic Structure Report: Jacob Riis Park Historic District”. Prepared for Denver Service Center, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior. 1981. p. 208.
5 Unrau, p. 209.
6 Lane, Frenchman & Associates. Ch. 2, p.20.
7 Clear examples of this brutality are seen in but not limited to those in: Cresswell, Tim. “Weeds, Plagues, and Bodily Secretions: A Geographical Interpretation of Metaphors of Displacement.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1997 Jun 01. 87(2), 330-345.
8 See Riano, Isabela. “Just A Bunch Of Weeds: An Interview With Peter Del Tredici”. Published in SCENARIO 02: Performance. Edited by Stephanie Carlisle and Nicholas Pevzner. Spring 2012; Del Tredici, Peter. Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast: A Field Guide, Second Edition. Comstock Publishing Associates, Ithaca, NY, 2015; and also Warren, Charles R. “Beyond ‘Native V. Alien’: Critiques of the Native/alien Paradigm in the Anthropocene, and Their Implications”, Ethics, Policy & Environment, 2021, 26:2, p.287-317.
9 In 1879, famed landscape architect and park designer Frederick Law Olmstead was contracted by a syndicate of New York investors intending to develop the sandy peninsula into a large park with private hotels. Upon surveying the site, Olmstead reported the peninsula consisted mostly of sand dunes with low vegetation such as grasses and shrubs, wetlands, and cedar swamps; the syndicate eventually disbanded before the site could be developed. See Unrau, p.7.
10 Riis, Jacob. “The Story of Sea Breeze”. May 1914. p. 88.
11 See www.native-land.ca.
12 For detailed diagrams of the changes in planting beds, see Lane, Frenchman & Associates, especially Ch.6, p.7-10, also Ch.8, p.6 and Ch.5, p.2; Ch.2 provides an overview and subsequent chapters offer more detail on distinct areas within the park.
13 Pictures from the late 30s and early 1940s document the popular use of the beach and boardwalk while reports of horticultural improvements and maintenance describe some of the continued investment in the aesthetics and function of the park. Landscaping of the park area behind the beach involved the excavation of sand and the introduction of horticultural topsoil. Based on the planting plans, the horticultural designers were mindful of the salty and windy conditions of the site, and familiar species of the Northeast (bayberry, beach plum, beach rose) were paired with non-native plant species favored by the tastes of the time (Japanese black pine, Autumn Olive). Lane, Frenchman & Associates, Ch. 2, p. 28 – 29.
14 National Park Service. “National Park Service Signs Lease for Historic Riis Beach Bathhouse, Partners Unveil $50 Mill Restoration Plans”. Press Release. October 21, 2022. And Frishberg, Hannah. “Rockaway Beach’s Jacob Riis Bathhouse to get $50M makeover.” New York Post. October 27, 2022.
15 NYC Health & Hospitals, Capital Committee Meeting Agenda. April 11, 2022.; also Iezzi, Annie. “Hospital Demolition Plans Worry Queer and Nude Beachgoers.” Pavement Pieces. September 15, 2021.
16 Efforts to preserve Riis Beach and establish a community-owned land trust are being organized by Glits, Inc with support from the Audre Lorde Project and many others. Read more about the efforts here: https://www.peoples-beach-land-trust.org.
17 Superb coverage of community voices is included in the journalism of Labowitz, Dean. “Turning the Tide”, Urban Omnibus. June 1, 2023; Hannaham, James and Melissa Guerrero, Jeffrey Furticella, Tanner Curtis, and Rebecca Lieberman. “Is This The End of the People’s Beach?”. New York Times. September 15, 2022.; and Iezzi, Annie and Katie Honan. “Demolition of Long-Abandoned Medical Center Could Leave Queer Beachgoers Exposed.” The City. May 8, 2022.
Tim (Teal) Nottage