Turning the Tide

A little over a year ago, at a meeting of Queens Community Board 14, environmental remediation, planning, and community outreach experts involved in the project presented their plan to tear down the abandoned Neponsit Beach Hospital behind Jacob Riis Park. To illustrate their demolition tactics, they showed image after image of the three-building complex as it then stood, threatening neighboring houses with imminent collapse. Without these photos, an attendee of this routine, still virtual community board meeting might have had no idea that Riis Beach is among the last public spaces informally dedicated to the queer and trans community in New York City. Graffiti proclaiming “Black Trans Lives Matter,” memorializing fallen queer and trans community members, and broadcasting screeds against landlords and the police decorates the exterior of the buildings. Presented without comment or acknowledgement, these markings had a haunting effect, replicated by the tone of the conversation. Nothing about the community engagement plan suggested that the engineers’ actions would pose significant risk to the queer and trans community that flocks to Riis every summer.

The tenor of the conversation among queer and trans New Yorkers could hardly be more different. “No other park, no other recreation space, is for us other than Riis Beach. That beach is our utopia and there shall be no more unless we protect it,” Ceyenne Doroshow, founder of the organization Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society (GLITS) announced at a panel on queer history and advocacy at Riis later that summer. Although the hospital site is inaccessible to beachgoers, the buildings — especially the 1915 U-shaped hospital, a McKim, Mead & White design — provide cover for this queer and trans oasis that has flourished at the edge of a conservative neighborhood in Far Rockaway. When I hear queer and trans people talk about Riis, they describe it with the same reverence and urgency: It’s the only place like it in the world and no one can imagine a New York without it.

The conflict over Riis Beach comes at a terrifying moment for queer and trans people nationally. We are the target of a coordinated, far-right movement sweeping state legislatures. In the first half of 2023, Republican lawmakers have already introduced more than 500 pieces of legislation attacking queer and trans lives: restricting or eliminating access to bathrooms, healthcare, schools, social services, and, recently, the ability to appear in public. As historian Jules Gill-Peterson notes, trans people are being “expelled from the public sphere, exempt from care and support, as well as vulnerable to policing and violence. We are witnessing an attempt at the total privatization of trans life.” This is not a movement isolated to red states, where the majority of these bills are proposed. The inability of cities like New York to plan proactively for queer and trans people has the same effect: increased policing and surveillance that banishes our community from public space.

Riis is special precisely because it flourishes in public. Unlike the elite queer enclaves on Fire Island and Provincetown, or the private pools in Chelsea, Riis has no entrance fee, no bouncer, and no dress code. Public spaces like Riis — removed from the prying eyes of onlookers and physically challenging for the state to police — provide a venue for the kind of massive queer gatherings that can produce a shared political consciousness. Planning for the future of Riis could foster the historic and growing queer community there. However, current planning heavily weighs input from residents of the surrounding neighborhood, not the queer people who come to the beach from outside the council district. This imbalance is the product of New York City land use review processes, inadequate city and federal mechanisms for eliciting non-constituent public input, and disorganization among queer and trans community groups following the pandemic. As queer community groups begin to organize in response, what would it take to design for queer and trans people?

My first summers at Riis in the late 2010s came with warnings about National Park police on horseback, arrests for nudity, and caution around open containers. Although Robert Moses redesigned the beach to be an accessible Jones Beach for all New Yorkers, the park today is a far cry from its once grand stature, and policing fills in the gaps left by decades of neglect. Longtime beachgoers remember bathrooms, functioning water fountains, baseball fields, and concession stands on all sections of the beach, including by the queer section. Today, the closest bathrooms are in Riis’ bathhouse building, a quarter mile from the hospital site. If you are able to make it to the bathrooms, queer and trans people are routinely questioned by police for being in the “wrong” bathroom. If you can’t make it, residents of the Neponsit neighborhood frequently call the police to report public urination. United States Park Police patrol for unlicensed vendors, but there is nowhere to buy food or drinks and many water fountains are out of service. There are no ramps or mats for wheelchair access to the beach and little cell reception to call for assistance. Bus service is spotty, parking is expensive, and biking the bridge can be a harrowing task on a hot summer afternoon.

Despite all these barriers, Riis remains a queer summer staple. The beach is packed most weekends. Finding the queer section is easy: just follow the constant flow of people in the best outfits (or none at all) towards the easternmost end of the beach. The section in front of the hospital fills up first, forcing latecomers to spill out beyond the protection of the looming structure. At Riis, I feel seen, I feel hot. Riis was where I finally knew I needed top surgery and where I could go to still enjoy the waves before I was able. In their book, Time is a Thing the Body Moves Through, writer T Fleischmann describes coming to Riis in the summer:

Scholar, organizer, and artist Jah Elyse Sayers notes the particular importance and potential Riis has for organizing and movement building among Black queer and trans communities. Despite the ever-present policing at Riis, few (if any) spaces consistently allow for massive, public gatherings of QTBIPOC New Yorkers, and in that unique arrangement the beach allows for a rupture in the normal rules of time and space. Sayers quotes an interview subject in a recent study of QTBIPOC beachgoers: “Coming to Riis has transformed my relationship to the city since moving here six years ago. It is among the few places I can come and consistently access freedom in my body.” Sayers argues that being on the beach, “QTBIPOC don’t only claim a right to Riis, we develop a practice that strengthens our capacity to claim a right to the city as a whole.”

When I speak to longtime New Yorkers about Riis, memories of other banishments from public space still sting. The fate of the West Side Piers in particular fuels fears for the future of Riis. From the 1950s until they were demolished, the network of piers that lined Manhattan’s waterfront drifted into abandonment and, in certain sections, became essential queer urban space. People met at the Piers to cruise, party, and even live in the deteriorating structures. Although the piers could be dangerous and difficult places to be, they were open to anyone who could traverse the decrepit structures — unlike the bars and venues of the surrounding West Village, including the now mythical (and landmarked) Stonewall Inn. For many, the piers offered the experience of being in a crowd full of queer people for the first time, which had a profound effect on organizing for the gay liberation movement.

Queer youth of color found, and still find, refuge in the piers. Legendary activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera both lived at the piers at different periods of their lives. A young person describes what drew them to the piers in a documentary made by the QTPOC youth organizing collective, FIERCE!:

While nothing officially commemorates the importance of the Piers, years of activism by the majority cis, straight, and white Manhattan Community Board 2 culminated in President Obama’s designation of the Stonewall Inn as a National Monument in 2016. Today, a sign proclaims the soon to open National Park Service (NPS) Stonewall visitor center doors down from the bar, and signs with a random collection of LGBT movements encircle the small Christopher Street Park across the street. With steep rates of policing and real estate values in the surrounding West Village neighborhood, many queer New Yorkers do not see Stonewall as for them.

Amidst swirling rumors about the long-term fate of the hospital site, the immediate future is clear. NYC Health and Hospitals has demolished the buildings and is preparing the site to be handed over to the NYC Parks Department. In that May 2022 Community Board meeting, representatives of NYC Health and Hospitals detailed their plan to bring the hospital site “back to nature.” They intend to turn it into a vacant “grass field.” Health and Hospitals also plans to replace a small lifeguard storage structure by the road. None of these facilities will be accessible to Riis beachgoers or its lifeguards because of jurisdiction: Riis is National Park Service land, while the former hospital site belongs to the City. The project is expected to conclude at the end of 2023 and cost just over $25 million for the demolition, remediation, and storage facility. There is no money budgeted for anything else.

Groups with interests in the beach are forming their own visions for Riis. According to Doroshow, in an email to the Parks Department forwarded to GLITS, the Neponsit Property Owners Association detailed their desires for the site, which include a playground, dog park, and walking paths. The inclusion of a playground worries queer and trans beachgoers and many see it as a dog whistle for their erasure from the space. Although many children, especially in queer families, already attend the beach every summer, the rhetoric of a playground at the demand of the conservative, mostly straight neighboring community risks casting further scrutiny on Riis’ perceived deviance. Many are quick to point out that there is already a little-used playground some 750 feet from the hospital site.

Meanwhile, large-scale renovations to the decrepit bathhouse building at Riis are already underway. In 2022, NPS announced a $50 million plan in conjunction with developer CBSK, to be led by the architectural and preservation firm Beyer Blinder Belle. In addition to building improvements and repairs, plans include a 28-room luxury hotel, assorted dining options, and a pool. As at the hospital, queer and trans history are not informing the restoration process at this site, which is actively used by queer and trans people. When I asked NPS about engagement with nonconstituent groups, especially the queer community, a spokesperson offered that the agency has “established connections and is working to expand outreach,” suggesting that little input from queer and trans people has so far guided these designs.

New York City’s land use planning processes heavily favor the elected officials in the district where a project is sited, and few queer and trans people reside in the area surrounding Riis Park. With good reason: the queer and trans people who visit Riis face the typical barriers to homeownership and wealth building. Beyond that, the Neponsit and Belle Harbor neighborhoods have a strong history of active homeowner associations that have protected the racial and class makeup of their neighborhoods for decades. Their Council District is the only Republican-held council seat in Queens, represented by the conservative Joann Ariola. A Trump supporter, Ariola campaigned on a tough-on-crime platform, seeking increased funding for police to address “public safety” issues.

In an October 2022 op-ed in the local Rockaway Wave, Ariola called for an end to “lewd behavior” on the beach, and promised her constituents that the “new park space is going to serve as a location where families can gather and enjoy the outdoors.” According to an attendee at the February 2023 meeting of Community Board 14, Councilmember Ariola reiterated that the future of Riis “will be decided by the residents and the people of the peninsula.” Without directly naming queer and trans people at Riis, community members read her statements as a desire to eradicate them from the beach entirely.

Councilmember Ariola’s statements have gone further than condemning lewd behavior: she advocates for increasing NYPD and United States Park Police presence at the beach. I was among a group of queer and trans people who held a quiet, small gathering to commemorate the hospital building on the precipice of its demolition. National Park police arrived at our beachside event moments after we began and told us that they had been summoned by Councilmember Ariola’s office, alleging we were playing loud music and had an unpermitted event. (We were not, and we had fewer attendees than the legal minimum for an official event.) The police informed GLITS that they anticipate a sharp increase in the number of arrests at the beach this summer following pressure from Ariola’s office.

What would a queer and trans-led planning process look like? Few models exist for municipal policy that would encourage the community to thrive there, which is especially alarming given the far-reaching effects of anti-trans legislation. In 2017, the City of San Francisco officially designated six blocks of the Tenderloin neighborhood the world’s first legally recognized transgender district: Compton’s Transgender District. Using historic preservation code, trans activists created space for programs like an entrepreneur accelerator for trans businesses owners of color and housing programs, and are in talks to start a universal basic income fund. In 2022, Chicago opened the long anticipated park and AIDS memorial on the site of the once-bulldozed Belmont Rocks, a popular gay beach before and especially during the AIDS crisis.

GLITS emerged as the leading voice among groups advocating for a queer vision for Riis and founder and executive director Doroshow has big dreams for the site. She wants the land to be permanently under queer and trans stewardship through a Community Land Trust (CLT) where she can build a health and wellness center to serve her community. She wants gender neutral bathrooms, wheelchair ramps to the water, places to buy food and drinks, attentive lifeguards, and better transit access. She wants the arrests to stop and to quell the harassment she and the GLITS community have faced from Neponsit homeowners and Councilmember Ariola’s office. She wants queer and trans people to staff the queer section of the beach, from lifeguards to park rangers. And she wants queer and trans New Yorkers to have a place to go to be themselves every summer until the seas rise. GLITS is also working with scholar Jah Elyse Sayers to explore landmarking the beach with the National Park Service. Sayers notes in a 2022 essay in Deem that a strategy combining landmarking and a CLT that provides resources for the community “has the potential to loosen the stranglehold of private property logics on public space preservation by supporting the embodied health of beachgoers. This approach takes seriously the necessity of living to placemaking and the necessity of care to living.”

Doroshow’s ambitious visions for the former hospital site must contend with a number of contradictions for their implementation. New York City desperately needs additional resources for trans people to survive, but how easily could the majority of queer and trans people make it out to the Rockaways for a routine mental health appointment? As a commentator on the Pratt Center for Community Development’s blog recently highlighted, GLITS’ desire to solidify a queer and trans stake in the future of Riis undoubtedly has the effect of “placing publicly-owned land into the ownership of a non-profit land trust . . . in fact, privatization.” In addition, it is unclear how a CLT within a district led by a far-right councilmember could gain City Council approval. For this summer, GLITS’ strategy focuses on mitigating the increased policing threatened by Councilmember Ariola. They plan to create a community response unit that would attend to 911 calls in some capacity (either in lieu of NYPD or as designated intermediaries when police arrive). Thus far, this plan has involved meeting regularly with the local NYPD precinct and US Park Police. For some former members of the organizing efforts for Riis, these meetings are not only a step backwards in the meaningful reduction of police presence there, but could potentially worsen punitive conditions.

There are few, if any, formal avenues for queer and trans inclusion in the planning process for Riis, which heavily favor property owners and voters in the surrounding neighborhoods. Any changes to zoning or to the property deed (including transferring the site to a CLT) would have to be approved by the City Council, where Councilmember Ariola has outsized sway on the outcome. Barring no such changes, once demolition is complete and the site is transferred to the Parks Department, Parks can either choose to manage the site in-house or put out a Request For Proposals (RFP) inviting people to apply to enact their vision for the site. If they retain control of the park, Parks will conduct community outreach and elicit input from the groups it identifies as stakeholders. Considering that the community engagement plans already put forth have not considered the queer and trans community in a substantial way, Riis’ public is increasingly anxious about what will happen to the beach. The Parks Department has the capacity to engage non-constituent groups in a successful design process; as it recently did in the redesign of the skate park at Tompkins Square Park. But it remains to be seen if Parks is willing to run an engagement plan or accept an RFP that is contrary to the visions of the incumbent councilmember and her constituents.