By Julie Lasky April 29, 2022
Erosion is a theme of the Pines, with its wind-tortured dunes and combustible wood buildings. But Bobby Bonanno, 65, who works as a hairdresser in Bellport, N.Y., and has visited the Pines for more than four decades, was concerned about the erosion of memory. To protect the heritage of the Pines, the affluent, largely L.G.B.T.Q. hamlet near the center of Fire Island, he decided to create the Fire Island Pines Historical Preservation Society.
“It’s become my passion project,” he said of the historical society he founded in 2010, because “a lot of these young people who come here to party” — most taking the ferry from Sayville on the South Shore of Long Island — “they have no idea that gay men in the ’40s or ’50s were handcuffed to poles here when cops came over for night raids.” The police would take the men back to Sayville and jail them, Mr. Bonanno said. “And if your name was published in the paper, you were ruined.”Image