Welcome to Fire Island; Visions of Cherry Grove and The Pines
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1976. First Edition. Hardcover. 246 pages. "Floating almost miraculously at the edge of the great Megalopolis, Fire Island is a narrow sliver of beach and shrubbery that has become one of beach and shrubbery that has become one of America's most popular playgrounds... Focusing on the Island's most famous communities - Cherry Grove, the summer capital of the gay world, and The Pines - and in so doing illuminates not only the sexual more of its inhabitants not only the sexual mores of its inhabitants but the beauty, zaniness and pleasure of their company and environment."
The author, Jack Nichols (1938 - 2005), was a groundbreaking gay activist who campaigned publicly for gay rights nearly a decade before the Stonewall riots of 1969. Nichols was one of the founders of the Mattachine Society, an early gay advocacy group, in Washington in 1961. Nichols also helped organize some of the country's first civil rights demonstrations on behalf of gay men and lesbians and was also one of the founders of Gay, the first gay weekly newspaper in the US. While the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a form of mental illness, Nichols was instrumental in lobbying to change this definition.
Illustrated throughout with black and white photos. Pages lightly toned with small water stain to the top of the first three pages. Dust wrapper chipped at edges with water damage to top edge. Black boards. Very good, in good color photo dust wrapper. Item #3686
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