The uncertain future of a historic LGBTQ+ safe space: New York City’s People’s Beach WHIO TV 7 and WHIO Radio [Video]

NEW YORK — The summer season in New York City is informally marked each year by the hoisting of Pride flags on The People’s Beach, a queer haven tucked away on the far eastern corner of the city’s Jacob Riis Park in Queens.

“When I was a runaway, when I had no community at all, I came and I witnessed something that I never even knew existed: that was a sense of family,” said Ceyenne Doroshow, activist and founder of LGBTQ advocacy group GLITS. “People fed me, people dressed me.”

This has been a popular gathering place for the LGBTQ+ community since the 1940s, shaped by its beachgoers into more than just a spot to sunbathe and swim. It’s a place of direct and indirect social activism, where queer joy is at the heart of the jumble of music, umbrella and bodies packed tightly along the shoreline each weekend.

But …