Happy Pride Month, everyone! As someone who didn’t understand my queerness until I was fully in adulthood, a lot of the narratives and emotional beats of Pride never quite felt like they fit, and so I’ve sometimes struggled to “feel queer,” whatever that means. But one place where I’ve always felt queer enough is at the People’s Beach. The far eastern part of Jacob Riis Park in Queens, New York, has historically been a haven for queer New Yorkers, and each year it’s a real joy to sit in the sand, look around, and be reminded that we come in all types of bodies, all ages, all styles. And then to have all my thoughts immediately drowned out by the “Gay UN,” our nickname for the guys who set up a massive sound system surrounded by gay and various Central American flags and blast pop hits all day.
The thing about Riis, however, is that it’s a bitch to get to from a lot of other places in the city, and concessions were hard to come by. For the last three years, Spectro has been the only food stand operating on that side of the beach (save for the Mr. Softee truck that shows up sometimes). With Pride weekend approaching, I wanted to see just how Spectro plans to feed all of us. It involves 300 pounds of lemons.
In today’s newsletter: A conversation with Spectro owner Ty Wright about defending the gay beach, and how he is working to make sure everyone gets their burgers on Pride weekend.
Plus, saying goodbye to a beloved restaurant. And restaurants posting AI slop is annoying, but we dared to ask: Is it illegal?
The easternmost tip of Jacob Riis Park on Rockaway Peninsula, a rocky and quiet corner of a long stretch of beach, has served as a de facto queer space since at least the 1940s, and, in many ways, the isolation was the point. It’s a little less pristine than the rest of the beach, but being farther away from the crowds and the families, it’s a spot to call our own. However, that seclusion, and the fact that the city and state likely did not want to make things particularly nice for queer people, has historically meant a lack of amenities. The closest structure, the Riis Park Bathhouse, was largely underutilized for decades before being severely damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2015. For years, the closest place to get a meal was a full 15 minute walk down the beach.
“It was crazy to me, and still is, that this was ever not available,” says Ty Wright, the owner of Spectro, which for the past three years has been the sole food stand on the queer beach, sometimes called the People’s Beach. If anything, it seemed like a missed business opportunity. “The gay beach, every single day it's busy. You can walk up and down Riis on a random weekday and there are maybe not that many people around, but the gay beach is packed,” he says. Somebody had to feed them.
Wright comes by his love of the gay beach organically. While building a career in New York restaurants, he found himself heading to Riis on his days off. “Eventually I moved here with my friend Eugene [Cleghorn], who’s the owner chef of Super Burrito,” he says. The two met working together at the Spotted Pig and moved, “because we decided we wanted to leave that world altogether.” They bought a boat to live on and worked beach concessions around the area, with Wright eventually serving food at Rockaway Beach Brewery. But slinging burgers anywhere on the beach is “not really why I'm doing this,” says Wright. He realized the gay beach was special to him and was clearly in need of some good food. “I know and recognize the history of this place and I just want to do whatever I can to give back to it,” he says.
In 2018, he reached out to Rockaway Beach Bazaar, which ran concessions further down the beach at Riis, to see if there was a way for him to set up on the gay side. There was, and he set up his first operation, Two Dudes. It operated out of half of a shipping container, serving burgers and fries, while in the other half was a bar run by Brooklyn Bazaar. In 2023, Brooklyn Bazaar left, Wright was offered a longer lease, and Two Dudes rebranded as Spectro.
Now operating from two full shipping containers, Spectro serves burgers and hot dogs, as well as a variety of vegan and vegetarian options, like the Briny Vegan sandwich with chickpeas and lacto-fermented carrots, and grilled cheese on sourdough Pullman bread. It’s still not big enough. “We have freezers planted secretly throughout Rockaway [peninsula], like a shelf in another person’s walk-in,” says Wright, because Spectro can’t store all the food it needs itself. While the gay beach is always crowded, Pride month is another beast. Over the past three years, Spectro has only seen its customers increase. “I always tell staff that people might have taken two or three buses plus a train to get here, or are walking from the parking lot and it's super hot. They're gonna be super hungry and really thirsty and we're literally the only place,” Wright says.
Two of the most popular things Spectro serves are its fresh watermelon juice and Spectroade, a combination of lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, ginger, and honey. Last Pride, Ty says Spectro ordered 300 pounds of lemons and juiced 60 watermelons to meet demand from dehydrated customers. But year after year, the burger is the top seller, and with “thousands” of beachgoers, that means hundreds of pounds of grass-fed beef. “I don’t know where we’re keeping this stuff but somehow we pull it off,” Wright says.
There has been worry that the gay beach is under threat, by forces natural, social, and capitalistic. In 2023, the year Spectro opened, the city demolished the Neponsit Beach Hospital, the longtime backdrop that had fallen into disrepair, but was emblazoned with queer graffiti — two outcroppings declared QUEER TRANS POWER and KNOW YOUR POWER, while the gate around it featured a memorial to Ms. Colombia, the late queer performer. Some nearby residents hoped the lot would become a children’s park, which queer beachgoers were concerned could lead to increased scrutiny of queer people and behavior under the guise of “protecting children.” The historically queer part of the beach was also closed off due to erosion and unsafe conditions, pushing everyone westward into straighter crowds. And now, plans for a private, “family oriented” boutique hotel and club are underway for the historic bathhouse. “Even though the beach will still be public, this changes the demographic of the beach. Every time you are talking about memberships or costs, it is limiting,” beachgoer Jen Mecum told the New York Times. “Capitalism and queerness have never been compatible.”
“When we were building it was so important for me for this to be a safe space for the queer community,” says Wright. “It’s violent to tear that building down and strip things away. The beach at Bay 1 is fully eroded and hasn’t been replenished.” Spectro was built to enhance the gay beach. On top of hosting pop-ups with other restaurants and dance parties with DJs from around the city, Wright notes that almost all of Spectro’s staff were hired off the gay beach. “That’s who we are. It’s part of my identity. It’s part of my staff’s identity.”
He does note, however, that the changes that have come to Riis over the past few years have not discouraged queer beachgoers. If anything, he says, there are even more queer people showing up every summer, ensuring that despite gentrification and discrimination, we will not be washed away. “I’ll do anything I can to protect the beach,” says Wright. Right now, that means making as many burgers as possible.
Got a crush you think would like reading about queer food and beach dynamics? Send them a gift subscription! They’ll like you even more, we promise.
New Stories This Week
Courtney E. Smith
Jaya Saxena
🐦⬛Bird Droppings
- I know it’s been over a week, but I watched the Knicks win the NBA Finals on an iPad in a Chicago brewery with the Ravenous crew, and I’m still not over it. I loved this blog from Seth Rosenthal on what that feels like.
- The Gazetteer reports that at least three gay bars in San Francisco have been using facial recognition scanners, which are linked to a private surveillance system that collects biometric and behavioral data on customers. When the gay bars start getting more information on you than the TSA, something is deeply wrong.
- Jonathan Dearden, corporate chef at Knead Hospitality and a contestant on Top Chef: Carolinas, performed at Trump’s UFC event and is now trying to defend his choices. “You don’t know me, so deciding my political beliefs based on a UFC fan event where I was invited to cook is a pretty wild assumption,” he commented on Instagram. Whatever helps you sleep at night, bud!
- Attaboy Local 134 won union recognition! Read our piece about some of the struggles the union at the world-renowned bar has faced so far.
- If you’re in New York on June 25, I’ll be moderating a panel on queer food with Erik Piepenburg, Megan J. Elias, and Mavis-Jay Sanders. Tickets are available here!
Raven Nickname of the Week
Want to have your nickname featured here? You have to become a Regular. And if you want to know the raven's real name, become a Big Spender today.
This week’s nickname comes to you from Carmen Obscura, who writes:
I can overthink this one easily, but this time I’m gonna go with Peckish - the Raven is always looking for a scoop. You know, like bites, but also journalism? And it’s a bird? I’ll stop.
Peckish will never stop!
