From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is a program of stories and original documentaries from KCRW's independent producer project and on

this episode the history of a place.

It was just a free falling place.

I don't know how else to explain it as well as being you know a

great beach. I can remember walking out onto the beach in Cherry Grove and seeing

a thousand guys walking back to the pines into the early morning sunlight and it was quite a sight. It was quite a sight and very beautiful.

For most of the 20th century, New York's Fire Island was virtually the only place on earth where gay men and lesbians felt safe to live and love freely.

But at the beginning of the 1980s, that entire culture began to change.

As a shadow fell over the community and island goers began

falling to a mysterious and lethal new illness. What happened over the next decade

is a haunting story about emotional and physical transformation in the midst of a pandemic.

Producer Mike Dodge Weisskoff brings us the story of Fire Island told by a few of the people who live through the magical times and the dark times.

And a note that while there's no explicit language on the episode, there are references to sex in general, so take that under advisement. From KCRW.com, it's unfictional

and The Ghosts of Fire Island. The Fire Island is best understood as really a glorified sandbar. It's about 31 miles long, a few miles off the south shore of Long Island.

From almost every point you can see the bay in the ocean and there are no cars.

Here was this charming little place with no bicycles, nothing of the sort, just a boardwalk.

It's a very unique place, especially for a place that's only 50 miles from New York City.

It's just this expanse of water, it's very clear, The sky is clear.

Also, the stars at night on Fire Island because there's also no ambient light

are really much more brilliant.

It's like being in the mountains in the woods somewhere.

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