Pines Pavilion / Blue Whale

The Pines Pavilion complex at the Fire Island Pines harbour is the social hub of the most prestigious gay summer community on the East Coast — a bar, restaurant, and event space built over the harbour water, with views across the Great South Bay toward the Long Island mainland. The Blue Whale bar is the anchor: a large outdoor bar in the harbour building where the crowd assembles from late afternoon onward on summer weekends, watching the water taxis come and go, recognising friends from the previous weekend, and performing the specific social ritual of the Fire Island Pines summer. The weekend tea dance at the Pines Pavilion is the Pines equivalent of Provincetown's Boatslip — a ritual afternoon gathering that has been running for decades and that constitutes the social centrepiece of the Pines weekend. The circuit party events held at the Pavilion throughout the summer season are among the most attended and most sought-after in the New York area. The harbour setting gives every event at the Pines Pavilion a visual backdrop that no mainland club can match: the boats, the water, the dunes behind the community, the light of the late afternoon on the bay.