Bartending School in Ocean Beach, NY

Ocean Beach was incorporated as a village in 1921. It formed with the merger between the tract of land owned by John A. Wilbur and Stay-A-While Estates. It is the location of Fire Island’s only elementary school, which first opened in 1918.

The community was once a favorite of celebrities including Fanny Brice, Carl Reiner, and Mel Brooks.

When artistic bohème of New York started frequenting Fire Island during the Jazz Age, Ocean Beach became the first gay village of the island. This caused tensions between the gay (often famous) tourists and locals, which peaked when Antoine de Paris built on his land an outdoor toilet with revealing saloon door right across the street from a Catholic church. The villagers arranged a provocation by choosing a teenage boy to “seduce” one of Antoine’s guests, and after catching the guest in flagranti, they burned down Antoine’s property. After that and the Great Hurricane of 1938, the gay community settled in the Cherry Grove.