Fire Island's Joel Kim Booster Reflects on the Film & Queer Hotspot
Fire Island first became a retreat for artists, actors, and writers in the 1930s. Long before the Stonewall rebellion of 1969, the island was a welcoming destination for gay people and the local theater helped define both drag and camp while providing a safe space for trans and gender-nonconforming people.
On our subscriber cover, Joel Kim Booster wears Lockwood51 old School Jock; Nike shoes; vintage T-shirt and shorts But in 2015, actor Joel Kim Booster probably knew very little of this (he was homeschooled after all, and jokes of his sheltered upbringing), when he landed in the gay mecca with a bunch of friends. “Back then, I was pretty poor,” he laughs. “I think back in those days, we would shove about 16 people into a four-bedroom house.”Though it can be “an economically impenetrable island” with a “lot of positives and negatives,” it was a game changer for Kim Booster, the writer and star of the upcoming film Fire Island.“It was, for me as a young gay man, to go for the very first time in my life to a place where there were no straight people, and you were just sort of able to be free, and, unencumbered — and this is me coming from New York City, which isn’t exactly a red state when it comes to gay issues — but even still, it was really powerful for me to be with some of my closest gay friends in a place where there were no straight people.
We could all just sort of be ourselves in a real, sort of primal way, for the very first time.” Vintage top and jeans; stylist’s own boots That’s the allure of Fire Island, of course.
It’s always been a place for sexual exploration, beginning when same-sex coupling could still land you in prison for life in some states.
