A Week on Fire Island

(click on photos to enlarge)
TD and I had a wonderful vacation last week in Fire Island Pines as the guest of our close friend Philip. You may remember we visited Philip last Labor Day in his beautifully restored modernist house designed by architect Andrew Geller in 1961. Philip had two other friends visiting, Tom and Jim, and the weather all week was superb. Aren't we lucky?
My favorite walk is always a walk

to a beach.

I took refuge from the hot sun under an umbrella. The clouds glowed in the clear blue sky.

I just love the colors of the beach: blue, white, green, khaki sand. Those are the colors that I wear.

I could watch the colors change all day. It's so relaxing.

5:00: cocktail hour under the shade of the umbrella.

Philip's modernist house is very chic indeed

and carefully edited.

Here is the pool in the morning,

and Jim making dinner at night.

Up on the roof is a fantastic deck for viewing the ocean and the bay.

Yours truly.

The sun set slowly over the Great Bay

sinking down below the horizon

until it slipped away.

Heaven on earth.

A Weekend on Fire Island

I had a challenging week at work at the ad agency so no chance to blog but I want to return a minute to last weekend, Labor Day weekend, when we went to visit our friend Philip on Fire Island. Ted and I were also celebrating our anniversary – we met in Fire Island Pines on Labor Day weekend twenty-four years ago.

Philip bought this house on Fire Island six years ago. It was designed by pioneering architect Andrew Geller and when it was built in 1961, it was the first example of modernism in the Pines. This important house had deteriorated and been altered but Philip completely restored it and brought it back to life. The design flies upward with bright expanses of glass windows. The walls were not built at ninety degrees but slant inwards instead which further emphasises the upward feeling. As a result, all of the corners and joints fit together inside like a wooden jigsaw puzzle. It's kind of like being inside a beautifully crafted boat.


The heated lap pool always entices.


Inside, modern furniture complements the architecture.


Chicness itself, as we say.


Through the guest room is a spiral stair case...


which leads up to a fantastic roof deck...


with spectacular views of the ocean...


and the bay. Really divine.


My favorite walk: the walk to the beach.


We set up camp...


and Ted and Philip took a dip.


When Ted and I met on Fire Island twenty-four years ago, we actually had already been introduced earlier that summer at an event for the Road Runners, the gay running club. When we met again on Fire Island, I was visiting a house on the ocean with friends and up from the beach came Ted who was part of that house. Last weekend I went for a run on the board walk and then I walked down to the beach. I stopped in front of the house where we met. A new house is now built on the site but ironically the owners still wave the Fire Island Pines flag which Ted designed for the community. I was standing there on the beach looking at the house thinking about the day that my life changed, when up from behind me came Ted. Just like twenty-four years ago.