Meat Rack, The

The Meat Rack, also called 'the Rack' or the Carrington Tract, is a stretch of dunes and scrub woodland on Fire Island, New York, sitting between the two historic LGBTQ communities of Cherry Grove and the Pines. Since at least the 1950s it has been a well-known gay male cruising ground, a place for casual sexual encounters where, in its own culture, barriers of race and class often fell away. Its reputation grew through the 1960s, and it became a reference point in queer pop culture, including the 1971 film Boys in the Sand. The site also holds somber meaning: many people who died of AIDS had their ashes scattered there. It remains a symbol of queer sexual freedom and community.