Rockaway Beach, New Yorkers’ Favorite Escape, Sees a Creative Resurgence
“Everybody from the city would come down and spend their summers here in this bungalow community,” says Terence Tubridy, a third-generation Rockaway resident and a partner in the Rockaway Hotel. “There are about 200 or so bungalows left; there used to be thousands that stretched all the way down the peninsula.”
In 2014, he partnered with the Rockaway Artists Alliance (RAA) on Rockaway!, a music and art festival designed to bring people to the Rockaways. Over the years, the festival hosted large-scale installations by Yayoi Kusama, Katharina Grosse, and Patti Smith, who also has a home in Rockaway. Biesenbach moved to Los Angeles in 2018, and the most recent installation—an augmented reality piece by Nancy Baker Cahill, which was on view through July 4—was sponsored by the Rockaway Hotel.