Fire Island is a place that loves its flags. Look around any of Fire Island’s communities, marinas, or beaches. Not only will you see a ton of American flags, but you are also likely to see nautical flags, military veteran flags, lifeguard flags, LGBTQ+ pride flags, sports flags, partisan flags, ideological flags, community flags, flags of foreign nations, purely decorative flags, and more.
What if Fire Island had a flag of its own?
No flag exists to represent Fire Island and unite its diverse communities. Do we need a Fire Island flag? We have gone this long without having one. While this is true, Fire Island will face unprecedented existential challenges over the next few decades, and a Fire Island flag would be a helpful symbol that will unite us in the fight to preserve our island. What will Fire Island do if we are devastated by another major hurricane? What will we do if, in the face of rising sea levels and budget deficits, the federal government no longer wants to spend money replenishing our beaches and rebuilding our dunes?
In the coming decades, we must unite our diverse communities to fight politically for the future preservation of Fire Island, just as those who fought Robert Moses’ highway did before us. Unfortunately, our island is burdened with the same divisions of politics and identity plaguing the rest of America and unique local divisions between our various distinct communities and their seasonal and year-round residents. We need a way to bridge these divisions.
Flags can be potent tools for uniting divided communities. Look at how valuable the rainbow flag has been in fighting for LGBTQ+ rights. The designer of the rainbow flag, Gilbert Baker, spent his later years in Cherry Grove, and we should follow his example by creating a flag for Fire Island. We need a common symbol for all of us to rally around.
In addition, a Fire Island flag would also be a cool thing to have that would inspire civic pride within the greater Fire Island community. We could fly the flag on our homes, businesses, community flag poles, and boats, in addition to but never in replacement of The Stars and Stripes.
A Fire Island flag could also be a boon for local businesses that could use the flag in their marketing and on souvenirs.
Any future Fire Island flag should be in the public domain, like Gilbert Baker’s original pride flag or the American flag, to ensure everyone who loves it can use it without considering copyright issues.
How would we go about designing a Fire Island flag? Well, any good flag nerd will tell you that we should start with the five basic principles of flag design pushed by The North American Vexillological Association (NAVA).
- Keep it simple.
- Use meaningful symbolism.
- Use two to three basic colors.
- No lettering or seals.
- Be distinct or be related.
A flag in the modern world has two functions: have the people it represents identify with it/use it and be distinct enough to be recognizable to outsiders. Flags that meet NAVA guidelines tend to be more successful at fulfilling these functions than flags that break all or most of these guidelines. The distinct flags of Texas and Colorado meet these guidelines and are widely used and celebrated, while the “seal on a bedsheet” flags of NY and NJ do not and languish in relative obscurity.
However, these five principles should be taken more as loose guidelines than unbreakable flag design commandments. Many of the most iconic flags in the world break at least one of these principles. Overly strict adherence to NAVA guidelines when creating a flag can also sometimes lead to a final flag that feels overly simplistic and even corporate. We should be cautious when designing our flag to walk the line of the NAVA guidelines carefully and to ensure that our flag adequately embodies the uniqueness and beauty of Fire Island.
We already have one advantage on our side when designing our new flag. Fire Island is awash with existing symbols that we can utilize. Chief among them is the Fire Island Lighthouse. Still, other possibilities include deer, the beach, wagons, surfboards, boats, a stylized map, the ocean, fire, firefighting and lifeguard iconography, fish and other sea life, seabirds, fishing gear, and more. For the colors of our new flag, we have four good options: looking to our island’s natural environment, using fiery colors to match our name, coordinating with the American flag, and borrowing the stripe pattern of our lighthouse.
We could hold a contest and solicit flag designs from the Fire Island public to pick our new flag. Mississippi, Utah, and Minnesota all solicited designs from the public when creating their new flags over the last few years. Fire Island Pines did the same in the 1990s when they selected their community flag.
We can do the same for the whole of Fire Island. Legend has it that our founding fathers called upon Betsy Ross to design the American flag. Now is the time for Fire Island to find its own Betsy Ross. Now is the time for a Fire Island flag.
