This summer, the Cherry Grove Archives Collection is serving up more than sun and sand. From a new podcast (Queer Grove) to a drag pageant documentary (Making Miss Cherrys) to intimate Art Walks and the reissue of Safe/Haven, CGAC’s 2025 programming dives deep into the vibrant, complex history of Fire Island’s most storied queer enclave.
At the heart of it all is filmmaker and CGAC Creative Director Parker Sargent, whose decades of storytelling—through films, exhibitions, and now podcasts—bring Cherry Grove’s queer legacy into sharp, sparkling focus. In this wide-ranging interview, Sargent shares what the Grove has taught her about drag as protest, the politics of chosen family, and why queer sanctuaries still matter now more than ever.
No Kill Mag: Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you first got involved with the Cherry Grove Archives Collection?
Parker Sargent: My wife and I (both trans femmes) came out for the Invasion of the Pines in 2014, which takes place every July 4th on Fire Island, hoping it would be a day we could wear bikinis on the beach without the judgments we’d face at other New York beaches—even those considered gay, like Riis.
The event was a fabulous celebration of queerness, but what we found was something more: a place that would accept us every day. Walking from the Pines to Cherry Grove for lunch, we instantly made friends and fell in love with the quaint beach community filled with people across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.
I was immediately inspired by the Invasion and wanted to learn more, but aside from a few random clips online, there was nothing that truly explained the history of this massive drag party. That gap led me to create my first documentary, The Panzi Invasion.
Since then, I’ve made five feature films and around ten shorts spotlighting different aspects of the Grove’s history. Thankfully, I was introduced to the Cherry Grove Archives Collection and have spent the last ten years documenting stories and creating films, exhibitions, books, and podcasts that celebrate our incredible queer community.
photo from Safe/Haven
Cherry Grove’s history is full of contradictions—activism and indulgence, glamour and grief, camp and community care. As Creative Director, how do you choose what gets highlighted each season?
You’re absolutely right—the Grove is more than just a gay vacation destination. Since queers first began forming community in Cherry Grove, it’s been a place full of drama and delight. As decades pass and culture shifts—sometimes progressing, sometimes sliding back—our community has grown. What began as a haven for mostly white gay men has expanded to include more marginalized queer identities, broadening the story of what Cherry Grove truly is.
That’s why it’s no easy task to define the Grove in its entirety. The CGAC Board is constantly considering which stories to spotlight, influenced by the materials people donate, the questions our community is asking, and what resonates most. Our board members—Grove homeowners, renters, and visitors—bring diverse experiences and perspectives, which we draw from to shape what we highlight next, illuminating our rich and evolving history for the wider world. The fact that we all have a hand in our exhibitions and projects, is reflected in the way we present our history. Being an intergenerational group brings knowledge and passion into the work we present. It can be easy to focus on the hot gay men that inhabited (and still inhabit) the Grove, but we have voices in our planning conversations saying, “what about the women” and “what about people of color” and “what about transgender people”. We want to inspire more people to get involved and share the stories of their experiences in Cherry Grove.
In Queer Grove, you’re gathering oral histories in a place where the oral has always mattered. What’s been the strangest, tenderest, or most unhinged moment in the recording booth so far?
One unique aspect of our series is that the interviews span the last ten years—and most were recorded right in Cherry Grove. You can hear the sounds of nature, parties, Pride parades, and general queer joy in the background. At first, this felt frustrating as a producer, but we quickly realized it added something special: it makes listeners feel like they’re there.
Over the years, I’ve learned so much—about my community and about myself. I’ve laughed and cried with people, felt their pain as they shared struggles for acceptance, and celebrated the ways they found it in the Grove. Some interviews left me feeling like a better version of myself.
I’ve been told so many horror stories about the time during the AIDS Crisis, but the one that stands out to me most, is one of love and kindness. One couple told me about a neighbor who was in his last stages of the sickness and he needed to get off the island to a hospital, but the EMS from the mainland would not pick him up because they feared contracting the virus; so they carried him to their own boat and took him over to the hospital. When I hear something like that, it forces me to think about what I am contributing to my queer community, how I am helping. Because we are currently seeing the attempts at trying to erase us, and we need to work in our communities to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Cherry Grove is strange, tender, and unhinged—in the best way. Every day feels like living inside a queer soap opera. What stands out most is when people let go of their fears and tell the stories they once kept to themselves. Sex, drugs, love, loss, parties, memorials, tragedies, triumphs—it’s all part of our history, and all part of the podcast.
The Miss Cherrys pageant is camp, legacy, and drama. What did you learn about drag as survival—not just entertainment—while making “Making Miss Cherrys”?
I love this question—because drag is an act of protest. It always has been and always will be.
While the world is wrapped up in who will win this season’s Drag Race, queens in local bars are still getting harassed on their way to work. Drag has become a political talking point that puts our freedoms at risk—for everyone. You can’t be a drag performer without being political.
Take Sabel Scities (Timothy Bayars), for example. She’s gorgeous, talented, and could easily show up, collect her check, and head home. But out of drag, Sabel educates our queer community about HIV awareness. Like many drag divas in the Grove, she donates her talent to countless fundraisers that help keep our community thriving.
When a queen like Sabel or Ginger Snap takes the stage in Cherry Grove, she might perform your favorite pop song, but when she grabs the mic, she’s also telling her story—offering survival, strength, and inspiration to others who may be facing similar struggles.
Making Miss Cherrys is actually my sixth film on drag history in the Grove. And every time I document a queen’s story—whether she came out in the 1950s or the 2000s—I feel deeply connected. Because drag is never just performance. It’s about each queen’s relationship to queerness and community, about finding themselves and finally being allowed to share their talents in ways the “real world” never made space for.
Images from Making Miss Cherrys
Cherry Grove runs on glitter and volunteerism. How can younger generations—especially those who didn’t grow up with a place like the Grove—get involved or feel connected to this legacy?
Glitter and volunteerism…consider that stolen!
The crazy thing about Fire Island is that, whether you realize it or not, your queer identity is somehow linked to this place. Since the 1950s, it’s been coded into our personas through film, infused into our collective sexuality via novels, poetry, fashion, and porn. I truly believe you can tap into the liberation and legacy of Cherry Grove—even if you never set foot there.
When I present my films, I secretly hope queers in far-off places not only feel a pull to visit the Grove, but are inspired to create safe spaces of their own.
By understanding the gays who paved the path and the struggles they overcame, we can stay focused on protecting those hard-won freedoms—especially now, as they’re under threat.
Since the mid-20th century, Cherry Grove has been a blueprint for what’s possible when queers have control. It teaches resilience. It shows how to take matters into your own hands, band together in devastating times, and come out stronger. It proves that when the world says you don’t have value, you can still find your people—and build joy.
There’s a myth that once queer people get rights, we no longer need places like the Grove. But clearly, safe havens still matter. What does Cherry Grove offer that the algorithmic hellscape of queer Instagram can’t?
Community. I don’t care what anyone develops online or in a virtual world, there is no comparison to living in a space with your people, whether that is for an evening or a season. Being free to talk to each other in loud voices, to hear the music of our scene, to see the colorful queer spectrum all around you, that can never be replaced by artificial anything.
And sex.
Instagram can be hot…but it will never be as hot as being on the beach with someone that ignites the flames inside you, and the freedom to flirt and fondle and fuck…without fear of attacks from the non-queer world.
Queer people still need this safe space. Black and brown people need this safe space. Women need this safe space. The trans community needs this safe space.
What stories from the Grove still feel dangerously under-told?
We need to explore the experience that people of color have had through the decades of queerness in Cherry Grove. We are not a utopia, we are a microcosm of the “real world” and all the ills that befall it, are present on Fire Island.
Cherry Grove has meant so much to so many, and I would love to witness the stories of queer evolution that unfolded for Black and brown people as they carved out space for themselves in the Grove
Cherry Grove is both a sanctuary and a sandbar—eroding, literally and politically. As the climate crisis accelerates and queer lives are once again under attack, how do you think about legacy in a place that might not always physically survive?
That’s why the Cherry Grove Archives Collection is so passionate about sharing our queer history with the world—not just our community—through exhibitions, books, films, and media pieces like this one.
In 2021, our exhibition Safe/Haven: Gay Life in 1950s Cherry Grove at the New-York Historical Society helped teach people from around the world about our queer lineage and legacy. It inspired us to keep expanding the narrative and including more voices and experiences.
Registering the Safe/Haven photo book with the Library of Congress (shameless plug: the second printing is available at www.cgarchives.org) was a powerful step toward solidifying our place in history—so that even if we wash away tomorrow, there’s a record we were here.
Our queer history is in danger of being erased. We must continue preserving and presenting it—for everyone, gay or straight, cis or trans—because queer history is history.
photos from Safe/Haven
We love the book – the photographs speak volumes – so many of them evoke an easier time when being on the Island looks free. A place for living freely outside the law. Something in that, the risk, the danger, the joy of being on the edge bleeds through. How do you think it has changed since then and how has it remained the same?
I’ve interviewed hundreds of people who have lived, played, and loved in Cherry Grove since the 1940s—and the thing I hear most often is, “We lost a lot when we got our rights.”
There’s a specialness our community elders speak of that feels absent today. For those growing up with more queer equality, it can be hard to grasp what they mean. But as I learned more about the events and attitudes that shaped the Grove, I began to understand how essential it was to protect one another and build a space that was unapologetically queer—and how deeply that was cherished.
In many ways, that spirit lives on. New generations of queers still need protection, still need a space to be as queer as they are. That key element of Cherry Grove has never changed—and I hope it never does.
In your new podcast Queer Grove, you amplify the voices of longtime residents. What have you learned from these conversations?
Sadly, that not much has changed.
Or at least, not as much as you’d expect.
Queer progress has made headlines over the last decade, but it hasn’t moved mountains. In many ways, we’re still facing the same frustrations and limitations LGBTQIA+ people have been fighting since Stonewall.
But that sadness is outweighed by the stories of solidarity and sanctuary found in Cherry Grove. The freedom, the friendships, the chosen family, the sexual exploits, the style and attitude—it’s all alive in the oral histories we’ve collected. And it’s thrilling to share them with the world.
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