The Cherry Grove "Benefactor's Fund"

Happy Gay Pride Weekend!


We'll have our local gay pride parade here in Cherry Grove later this afternoon. The big annual pride parade and event in New York City has been in the news recently. Apparently, there are money concerns, and the Pridefest after the parade will not take place this year because the NYPD denied a permit for it to take place in Chelsea instead of in the Village. Some commentators wonder if these pride celebrations are relevant any more, or necessary given the state of the gay rights movement. I think that's the wrong question to ask. Yes, we have made progress toward equal rights, but not because of parades. The progress we've made has been due to other factors including the hard work of gay activists and gay rights organizations, and the very fact of our visibility, not on the streets of New York and other cities once a year, but the daily visibility of gays and lesbians leading their lives openly and honestly and out of the closet with family, friends, and on the job. So I'm ambivalent about the parades. I used to go many years regularly, but not any more. If young people find them affirming then why not? But they are essentially parties, and any benefit to the community's struggle for equality comes as a side effect. They can't take the place of the hard political work that still needs to be done.


I ran into my friend Charlie Isola yesterday downtown at the Cherry Grove Post Office. Charlie read my post a couple of days ago on the subject of the importance of focusing on preserving the Cherry Grove Community House. Charlie told me that's what the CGCAI's (Community Association) "Benefactor's Fund" is for. He also emphasized that it is the Property Owner's Association (CGPOA) that is working on the Top Of The Bay property issue, and not the Community Association (CGCAI), which are two separate organizations. Of course, the board of the Property Owner's Association is appointed by the board of the Community Association so they are connected. I remain highly skeptical of any plan to have residents pick up the tab for years of neglect of Top Of The Bay by commercial interests who made their money in the structure while allowing the property to gradually deteriorate to its current state. Let the bank that holds the property figure out what to do with it. Perhaps someone in the downtown business community will step forward with a solution. Let the market work. I've heard the argument that a benefit of having the community acquire it and demolish it would be an increase in our property values. I'm skeptical of that claim as well. First of all, property values have been doing pretty well on their own, having doubled or in some cases tripled in the last ten years. Second, I'm not convinced there is that much of a connection between the status of one downtown commercial property and residential property values. Third, who wants residential property values to go up even higher if that means our taxes will go up with them?

Jim

Interesting Ideas For Cherry Grove Organizations

Here's a shot of one of the beautiful beaches of Southern Brazil that I took back in February. Our cruise took us from Buenos Aires to Rio DeJaniero with stops along the coast on the way North. We have a beautiful beach here in Cherry Grove, one of the finest I've seen in the world, but the mountains that serve as the backdrop for the beaches of Brazil certainly add a spectacular backdrop for beach goers to enjoy.

In regard to the financial and membership woes of the Cherry Grove Community Association and The Arts Project Of Cherry Grove, a reader writes:

I think some of the problems with the groups are developing into a situation of genuine urgency, and if left unsolved, I see them leading to a collapse of the organizations primarily caused by the inability of the groups to sustain the cost of improving, and even merely maintaining, the Community House....I think that the best way for the organizations to survive will be for them to merge into the following entities: CGPOA as a 501c(4) politically engaged force in both Cherry Grove and Brookhaven and the CGCAI and APCG as a single 501c(3) charitable organization that pools its membership and labor pool as well as property and financial resources and has several different committees: arts, finance, funding and fundraising, civic association, environmental, etc...I also think that the costs of maintaining a self-described "band aid clinic" (the Doctor's House) are disproportionate to the meager benefits derived therefrom... Healthcare is delivered substantially differently today from the way it was in 1957 (and on the island, the EMS and Suffolk County Marine Police with EMT's and rapid boats to the South Shore make redundant the clinic and its often hard-to-find physician)... (the Doctor's House) would be better used as a revenue-producing rental property for the CGPOA/CGCAI.

I think the writer makes some good points. On the Doctor's House, the community has been struggling for years to staff it with physicians and to come up with the funds to maintain it. While it might be convenient to get first aid for minor medical woes here on the island, I agree with my reader that the cost of maintaining the facility is out of proportion to the benefits of having it.

I also like this reader's idea of "circling the wagons" by combining the two major community organizations. That is a suggestion that makes great sense in the face of a dwindling local pool of both people willing to volunteer and financial resources.

Maintenance and preservation of our Cherry Grove Community House (a separate structure from the Doctor's House) should be of paramount importance to our community organizations. I am concerned that the focus of some of our movers and shakers seems to be shifting to the fate of a commercial structure downtown, the Top Of The Bay structure, which is vacant. I have heard about a proposal to float a bond to purchase it, which would increase our taxes. I suspect that we will have our hands full just keeping the Community House afloat. I would prefer to focus on our own Community House and let the bank who owns Top Of The Bay or the Cherry Grove business community sort out the disposition of this private commercial property. If our taxes have to go up to support revitalization, let's insure that the residents reap the benefits.

Jim

Small Town Social Dynamics

I wonder if the social dynamics of all small towns are like those here in Cherry Grove. Here we have a number of long established social groupings organized around shared interests in things like entertainment, drag, and various community volunteer organizations, such as the volunteer fire department, the community association, etc. For the newcomer, while most of these groups are open to anyone, some of these groupings are harder to break into than others. A few are, for all intents and purposes, closed to new members. All of them share in common a group dynamic that requires conformity on the part of members and one that is to some degree or another, hostile to individuality. As a result, not everyone who calls Cherry Grove home is a member of one of these social groupings. Some people who have lived here for decades appear to not be connected to any of the established groups. Two of the long-established high profile groups in the Grove, the Arts Project Of Cherry Grove (est. 1948,) and the community association have in recent years been experiencing hard times in terms of membership numbers and finances. Both groups seem powerless to change course and reverse the downward trends in which they are entrapped. One dynamic that is affecting all of the groups in the Grove is the basic fact that there are simply less people here today. The town is no longer quite as popular as a resort destination as it once was. There are a number of reasons for this, but it is a reality that groups should take into account as they struggle to remain viable. With less of a base of people to draw from, it becomes even more important for these groups to be more open and welcoming, and to suppress the natural tendency of the group to demand conformity. They can no longer afford to be quite so choosy in terms of who to admit to the group. It will be interesting to see if these groups are successful in turning things around. It will require jettisoning some old attitudes.

Photo: a scan of an old post card showing Cherry Grove in the 1960s

Jim