Invasion of the Pines, Fire Island, July 4, 2013

Try State contributor Robert Langdon took these fantastic candid photos from the drag Invasion of the Pines at Fire Island on July 4th. You can view more of his photos by clicking here

During the summer of 1976, a restaurant in Fire Island NYdenied entry to a visitor in drag named Terry Warren. Fire Island Pines is a beach community on Fire Island east of NYC with a gay majority population that was at the time more affluent and conservative than the population of nearby Cherry Grove.When Warren's friends in Cherry Grove heard what had happened, they too dressed up in drag, and, on July 4, 1976 with Cherry Grove's 1976 Homecoming Queen Thom Hansen (Penzi) in the lead, sailed to the Pines by water taxi. The boatload of drag queens that stormed into the Pines that day—to a surprised but exuberant welcome—was the first "invasion," an event now repeated each year.