PRIDE Q&A: Sarah Barnhart, primary dreamer at FruitSalad

The events series for ‘lesbians, 2SLGBTQIA+ women, femmes, gender non-conforming folks, and their friends’ turns five in August. 

Sarah Barnhart (she/they) describes herself as the primary dreamer of FruitSalad. Originally from Burlington, Barnhart created the Hamilton-based FruitSalad after a visit to Montreal in 2021. FruitSalad is a dance party marketed as a “hang for lesbians, 2SLGBTQIA+ women, femmes, gender non-conforming folks, and their friends,” according to its website. 

Over the years, Barnhart and FruitSalad have supported different organizations. They include Trans Supply Library and the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, and the current recipient speqtrum, a youth-founded and youth-focused skill-sharing and community building 2SLGBTQIA+ program of YWCA Hamilton. 

Barnhart and her small FruitSalad team returned from a hiatus in late 2024, and have been running ever since. 

Barnhart sat down with HAMILTON CITY Magazine to discuss the creation of FruitSalad, her favourite experiences, the time a queer prom made her cry, and her fierce desire to be welcoming to anyone identifying as queer.

Answers have been edited and condensed for clarity and grammar. 

How did you come up with the idea for FruitSalad? 

I was on a trip to Montreal and I attended an event. I went to visit a friend that I had just met on Instagram and it was our first time meeting in person. So we were looking for stuff to do and there was a mid-week event. It was called Salade de Fruits and it was a happy-hour event in Montreal and I went there. I had never felt queer enough anywhere until I attended that event and I was like Hamilton doesn't have this, and the organizer was like “let me help you build it there.” 

What was that process when you brought it to Hamilton?

It all kind of happened sort of accidentally, but also not. 

This is very random. It's a very roundabout way of starting something, but I was doing a public speaking course called Slay the Mic with Jam Gamble, and our homework was to talk about something that we were doing on Instagram. And I was like, nobody wants to hear about anything I'm doing in my day-to-day life on Instagram. So I had gone to Montreal and met this person and then I went home and sort of talked about doing this event but the event wasn’t a thing yet. But I had talked about it out loud. So then I had to make it happen.

And on my way home from that same Montreal trip I stopped at Side Door bar for a friend's birthday party and I was like, this would be a great location, so I had somebody to reach out to and then I had reached out to friends about potential DJs and I talked about it out loud. So then I had to make it happen.

What does planning look like for an event you host?

We've done so many different types of events so it varies, but our main kind of dance party events are booking location and booking the DJ. We now have a door person that works with us. We also intentionally make the event early. Most events start at 10 o'clock. But ours start at eight o'clock and have started even earlier for different events. So we run 8 to 12:30, which is early and that gives people a chance to go out after if they want to, if they've made new friends or if there's other things going on. They can choose to do something after and stuff is still open. 

And the DJ starts right away. We've done other kinds of novel things where we've opened the doors early so people who are coming alone can come and meet, and we've done like a bunch of different things, so the process changes a little bit depending on what we're doing.

How long does it take you to put one of those events together?

I've gone from running monthly events, (we did every other month in Hamilton and every other month we would go out of town), to doing four bigger events a year. So we do the planning for those bigger events from the time the last one ends. We just start planning the next one.

But we've had stuff pop up or people be interested in hosting and we've been able to put something together pretty quickly.

You’ve been active for five years, so that brings us back to 2021. What was the process of starting up coming out of the pandemic?

It was very strange. We could only have masked events. They could only be outside. People could only talk with their masks off if they were seated. It was during that first time that we were allowed to do things outside together again. But all masked unless you were sitting, so if you were dancing, masks were on.

But also, there were so many people that discovered their sexuality through the pandemic and through TikTok and different things like that. So the timing was kind of perfect because so many people had discovered these things about themselves and didn't know where they were going to go and meet people or connect with the community.

So we kind of popped up at just the right time with that first wave of opening again. It was strange and also I feel like it was perfect timing.

What kind of changes happened as you rolled out of the pandemic?

We welcomed masks as an option moving into different events so when we were able to be indoors again they were masked events to start and then we offered masks at our events for quite a while. 

It was strange. The pandemic was really challenging for me personally with my anxiety and medical health traumas, so I found it really difficult. So we wanted to keep people as comfortable as possible and as safe as possible for as long as possible. And then still welcoming people to take care in the ways that kind of serve them best.

But it was strange going from needing to have all of those safety precautions in place, like having hand sanitizer as a giveaway, to being indoors and being in large groups. We just welcome people to continue to care for themselves and in the best ways that they could.

You are donating to speqtrum. Could you talk a little bit about that?

We did that from the beginning, and then as costs went up for events we slowed with our donations and then I would do in kind – trades for time and energy – instead of financial donations, but with that we were able to work with different organizations as well, which was really great. 

Speqtrum – protect queer kids and then we get to have more queer happy adults. so Speqtrum felt like it aligned with what we were doing. We also have a lot of queer families in our community … and then we've also been able to work with other organizations as well … So it's been good. 

We're doing $5 from every T-shirt and hat sale that we make goes towards speqtrum for the month. So yeah, but we originally did like a percentage of all of our event sales that would go to speqtrum that was how we started with them.

Could you talk a bit about your hiatus?

I was on a hiatus for a little bit. I was unsure if I could continue. I was experiencing a large amount of burnout. It was tough. 

The reason I was able to come back from hiatus was I had decided that if there was a location that could host us for a Halloween or Halloween-adjacent event and I could time it that way, then I would continue. And that's how we ended up at Bridgeworks … So then I had something to put my energy towards and it worked really, really well and I've been able to continue. 

That's also why now we do the planned four events a year, despite the fact that people want more. And we end up filling our calendar with other smaller events, but that decision to do four big events a year came out of that experience of burnout.

What inspired your Instagram post from September 2023?

Yes, we had a few incidents. People who were coming who were bisexual, pansexual, questioning, femme-presenting with male partners, you know, female assigned at birth but showing in heteropresenting couples, be asked why they were there. And that is like, so far backwards from what I ever wanted to create because that was my personal experience in queer spaces in the ’90s.

I was never queer enough. I was never like a lesbian. I identify as queer, not a lesbian. I’m a sapphic-leaning queer person and my experience was like, “What are you doing here, you have a boyfriend?” or “You don't look gay.”

[laughs] What does that mean?

So there were people in FruitSalad who were experiencing this from the lesbian community, asking them why they were attending these events that are meant for lesbians. But they're meant for queer and questioning women and trans folks. They're not only meant for lesbians. So people were, I think, maybe confused with the messaging. They are [the events] definitely sapphic leaning, they are for lesbians also, and queer and questioning women and trans masculine people.

So hearing that people were having those questions asked to them and being made to feel uncomfortable at events was so backwards to what I was hoping would be created when I created FruitSalad. I was like, you can't come if you're going to do that.

So has that been an issue you’ve had since the post, or is the message clear?

The message seems much more clear now. And I [talked] about my coming out experience here, too [ the 2023 post]. 

I would love for people to know coming to events that all kinds of women and femmes are welcome. And maybe it's somebody's first time coming to a queer space and what that looks like for them is not anybody's business. It's their [own] business. 

So I've had people attend events, it was their first event out ever as a queer person and their first event ever expressing their femininity and leaning in the direction of trans femme and had never even talked about it. But [they were] coming to this event and had the opportunity to pop into a makeup counter and have their makeup done so that they could come to this event and be there in their full expression for the first time ever.

These are very moving experiences and stories to hear from people, so I would hate that anyone experiencing that would come to an event and be told they're not welcome. That's a no for me. 

What do you want people to take away from a FruitSalad event?

I would love for them to feel like they are queer enough in whatever expression or stage of their journey they're on. I would love for that to be their experience. Because that was my experience and the reason that I started this for folks in the first place.

Safety is such a challenging thing to talk about because of the humanness of experiences, but I would like for people to feel safe in their skin, comfortable in their skin, comfortable being who they are, safe in community to the best of anyone's ability.

I would like for people to feel good coming to an event. And when they leave that they want to come back, or they've met people that they want to see again and spend time with. They are able to build community from attending an event, that it kind of ripples.

What has been your favourite experience?

Two things. Generally, my life is completely different. My life has changed completely: the people that I know, the community that I have now, my experience in Hamilton is completely different now than it was before I started FruitSalad. I'm hugely grateful for that, and honoured to have met the people that I've met, and have the people around me that are around me now. It's amazing. Nothing that I'm doing now, I would be doing if I hadn't started FruitSalad.

My favourite FruitSalad event was the first queer prom that we ever hosted, and my favourite moment of that event was when it was time to open the doors. And I opened the doors to check people in, and there was a lineup down the hall of the art gallery, of everybody in their, I'm getting goosebumps, everybody in their finest prom attire, whatever that meant for them. And I opened the door and started crying and I had to turn around for a second. And It was just the most special moment ever, because there were so many people there who had never had a prom experience, or had a terrible prom experience, or went not as who they are, and they were able to show up to this as who they were fully. And that my will forever be my favourite moment.

What do you and your team do to foster a safe space for people who are attending your event?

 Posts like that I think are really important. Being accountable for the things that do happen and being able to follow up when necessary with folks, I think is really important.

 I feel like we've for the most part just created a space where it's, I want to say it's known and understood for the most part how to navigate that space. I think that's why It's so shocking when in 2023, hearing that people were being made to feel uncomfortable. So shocking, because for the most part people who are there know how to navigate the space and therefore create, again, a ripple effect of that safer experience for people.

 I also like to use safer space and not safe space, because we can never guarantee safety for all people. We just don't know what people's experiences are. But safer, I think. And then when things go sideways, being accountable and following up and ensuring that folks know what's happened and what's not acceptable so that it doesn't continue and become an ongoing issue.

What do you see for the future of FruitSalad?

 So what I would love to do, my ultimate dream for FruitSalad, is that it's road trips and getaways, and that we do a boutique hotel takeover  and it's like a queer weekend. We've done a couple of these, they were excellent. Organizing and planning is a challenge for sure, but that's my ultimate dream for FruitSalad. That it moves into road trips and getaways with a party as part of that and then I think just finding a way to continue what I've been doing for as long as people are receiving it.

 Yeah, just watching to see if this is something that people want to see continue, and just kind of going with the flow to avoid burnout. I think going with the flow and not over planning is probably the best way to do that for me.

Do you see your team kind of getting bigger to kind of mitigate burnout or just staying as is?

 I think just staying as is, because I am not great as a leader. Most of the ideas for FruitSalad live in my head, and getting them out to somebody to execute them is really challenging. So the small crew that we have now that are able to take my ramblings and turn them into something real, those are my people.

What does life look like for you outside of FruitSalad?

I am like a weird hermit. If I could be at home all the time I would be at home all the time. Which I'm sure people don't realize.

 I am a mom. I have an 18-year old. So that's wild, having an 18 year old son, it’s a trip. I've been an independent parent always, so parenting, I guess, outside of FruitSalad. And I do have a partner who I spend quite a bit of time with now, which is really great. Just family stuff and being a hermit. Like I love a nap. 

There are times at FruitSalad I’m like, “okay, it's running, great I can go now,” and then I'm like, “oh wait I'm not going,” or “I can just hide under this table until it's done and then clean up.”

That is my actual mode. my Virgo Sun, It wants to be at home, but my Leo moon is like, let's have a party! So Leo runs FruitSalad.

Are you from Hamilton?

I'm from Burlington. Yeah, but I've been in Hamilton for ten years. Hamilton changed my life for sure. Again, I don't think anything I'm doing would have even been possible in Burlington.

It's like 15 minutes away, it's a different world. I don't think it would have been received the same way. I had a business with my dad for about ten years also, making hand wood burns like ornaments and home decor stuff, and we landed in Hamilton when markets were a really big thing and there was all kinds of support for small businesses and handmade items. We did that, and I don't think that would have been possible from Burlington either. So I think I landed in Hamilton at just the right time.