My Secret Provincetown

The gayest place around? Okay, that's not a secret.

 
 
 

few years ago it boasted—as far as anyone knew—the only town council in America consisting of all openly gay people. (It may still have that distinction; I just haven’t kept up on the topic.) And that’s only one of the many interesting things about Provincetown. So to complement MySecretCapeCod.com, I present some of my favorite P-town secrets.

Dramatic Provincetown
Provincetown is often cited as a birthplace of American theater. It is where our first internationally renowned playwright Eugene O’Neill crafted some of his earliest masterpieces with the Provincetown Players. The Provincetown arts colony attracted all sorts of bohemians in the 20th century. And while O’Neill was a confirmed heterosexual, another great American playwright, who “relied on the kindness of strangers” and summered frequently in Provincetown, Tennessee Williams, was definitely gay.

Shacking Up
Although – or perhaps because – they had no electricity, telephones or running water, Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill were among the bohemians who would often sequester themselves in dune shacks by the sea; some are memorialized in Edward Hopper’s famous paintings. Seventeen of the shacks, on High Head Beach at Peaked Hill Bar, survive; check with the National Park Service for information about visiting.

Go Ask Alice
One bohemian who still camps out at Land’s End is Alice Brock, made famous in Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant.” She’s currently staked out in a little house in the West End of town, where she creates and sells her art work. Catch her at home and she’ll be happy to regale you with tales of her and Arlo and James Taylor and the heady times of the Vietnam era. For a small fee she autographs photos of herself with Arlo.

Pilgrim’s Progress
Provincetown is where the Pilgrims first disembarked in the New World. And the iconic Pilgrim Monument commemorates the event. President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone in 1907, and President Howard Taft dedicated the tower in 1910.

Gropius Rising
Another favorite P-town secret is the Murchison House, a modern-looking building in the far West End, on a hill overlooking the great breakwater. Designed by Walter Gropius’s Cambridge firm in the 1950s, it is widely considered a triumph of modernism. Architectural Digest called it the best design of 1959.

Magnetic Provincetown
A not-so secret is that so many LGBTs flee to the tip of the Cape for the summer, queer culture virtually dries up in Greater Boston in July and August.

Stop Writing!
There are so many wonderful secrets of Provincetown that it’s hard for me to stop myself from writing more. Speaking of writing, Norman Mailer used to summer in P-town. His will stipulated that his home here be transformed into a writer’s colony, which it has.

Find more Provincetown secrets at MySecretCapeCod.com.

James Lopata is editor of Boston Spirit magazine.