Cape Cod History

1985: The "Tackiness" of Cape Cod. 1987: fare of the country: Cape Cod's Beach Plums

The "old media" takes its first bite out of the "New Provincetown"

On this day in 1985, the national media was describing Provincetown as one of the least tasteful destinations possible. The Associated Press scathing article below appeared in countless newspapers across the country.  Take a deep breath and read the full report;

August 25, 1985
TAKING ON 'TACKINESS' ON THE CAPE

Provincetown, once a remote, picturesque fishing village that attracted writers and artists fleeing the material world, is fighting to rid its main street of gaudy displays and street markets that obscure its historical charm.

''Year-round residents can barely afford to live here anymore,'' he added. ''My wife and I can visit New York City and not spend any more than we do here.''
     - Selectman George Bryant

In the summer, tourists jamming the streets of the village at the tip of Cape Cod are greeted by rock music blaring from a leather boutique and vendors hawking cotton candy and fudge. Many stores cater to tourists, selling painted seashells, plastic religious statues, leather sandals, caps with rabbit ears, brass jewelry, foot-long hot dogs and dried starfish.

In front of Town Hall, a cartoonist sells drawings of the actress Joan Collins. Cabarets and nightclubs along the main thoroughfare, Commercial Street, advertise performances by transvestites.

''No denying it's tacky,'' said Candice Collins, executive secretary of the Chamber of Commerce. ''Tackiness is something we want to combat.''

The downtown area has ''a real honky-tonk look,'' says Town Manager Jim Jeffers.

The town hired two inspectors July 1 to patrol the streets and write summonses to merchants who place their wares in the street, display large or garish signs and break other building code regulations. The summonses can carry fines ranging from $50 to $300.

The inspectors have a lot of ground to cover. The 1.5-mile downtown strip has 800 shops and 100 restaurants.

For a look at Ptown this past week, take a peek at this YouTube of the 2007 Carnival

''I'd say we have a five-year battle ahead of us,'' said Miss Collins, chairman of a coalition of residents and officials that opened the drive last year under the banner of the Better Business Enhancement Committee. ''When we started last winter, everyone was real gung-ho,'' she said recently. ''When we started in more seriously in the spring, we got accused of being do-gooders and trying to ruin their businesses.''

She said the inspectors issued hundreds of warnings and fines. ''It's not that we don't want little shops,'' she said. ''We just want them to be in good taste.''

''We want to look like Edgartown or Nantucket,'' she added, referring to the chic conservative island resort towns off Cape Cod.

Provincetown was not always tacky. Many sections of the six-square-mile town look just as they did before tourists started to arrive in droves after World War II.

It can still boast of pristine beaches, tall dunes, and winding streets lined with rough-hewn cottages and splendid Victorian mansions. Colorful wooden boats still crowd the harbor, although the fishing and lobster businesses have declined in recent years.

Every summer 50,000 tourists pour into Provincetown, many of them homosexuals who enjoy the community's live-and-let-live air.

The town still draws writers, such as Norman Mailer, and artists, such as Robert Motherwell, who seek the same solace once enjoyed by Tennessee Williams.

''Almost every important artist of the past 40 years has lived here at one point or another,'' said George Bryant, 48 years old, a lifelong resident who has been a Town Selectman for nine years.

Mr. Bryant said Provincetown, which has a winter population of 3,500, has gradually become dominated by the merchants who survive on summer tourists.

''Year-round residents can barely afford to live here anymore,'' he added. ''My wife and I can visit New York City and not spend any more than we do here.''

 1987: fare of the country: Cape Cod's Beach Plums

Between the end of August and mid-October, visitors to Cape Cod who travel the back roads near the ocean or the bay are likely to come upon residents toting white plastic Cape Cod Potato Chips pails and staring like bird watchers at the shrubbery. Actually, these Cape Codders are taking part in one of their favorite seasonal pastimes - the search for the wild beach plum. Though prunus maritima, or the beach plum, is found on bushes up to 10 feet in height in the sandy soils of dunes and coastal flat lands from Maine to Virginia, Cape Cod and the nearby islands have, above all, celebrated and appreciated its uses and beauty.

In May and June the great drifts of snowy, star-shaped white flowers that obscure the branches and turn pink with age have something of the effect on Cape Codders that cherry blossoms have on the Japanese. The saw-toothed, pointed, oval leaves follow the blossoms. In late August the berry-like fruit begins to ripen, turning from green to yellow-orange, red, blue or deep purple, and ranging in size from less than half an inch to over an inch in diameter. Whole families pursue the ripe, tangy plum, intending to use it in muffins, pies, brandy and sauces for meat or fish. (''Plum Crazy,'' a book by Elizabeth Post Mirel, lists 70 recipes.) Most of the plums, however, will end up as jam or jelly, long a popular souvenir for Cape visitors and a winter staple for residents.

Unfortunately, in the last few years many pickers have reported a decline in the once-bounteous supply. Bushes that used to bend to the sand under the weight of their beach plums have been found to bear few or even no plums. When asked for explanations, local naturalists, after saying there has never been a major scientific study, offer cautious observations.

Donald Schall, a naturalist at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in Brewster, noted that the beach plum had ''been suffering from a loss of habitat,'' partly because of heavy residential and commercial development on once-open lands. ''The other causes are natural, like the succession of taller bushes and trees overshadowing the beach plum,'' he said. ''And attacks by pests like the spindle gall may weaken the plant over time.''

Richard LeBlond, a field botanist and a research associate at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, said the decline ''could be partly cyclical, and it could be partly competition for pollination or space,'' such as from the salt-spray rose - brought from China by clipper ship - and the pitch pine.

"At best the crop is always variable,'' Mr. LeBlond said. The bushes bloomed heavily last year, he said, but heavy rains on Memorial Day in 1986 may have interfered with pollination. "The next day I was hiking in the dunes and found bush after bush stripped of its blossoms,'' he said. Apparently the erratic nature of the beach plum crop is nothing new. A fact sheet prepared by the Cape Cod Extension Service in Barnstable says beach plums ''only set a crop once every three or four years.'' This unpredictability would seem to explain why the horticulturist Luther Burbank and the Ocean Spray Company each dropped plans to cultivate the beach plum after initial experimentation.

Observations by longtime pickers generally confirm these views; a bush may be loaded one year and almost bare the next. In 1986 Provincetown and Truro had a serious beach plum decline while parts of Wellfleet, Eastham and Orleans enjoyed a resurgence. In fact canny pickers have never advertised the whereabouts of the best beach plum thickets. Nina Opel, who has been summering at Eastham since she was a child in the 1930's, tells a typical story. A good 25 years ago she dropped in on a neighbor who was saying excitedly into the telephone, ''Mother, I've found where there are beach plums!'' Her mother, whose voice leaped out of the receiver, ordered: ''Esther, you get right on over here. Don't you know this is a party line?''

No beach plum enthusiast is going to be deterred by the difficulties. If you join the quest, be sure to remember that beach plum bushes are likely to be interlaced with strands of poison ivy, which, fortunately, are more visible in the fall when the poison ivy leaves turn a brilliant red... Read the rest here.