A Provincetown Path Long Gone

A lovely view of Provincetown Harbor was found down Hollyhock Lane.

At one time there was a lovely little footpath known as Hollyhock Lane between 271 and 273 Commercial Street, between the buildings that are now Tin Pan Alley and Board Stiff.
The path lead from Commercial Street, in front of Town Hall, to the beach and the harbor. It was chock-full of greenery and flowers, mostly hollyhocks, and this scene was the subject of many popular postcards over quite a period of years.

This card had several printings over the years, with
this same photo colored differently at least three times.

The postcard above has no postmark to show its time period, but the white border dates it somewhere between 1915 and 1930, when WW I had caused American printers to begin conserving ink by printing short of the edges, with a colorless border left around the images on the postcards they were printing.
On the left, this popular postcard of the day shows a woman posing on the footpath in the view from the opposite direction, seen as one would walk up Hollyhock Lane from the beach toward Commercial Street, Town Hall and the Pilgrim Monument.
As with other early footpaths around town, this one is gone today. A little trail between the buildings still exists, now hidden by a large wooden gate, but this former flower-lined path is no longer that charming little walkway open to the public, and no longer leads folks to those gorgeous views of the beach and Provincetown Harbor.
There are still a few nice little footpaths to the harbor and to other spots around PTown, though, and I'll try to feature some of them shortly, but in the meantime, keep an eye out for a couple of these that you just might find on your own.

Sun Dog Appears Over Race Point

A sun dog appears in these stacks of thin, wispy, cirrus clouds as the sun descends over Race Point.

A sun dog, sometimes called a mock sun or phantom sun, is an atmospheric event called a parhelion in scientific language. It can give the appearance of a pair of bright spots on either side of the sun, sometimes seen at the left and right edges of a luminous circle, or halo, visible around the sun, with the area inside the halo appearing slightly darker. These halos can appear when flat, hexagonal ice crystals in cirrus clouds are drifting in random orientations, refracting the light and bending the rays that pass through them.
As the crystals sink through the air they become vertically aligned, refracting the light horizontally, which can produce sun dogs, with a reddish color nearest to the sun, and always appearing at the same height above the horizon as the sun, whether or not the complete halo is visible.
This sun dog was seen from the Provincelands Visitor Center, looking out over Race Point as the late-afternoon sun dipped toward the horizon. This phenomenon is easiest to spot when the sun is low in the sky, and it can occur at any time of the year, so if you look out toward Beach Point in the mornings, and Race Point in the afternoons, and if these wisps of thin cirrus clouds are present, you may get lucky and spot a sun dog.

Provincetown's Splendid Foliage Season

Colors are blazing along Provincelands Road.

Provincetown's fall foliage has been slowly turning colors for the past three weeks or so, with oak leaves gradually turning from green to a deep bronze color, while beech leaves turn to gold. Maples turn myriad shades of red, and vines of Virginia creeper wrapped around the trunks of various trees of any variety turn a deep scarlet.
This photo was taken a few days ago along Provincelands Road, near the branch of the bike trail that begins at the far west end of Herring Cove. Foliage colors are spectacular this year because we haven't had too much rain over the last few weeks, nor for most of the summer. That makes for brighter hues as the leaves take on their autumn colors.

The Spectacular Provincetown Sky, Opus 3

Sometimes I think I could spend the rest of my time on this planet just watching the colors change in the sky and in the various waters that surround Provincetown…

As this rising tide crept into the marsh and stole the golden colors right out of the sky, these little dollops of clouds parted just enough to let a few rays from the setting sun turn this sandy hillside at the edge of the wetlands a little pinkish.

The Spectacular Provincetown Sky, Opus 2

The Provincetown breeze forms a series of rolling waves in the clouds as the sun sets over the rooftops.

If I had turned the corner from Carver onto Commercial Street 30 seconds earlier, or later, I'd have missed this shot of an insistent breeze gently swirling the clouds into a series of rolling ocean waves.
I happened into a crowd that had gathered spontaneously in front of the Aquarium Marketplace, at the beginning of Provincetown's West End, where people were looking up over the rooftops toward the western sky, exclaiming over the sight they were seeing as they fumbled for their cameras. The wind was twirling the clouds into neat little curlicues as it blew them along the horizon. I heard someone say there was a name for this phenomenon, but no one seemed to know what it was.
You might think these clouds have been "photoshopped" into the picture, but there is no trickery here. This is simply Mother Nature doing what she does… turning the natural elements around us into  stunning, elegant little displays that magically appear wherever you go in Provincetown.

UPDATE: My thanks to a reader who e-mailed me a name for these clouds, enabling me to look up some information on them. It turns out this sort of cloud formation sometimes results when there is more than one layer of air above us, moving at different speeds on a windy day. A thinner layer of air might move more quickly over a denser, heavier layer, rolling a bank of clouds into a shape that resembles a series of cresting waves.
These cloud formations are known by a number of names around the world, and are often called "Kelvin-Helmoltz" clouds or billows. They were named for Lord William Thomas Kelvin, a Scottish physicist and mathematician, and for Hermann von Helmholtz, a German physicist, physician and philosopher (say that five times really fast,) both of whom were born in the 1820s.
"Shear-gravity clouds" is another monicker for these whimsical swirls of condensed water vapor that most often indicate instability in the atmosphere, and are a predictor of likely turbulence for airplanes. And they make a dandy bit of sculpture in Mother Nature's sky.

PTown Photo Ops Abound. Enter TheYearRounder's Photo Contest!

Twilight brings the Pilgrim Monument to life as the lights come on.

If you just keep a camera handy, you can shoot some really great photographs all around Provincetown, with very little equipment, and with very little effort. When I started writing this blog I started carrying a camera with me every day. My cell phone camera (not the greatest because it is now several years old and woefully low on pixels) had to do for a few weeks until I could do a little quick research and get something a little beefier on eBay. I always buy technology at least a couple of generations back from whatever the current model is, because I seldom need all the bells and whistles found on the latest versions of cameras, computers, phones or whatever, and I usually need to save a bit of money on these items as well.
I most often will shop online, since the closest big-box electronics stores or discount centers are 54 miles or more from Provincetown, and I gave up driving a car and churning out all that polution years ago. Shopping online also lets me buy something used or refurbished rather than new, which cuts down on resources used in manufacturing, and all that packaging used for new products, and saves the fuel used to ship truckloads of new merchandise all around the country each year, as I recently wrote in a column about reusing and recycling household items.
Get a good camera inexpensively and carry it with you, and you can get great photos yourself. I wanted something digital with a lot of zoom and a good-sized screen so I could see what I was shooting, something to counteract jiggling the camera on those big zoom shots, and automatic operation with the ability to adjust settings manually as well. I wanted a camera that used batteries that I could recharge so I didn't have the guilt of tossing out hundreds of batteries over the years, but ones that I could also find at the drugstore in a pinch, and my "new" camera had to be small enough to carry around town with me wherever I went.
I picked a couple of models that had all these features, looked up user reviews on Amazon, and from there I chose the camera model I wanted to shop for on eBay. I got a great deal on a used one, $88 including shipping, and I've been really amazed at the photos I've been getting with my Canon Powershot SX120 IS. The photo above, and most of the photos I've put on this blog, have been taken with this camera, and I really couldn't be happier with my choice.
So as I was walking along Commercial Street toward the center of town one evening, just as the twilight was about to give way to the night sky and the lights kicked on at the Pilgrim Monument, I saw this image rising above the rooftops a bit west of Town Hall. I got out my trusty camera and managed to get a couple of shots before the light changed. This photo turned out really well, with a lot of detail in the granite blocks of the monument, and the sky not yet dark.
Send me your digital photos in jpg or gif format and I'll post the best of them here. Even a cheap "throwaway" camera can capture a great photo. Just don't forget to recycle the camera when you're done instead of throwing it away, which most developers will do for you, and then scan the photos into digital files to enter them in this contest. Email address and contact info is shown above. By entering this contest you grant your permission to have your photos published on TheYearRounder's Guide to Provincetown, with proper credit listing your name. Tell us a little about your photos, too. Only jpg or gif images can be entered. Photos shot on film can be converted to digital files at Provincetown Copy Canter, above Ross' Grill in the Whalers Wharf, at 237 Commercial Street, or at the Mail Spot, in the lane that leads to Sage, at 336 Commercial Street.
The best original photos taken somewhere in Provincetown, and received digitally by noon on Labor Day, September 2, 2013, will win prizes from local shops and restaurants. TheYearRounder's selections will be final. Happy shooting!

A Cloud With Square Corners? Only in Provincetown

This photo was shot through the window glass while driving through the Provincelands, out toward the Visitor Center. This is another one of those examples of the sort of naturally occurring sights often found in the Provincetown sky where it makes me think that if you were to paint this sky, people would think you made it up.
What sort of wind would have to come along to swirl the end of this cloud into a square corner?
The sky around us never ceases to amaze me, and the shapes formed by the endless variety in the sorts of clouds rolling overhead every day show me something absolutely spectacular every single time I venture out.

PTown offers Hundreds of Photo Ops at Any Moment

Just walking down any street in Provincetown any number of photo opportunities can pop out at you. Everywhere you go there are beautiful gardens, a peek at the harbor, an amazing cloud formation, a drag queen in full costume flying by on a bicycle...
Since I've been writing this blog every day I've been carrying a camera with me everywhere I go, and sometimes the way I choose my topic for any given day is by flipping through the hundreds of photos now stored in my computer, and the number grows by another dozen or more every day. There's never a shortage of beautiful or interesting things to photograph here.

The photo above jumped out at me from a garden on Bradford Street, where new, perfect blossoms had just popped out that day. The photo at the right came as I was having dessert on the back deck out behind Waydowntown. It was taken on a calm day in the harbor with a fairly high tide, in the few moments right before twilight where the water takes on that sort of pale violet color and the lighthouse out on Long Point lights up. The last whale watch boat of the day was sailing into port at the end of its sunset cruise. I got this photo as the whale watch boat, lined along its rails with passengers enjoying the last colors of the sunset behind me, came gliding into the harbor between the Long Point Light and the boats moored just off the beach.

Here is legendary film director Roger Corman (Pit and the Pendulum, House of Usher, Little Shop of Horrors and fifty others) lounging comfortably on the stage at Provincetown Town Hall during the 14th Annual Provincetown International Film Festival last month. He is being interviewed by director and local legend John Waters just before receiving his award as this year's Filmmaker on the Edge. If you missed my blog about this year's film festival, you can check the archives section of this blog, or you can click this link to This Week's Hot Ticket - PIFF. This was shot from my seat, way at the back of the hall, between the heads of audience members.

I love this photo. It was taken at the breakwater in the West End on a day when there were several families exploring the tidal flats at low tide. Check the archives or click this link PTown Beachcombers Find Little Treasures to see the post that went with this photo.
So put a camera in your own pocket. I've seen some remarkable photographs taken even with disposable pocket cameras. Capture a serendipitous encounter or the astonishing beauty of Provincetown as you make your way around the town.

Provincetown Portuguese Festival 2012

Commercial Street was packed this afternoon with Portuguese dancers, band members and others as well as parade watchers, all making their way along the street following the parade on this third day of Provincetown's annual Portuguese Festival.
Although there had been Portuguese sailors fishing these waters as early as the fifteen hundreds, they actually began settling in Provincetown in sizable numbers around the year 1840 or so. A number of sea captains from this area began sailing to Portugal and the Azores in search of skilled fishermen and ready sailors who were willing to leave their families behind as they set out to sea for many months at a time, or longer. A number of those fishermen settled in Provincetown, working very hard to eventually save up enough money to be able to send for their families to come and live here as well. The Portuguese were pretty much the backbone of the early fishing community here, while the Yankees growing up in Provincetown tended more often to become whalers rather than fishermen. Thus entered the golden age of sail here at the tip of Cape Cod, with the middle to late eighteen hundreds seeing some 700 fishing and whaling vessels in these waters, all of them outfitted and supplied here in Provincetown. Come and join us in celebrating Provincetown's tremendous Portuguese heritage. There are still events to come in this year's festival, so don't miss out.
The 65th Blessing of the Fleet will be held Sunday, beginning with the special Fishermen's Mass at Saint Peter's Church, on Prince Street, at 10:30 AM. It will be followed by the procession from the church to MacMillan Pier from approximately noon to 1:00 PM. The actual Blessing of the Fleet is scheduled for 1:00 PM at the far end of MacMillan Pier. The blessing is a wonderful tradition of the Provincetown Portuguese Festival where boats from miles around, and even you and I in our little rowboats, canoes and kayaks, can join in the procession of the boats that will pass by the end of the pier as each vessel is blessed by the priest for safety on the water and a bountiful fishing season.

Also at noon, there will be entertainment on the pier featuring Rancho Folclorico Corações Lusíadas, who will be performing traditional Portuguese dances in costume. The link above leads to a YouTube video of their performance on the pier at last year's festival, posted by  stagnes06. There will also be food offered on the pier from noon to 4:00 PM at the Tasca do Pescador, or Portuguese Cafe, set up for the occasion. Food at this event often includes linguica rolls (say leen-gwee-suh) which consists of a slightly spicy Portuguese sausage, grilled over an open flame and served on a bun with mustard. This is one of the great treats of the festival. And don't miss the band concert scheduled from 4 to 6 PM at Town Hall, featuring Saint Anthony's Band from Cambridge, Massachusetts. And if you missed today's parade, here's a photo recap of some of the participants:

One of several marching bands

There were a number of dance troupes performing in the parade

Smokey the Bear made an appearance

Dancers came in all sizes

Portuguese flags decorated the float that carried this band

An antique fire truck was a hit

It's not a parade without the Town Crier

A Scottish bagpipe band joined us

Looking over the awning at the Waterford Inn, more traditional costumes

Another marching band

Kids got to ride in the town's fire trucks

A band with dancers

Come and join us in the rest of the celebration, and put this event on your calendar for next year, the third week in June.

This Weeks Hot Ticket - Portuguese Fest Clam Feed

Plump Steamers and all the trimmings are always part of the
all-you-can-eat Clam Feed, one of the most popular events each year
at the annual Provincetown Portuguese Festival

Its the third week in June, and that means it's time for Provincetown's annual Portuguese Festival, with its music, dancing, a parade on Commercial Street, and of course, plenty of Portuguese food. One of the most anticipated events at this yearly celebration is always the Clam Feed, where volunteers serve up one bushel after another of succulent littlenecks, steamers, quahogs and sea clams, prepared in every way you can think of. The photo above is a plate of steamers I had at last year's festival, served in the traditional way with broth for rinsing, butter for dipping, lemon for squeezing, along with plenty of buttered corn-on-the-cob and fresh bread. The cups behind the plate held a traditional New England style creamy clam chowder and a robust sea clam chili, made with a spicy tomato base.

Elsewhere on the menu were heaping trays of littlenecks on the half-shell, stuffed quahogs (say KO-hogs) which are large hard-shelled clams chopped up into a bread stuffing with garlic, onion, peppers, celery,  and a slightly spicy Portuguese sausage called linguica (say leen-gwee-suh) and baked in the oven, usually mounded into the big shells left after the clams are shucked. There will likely also be some version of a cataplana, a sort of stew made with littlenecks, aromatics, and of course, more linguica. Admission for this event is usually around twenty bucks or so, and a real bargain for unlimited helpings of anything and everything served. 

The Clam Feed will be held Friday from 5 to 8 PM at the Bas Relief, which is kind of P'Town shorthand for the little neighborhood park on Bradford Street, behind Town Hall, where you'll find a large bas-relief plaque depicting the signing of the Mayflower Compact in 1620. The plaque will be somewhat obstructed but still accessible behind the huge white tent tops set up for the duration of the festival. This enclosure will take up most of this little park, and it  will also be the site for tonight's opening party and for the Portuguese Soup Tasting from noon to 3 PM on Friday, as well as the Lion's Club"s Portuguese Food Court on Saturday from 11:30 AM to 7:30 PM. Attend these events as early as you can, because even though they plan to serve the masses, sometimes they run a little low on certain items toward the end.

Get out and enjoy some of the events scheduled for the festival, like the parade on Commercial Street on Saturday at 3 PM, and the 65th Blessing of the Fleet on MacMillan Pier at 1 PM on Sunday. There will be a fishing derby for kids on Friday, puppets and face painting, music, Portuguese dancers in costume performing on the streets, a band concert and all kinds of entertainment through Sunday, and many of these events are free. The Fado Concert is always a highlight of the festival, held this year at Town Hall on Saturday at 7:30 PM. 

Happy Portuguese Festival, everyone. Obrigado!

Hike The West End Breakwater to Wood End Light

Don't forget to check the tide chart before you set out to walk to Wood End Light. It is a fairly strenuous walk of about a mile-and-a-quarter over sometimes rather jagged chunks of granite, in some spots hopping from rock to rock, and then a fair distance walking in soft sand. So you'll need good sturdy shoes. And a water bottle. And a Lunch. And a light jacket at this time of year. And don't forget the sunscreen, because you may be walking for a bit longer than you might think. You might want a camera, too. So now it's turning into quite an expedition. But it'll be worth it. All this gear can fit into a small backpack, and the walk really is beautiful.
Remember, the tide can rise quickly, and it can rise above the average high tide mark, the dark strip you see along the length of the jetty. Best to take your walk on the breakwater as the tide is on its way out, or at least check the tide chart before you head out. It doesn't take long at all for the water to rise a good couple of feet, and it looks to me like we've had some pretty high tides this past week or so. Just be careful, be safe, and you'll have a great walk.
The breakwater is at the far west end of Commercial Street. There's a little bit of parking, or you can bike down, or walk, or take the shuttle bus to the Provincetown Inn. The shuttle starts its full-time summer schedule today. They try to leave the bus plaza near the Chamber of Commerce on the hour and on the half hour. But there are three different routes, so make sure you get on the right bus.
And If you're a fan of lighthouses, you may consider making a contribution to the American Lighthouse Foundation, working for the preservation of lighthouses around the country. You can also make a sizable, ongoing contribution to the foundation without ever writing a check. When you get this Capital One VISA card, the ALF will receive a $50 donation after your first purchase, plus a percentage of every purchase you make with the card.
Enjoy your hike out to Wood End Light, and watch for upcoming posts about the three lighthouses surrounding Provincetown.

Public Art Meets PTown Legend

This past week, on my day off, I visited Mojo's for their guacamole taco (vegetarian, about 3 bucks and delish!) and spent a few reverent moments celebrating the 193rd anniversary of the sighting of the sea serpent by Captain Hawkins Wheeler, in local waters, on June 6th, 1819.
I ate my lunch sitting at one of the picnic tables on the covered patio behind Mojo's, quietly contemplating the seventeen-foot mural that wraps around the corner of this venerable institution which has been serving up tasty, inexpensive eats to Townies and tourists alike for forty years. In 1978, famed local artist Bill Evaul painted Mojo's exterior wall with his impression of the serpent described by the old sea captain in this epic P'Town legend.
Captain Wheeler and his crew were aboard the sloop Concord, out of Fairfield, Connecticut, sailing off the western shore of Provincetown near Race Point, when they saw the horse-shaped head of a serpent rise about eight feet out of the water. It was a calm day, and fine weather, so they had a good view of the creature, which they saw only fourteen rods (about 230 feet) from the vessel. This sea serpent turns out to have been spotted by many sailors over a number of years, according to The Atlantic Monthly. An article written by J. G. Wood in June of 1884 chronicles sightings over many years of what seems to have been the very same creature, with accounts reported and sworn to by legions of reliable and sober citizens over a stretch of a number of years.

A similar sighting had occurred near Gloucester on June 20th, 1815, about a quarter of a mile out into the harbor, and the Gloucester Telegraph reported a sighting that had occurred on August 18th, 1817, from a distance of only thirty feet. A year later, in August of 1818, the creature was near the shore for a period of a couple of weeks, and "multitudes of spectators" gathered to watch it. Unbeknownst to Captain Wheeler, when he saw the serpent, it, or a close relative, had been seen by hundreds of people including ministers and marshals as well as a good many seafaring men. All had given a similar description, including the head shaped like that of a horse.

Descriptions over the years also mentioned dark eyes the size of dinner plates, and something resembling a horse's mane on the head. In 1833 to 1835, articles about several sightings appeared in the Boston papers and the New York Times. When I googled "Race Point sea serpent" I found several links. If you find these stories intriguing, you may want to get a copy of The Great Sea Serpent, available as an e-book, and chock full of sea monsters, like the one mentioned on page 195, spotted about nine miles offshore from the Race Point lighthouse in April of 1835.

Read a couple of paragraphs about another local serpent of a slightly different description spotted off the shores of Provincetown in 1875 at this link to a book called The Great New England Sea Serpent. It's great to be able to go to sites like google and read a bit of the book to decide whether to buy it. I almost always buy any book I can find about PTown lore and the endless array of "characters" that have shaped its colorful history.
I also found a Cape Cod history and genealogy site that led me to a report by Capt. Robert Platt, U. S. coast and geodetic survey which even includes a drawing of what he and his crew saw that day in 1878. And I found a YouTube video called The Great Provincetown Sea Serpent Story! featuring some local folks who mention a serpent spotted in Provincetown Harbor by a relative of Ben Franklin in the early seventeen hundreds. They also stage a tongue-in-cheek re-enactment of the 1886 sighting of a much larger monster seen by the Town Crier of that day, one George Washington Ready, who swore that he was "not unduly excited by liquor or otherwise" at the time of the sighting. To read more about Ready's serpent, and many other Provincetown stories and legends, look for a book in the Provincetown Public Library, written by Herman Jennings and published in 1890, called Provincetown, or, Odds and Ends from the Tip End. Click this link to go to an Amazon.com listing for used copies of the paperback version of this book published in 1975. There you can read several pages from the book. I just ordered a copy myself a few minutes ago.
So, you see, there have been many sightings of serpents off the shores of Provincetown over the years. Next time you're hungry, stop by Mojo's at 5 Ryder Street Extension, near the bus plaza. Order something tasty and take it around back to the patio, where you'll find this mural of a Provincetown legend. It was painted more than thirty years ago, on a cinder block wall, so it could use a little touch-up, but it's definitely worth a look. Spend a few minutes enjoying Provincetown's wonderful tradition of supporting public art, like Bill Evaul's whimsical depiction of the Race Point Sea Serpent of 1819.