Is Provincetown doomed?

Guess what? [Peter Manso]'s take on the last century of Provincetown's history is a good read. He gets some details wrong and the writing is sometimes uneven, but the general picture he paints is accurate and the issues he raises are ones that Provincetown needs to address. Manso over-romanticizes some of the straight natives who see "their" town vanishing -- especially drug dealers. While he takes some cracks at some aspects of the gay community, and some people are quoted as making remarks that could be interpreted as anti-gay, the book isn't homophobic. (However, there are passages that could be interpreted as misogynistic.) Positive portraits of gay people are featured prominently throughout. And though he indulges in some dish and speculation, for the most part the book is not gossip, but history. It invites a serious debate about the astonishing level of hypocrisy that governs much of Provincetown's civic dialogue, which often consists of wealthy people protesting their devotion to diversity and affordable housing while rapidly turning the town into a gay Aspen. It invites discussion about whether Provincetown's future will build on its messy, glorious past, or bury it. There's a deeper reason this book offends those who have been turning P'town into a bunch of doll houses and vanity cultural projects. Manso suggests that the increasingly powerful arts and business conglomerates in Provincetown have promoted economic development and centralization to advance their own interests at the expense of the community. He doesn't say it straight out, but a small, wealthy clique is already largely in control of Provincetown's government, its arts scene, and its media. To long-time residents such as myself, there's something very weird about Provincetown as a place to which people move to buy social status. Most of us, straight and gay, want to see Provincetown remain a funky, tolerant, diverse, creative, and affordable town. But the prospects of that are dimming fast. A half-conscious vision of Provincetown's future can be discerned in our emerging governing class, and it's one of the few coherent visions of Provincetown's future available. Jay Critchley, a local artist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, has captured it well in his image of Disneyland: a "gayted" community with a compliant underclass emerging regularly from the bowels of the earth to work or perform. This raises the key question: should Provincetown become a museum of its history and culture p