People may be sleeping in their cars, their houses foreclosed like their businesses, standing in line for handouts. An anarchic sense of theatre – just as everyone riding a New York subway is a performer.
![when is the gay pride parade in provincetown when is the gay pride parade in provincetown](https://media.s-bol.com/r2qYy5Qn85Jk/1080x1200.jpg)
![when is the gay pride parade in provincetown when is the gay pride parade in provincetown](https://www.gaytravel4u.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Provincetown-Pride-2.jpg)
Even in its instability and campness and outre quality, it seems to refer a paradoxical permanence. And this tawdriness, which old Europe may sneer at, is in fact extraordinarily reassuring. This is small-town America, with all its good and bad. One could have a conversation with each of them and hear the kind of views it is rare to hear in England, which considers itself so advanced. This is not the America we assume, but another America just as, a couple of days before, I sat on a village green in Truro, down the cape from Provincetown, to hear a fiddler band surrounded by liberal families and dancing children in the evening sun under willow trees – a reminder of American utopia, rather heartening in its inclusive way. In the distance, the hoot of a big boat announces the departure of another whale watch, out into the distant Atlantic, where humpback whales cavort and breach. A beach volleyball match is in progress, fuelled by margaritas and bouncing, well-filled bikinis. Over here, children are digging for sandcastles. Over there, topless men are gyrating and, doubtless, taking drugs. Later, out on the beach, families play while the thud-thud-thud of the gay tea dance disco drifts across the bay at four o'clock in the afternoon.
![when is the gay pride parade in provincetown when is the gay pride parade in provincetown](https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/1387957/new-york-city-pride-lgbt.jpg)
It's virtually mandatory, legally enforced by the cops on bikes who patrol the outer edges of this decorative, contained madness. Tawdry glitter and cross-dressing is the order of the day. Like Waters's films, there's barely an ounce of good taste to be seen.