Meet the LGBTQ+ pioneers of Provincetown and Salem

It’s rare for a hotel to have hosted four US presidents. Rarer still for it to also have a queer nightclub in its basement — where, during its weekly underwear parties, revellers check not only their coats but most of their clothing into the cloakroom on arrival. But Gifford House in Provincetown isn’t your average hotel. It’s the jewel in the crown of a town that prides itself on having one of the highest concentrations of same-sex households in the US.

Presidents including Theodore Roosevelt visited Provincetown when it was the last stop on the stagecoach line. Over the years, other arrivals have included whalers, sailors and artists, who have come to settle on a shoreline edged with windswept sand dunes and saltbox houses. By the 1960s it was attracting LGBTQ+ tourists, offering a safe space for the community to unwind.

Steven Azar, now 44, is one visitor who came of age at Gifford House. “As a 19-year-old, I was hanging from the pipes at Club Purgatory,” he says of the inn’s nightclub when I meet him on the verandah. “Provincetown, and this place in particular, really helped me feel that it was OK to be a queer man at that time.”

Steven’s journey came full circle when he bought the hotel and set about making it into “one of the queerest properties on planet Earth”. Alongside Club Purgatory, there’s a speakeasy theatre, piano lounge, 33 guest rooms and a porch bar. “It’s really the living room of Provincetown,” Steven says as guests start arriving for the night’s entertainment, which includes drag bingo, a leather party and a Broadway-quality karaoke singalong.

Independent businesses such as Gifford House rule supreme in Provincetown, or P-town as locals call it, and I venture out to explore more of its 200 or so small enterprises. Steps from its powdery beaches, Commercial Street is the town’s main artery, chockablock with galleries, coffee shops, quirky gift stores and gay bars sitting under strings of rainbow flags fluttering in the salty sea breeze.

At Womencrafts, a bookshop that’s been lesbian-operated since 1976, I find the current owner Michelle Axelson folding a pile of ‘Keep P-town queer’ T-shirts. Against a backdrop of bookshelves heaving under the weight of women’s rights literature, Michelle recalls that when she first moved here 14 years ago, “it felt like I’d arrived in a queer utopia!”

Rearranging a handwritten sign that says ‘read banned books’, Michelle says that a highlight in the Provincetown calendar is Women’s Week in October. Founded in 1984, it’s a key event in the local lesbian diary, a time when “the streets are filled with women holding hands”. It’s one of several annual events, including LGBTQ+ Family Week in July and Bear Week in August, that infuse P-town with a Pride atmosphere year-round.

Directly across the street, Adam Singer is standing in the doorway of his shingle-clad store. Tucked inside a converted former artist’s studio, so tiny that you could stand in the middle and almost touch the walls either side with outstretched arms, Adam’s Nest opened nine years ago as “one of the queerest, most political shops in town”, according to the baseball-capped owner. “I first came to P-town on vacation and just fell in love with the place,” he says as I browse racks of T-shirts printed with historical LGBTQ+ manifestos. “As a queer person, you don’t have to check yourself before you walk out of the door here — everyone can be their authentic self.”

The ripple effects of Provincetown’s ethos of freedom and acceptance are credited with having helped pave the way for Massachusetts to become the first US state to legally recognise same-sex marriages in 2004. For my final stop, I travel upstate 80 miles north west of Provincetown to Salem, to meet a modern-day witch putting these principles of inclusivity into practice.

In the garden of the House of Seven Gables, a timber-framed mansion dating back to 1668, I find Tara McMullen-King of Witchy Woman Weddings. With flowing burnt-orange hair and a striking heart pattern tattooed across her chest, the Wiccan priestess ordains an average of 38 alternative wedding ceremonies each year, frequently in these grounds and often uniting LGBTQ+ couples. “I work with a diverse bunch of people, so I try to make the weddings as inclusive as possible, for example by using gender-neutral language,” she says. “Regardless of sexuality or gender expressions, my ceremonies emphasise two souls uniting; it’s really all about celebrating the universality of love.”

Best known for the 1692 witch trials in which 20 people were falsely accused of witchcraft and killed, Salem’s historical reputation is one of extreme intolerance rather than universal love. But it’s evolved into “a progressive city with strong values of justice”, according to Tara. “The association with paganism and witchcraft has fostered an environment of diversity and non-conformity in Salem,” she says. LGBTQ+ witches own a number of Salem’s businesses, including HausWitch, a hipster metaphysical lifestyle store, and Now Age Travel, which offers magical walking tours led by a clairvoyant.

I leave Tara in front of the Seven Gables mansion immortalised in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s gothic novel and head into town, strolling cobbled streets lined with 17th-century brownstone homes. Many travellers may be drawn to Salem to visit its witch-themed museums and shops but, I realise as I zigzag along street crossings painted in Pride colours, they’ll also find a town where the rainbow carpet has been well and truly rolled out.