The door is quietly closing on the season. Rowdy townie weddings replace stressed-out summer talk of divorce lawyers. The pier parking lot goes from $4 an hour to free.
It’s dark at 7:40 p.m., and there’s Eric Loscher, leaning against the counter at Spiritus in his gray Days Market hoodie eyeing a slice. He orders the pepperoni and, between bites, says he just left a meeting for a crystal-free support group he leads at the AIDS Support Group — a year-round job.
Loscher is 40 and grew up spending summers in Wellfleet. Later, he lived in Provincetown for 13 summers before moving to town in 2018. He worked at the A-House for six years and found that drinking was always a part of living here, especially during the high season.
It wasn’t until the off-season in 2020 that he finally got sober. His boozy friends in town all helped him pack for rehab, he says: “Big thank you to them!” Before he became a certified addiction recovery coach, Loscher had his own approach to harm reduction: he tried every flavor of Ben & Jerry’s that first off-season of sobriety. “I’m not going to destroy my life with Ben & Jerry’s,” he says. “It’s not a bottle of tequila.”
The off-season brings quieter times for Loscher. His job as a waiter at Joon Bar winds down in November. And so does the work on his farm. Loscher operates Best Day Farm in Truro, growing peppers, squash, green beans, herbs, flowers, and fruit on an acre he leases from Lynn Bikofsky, who has her stained-glass-making studio on the same property. All summer, he sells at the Provincetown Farmers’ Market on Saturdays.
The quiet times won’t last long. He has a greenhouse on the farm. In late February he’s back in there. “I get everything going early and then move it all out,” Loscher says.
But in the fall, he cozies up on the L-shaped couch in his Harbor Hill apartment, which he shares with Provincetown Select Board member Erik Borg. Loscher does a fall house cleaning, he says, and donates accumulated knickknacks to the Methodist Thrift.
Loscher says Provincetown has a year-round drug problem, but he thinks the seasonality of life here exacerbates it because summer is party time for so many people. “And then in the off-season, people are chasing that,” he says.
“With my groups,” he says, “it has to do with how quiet and dark it gets. People have a hard time with that.” Loscher tells people to stay vigilant, plan activities, be creative, and stay social.
He still experiences twice-a-year anxiety about the shift. “I feel it around this time,” he says, but eventually he gets comfortable with winter’s pace. “I settle into it so hard that when spring comes around, I feel the anxiety of summer and wish for my solitude.”
Free Lunch and Clean Hooves
In early October, Sadie Hutchings takes a few days off work at her Veterinary Wellness Center on Race Point Road and drives up to Portland, Maine for the New England Veterinarian Conference.
The summer season brings cats and dogs she hasn’t met before, with the kinds of injuries visiting pets get, like paws lacerated by oyster shells. It’s busy, but she likes that. “Our ability to make it through the winter is dependent on a busy summer,” she says.
Now, her Route 6 commute to Provincetown is smooth sailing, but she feels overwhelmed. Mainly, she’s bracing for a stretch of seeing fewer patients. Summer staff take off for the winter. She stresses out about money. “I think I’m going to feel overwhelmed for the rest of my life,” she says. “I’m in the process of accepting that and I’m working on it.”
Hutchings grew up in Wellfleet and Truro and now lives in North Truro. She has two “human kids,” she says, Henry, three, and Juniper, five. She also has three goats, a Staffordshire bull terrier mix, and a cat.
When she was young, fall was the time for trail-riding and long walks with her dog, she says. It’s different for her kids. They’re occupied all summer long with affordable recreation at the Veterans Memorial Community Center in Provincetown. Which means the shift back to school is not all that dramatic.
“I know this sounds ridiculous,” she says, “but the biggest thing that changed since school started is that I don’t have to make lunches for my children anymore because they get free school lunch. My kids love it, and packing two homemade lunches and snacks is such a time suck.”
Winter does bring a few other positives, she says. It means more time to trim goat hooves. Her goats stay up late in summer. She sends them to bed earlier in the winter. The same goes for her human kids.
After her summer neighbors leave, she says, she pays attention again to the small off-season community around her. “It’s a comfortable place for me,” she says. “It’s a good, close community.”
A Job TBD
Michelle Jaffe has owned Grab & Go in Provincetown for 12 years. On a late September Thursday afternoon, she stands in front of the counter instead of behind it. “Well, we have a lot to do right now, but we can fit you in,” she says. Then, “I’m kidding.”
The salad and smoothie place is located on a brick patio across from the post office. It bustles all day during the summer with people wanting a healthy dose of fruits and vegetables.
Today she casually leans against a wall with larger-than-life yellow bananas and green kiwis painted by Josh Wilmoth, the Provincetown muralist.
“The off-season shift is huge” for her, Jaffe says. During the season she rises at 5:30 a.m. and shows up to work by 6:45. Now she sleeps in, or at least till 7:30. Her fashion changes: “No more beet juice on my messy work shirts,” she says. She walks a lot, but not with her pet pig, Lula, because she’s a slow walker. Still, Lula receives more attention once the shop closes for the season.
Jaffe either stays put at home in Truro or travels. This year, she’s looking forward to a vacation to Germany with her mother.
“The money almost stops once summer dies down,” says Jaffe. In autumn, it’s usually just her, one employee, and a few regulars. She closes in mid-October.
That one remaining employee, Nick Prodanov, who helps run the business, has decided to stay in Provincetown this off-season. He usually spends his winters in California and Florida. “I feel like I want to experience winter here once in my life,” Prodanov says. “I heard they can be magical in a certain way.”
He’ll look for a winter job: “To be determined,” he says, before he turns on the blender in the back kitchen. “I’m surprised we don’t have hearing loss,” says Jaffe over the crush of the machine.
For now, Prodanov and Jaffe, with matching blender tattoos, lean on the counter and look out the window as house music plays on their sound system. “It’s house techno,” Jaffe says. “We gotta keep the vibe up.”
Editor’s note: Because of a fact-checking error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Eric Loscher is a bartender at Joon Bar. “I have not bartended since getting sober,” he says. “I work as a waiter.”
