^{“Bar Rush” at Spiritus, 1984.}

Spiritus Pizza Hits the Big Screen

by Steve Desroches

Regardless of who you are and what you’ve come to Provincetown to do, the town’s spirit demands you put on a show. Do something unique. Do something creative. Do something that is quintessentially Provincetown. And that’s not limited to artists, writers, actors, and the like. It goes for entrepreneurs, too. In a town where most new businesses don’t last very long, a fact that’s been true for decades, a major part of longevity for any commercial venture is, of course, quality of goods and services, but also connection to community, generosity of spirit, and creating something that does not, and quite possibly could not, exist anywhere else but Provincetown. Rely on out-of-town consultants, formulaic business models, corporate gobbledygook, and profits before people, and with history as a guide, you won’t last very long in Provincetown. Want to become a legend? Double down on the opportunity for freedom and self-expression Provincetown offers and you’ll transcend the world of commerce and become a leading cultural force. And perhaps no business in Provincetown better represents this spirit than Spiritus Pizza.

In his directorial debut, photographer and now filmmaker, Michael Koehler presents the endearing, dynamic, and compelling story of the famed pizza joint in the documentary Spiritus: No Business Like Dough Business, which is the closing night film of the Provincetown International Film Festival with two screenings at Town Hall this Sunday night. The story begins in the heady hippie days of 1970 when John “Jingles” Yingling comes to Provincetown that summer to visit his sister. A native of Camden, New Jersey, he worked on the Jersey Shore in Wildwood for years making pizzas. On that visit Yingling notices, if you can believe it, that there is no pizza place in Provincetown. Come the summer of 1971, he opens Spiritus in its original location at 193 Commercial Street, selling slices for 25 cents a piece before moving to its current location in 1978. And the rest is of course history.

“It’s about the community more than anything else,” says Koehler, who worked at Spiritus for three summers and lived in town from 1986 to 1999. “Spiritus is a community and it’s about serving the community.”

The idea for the documentary initially was for it to be a film commemoration made for the Yingling family, and the many friends who’ve worked there, in celebration of Spiritus’ 50th anniversary. But when Koehler showed a rough cut to Jingles and others, funding and support came in for the personal project to go public. But in addition to financing and encouragement, archival film footage began to appear, which allowed Koehler to illustrate the fabulous, funky, and freaky history of Spiritus, as it isn’t just a pizza parlor, but an important countercultural institution that has continued to thrive despite all the changes in Provincetown over the past 50 years. And while Spiritus is a lot of things to a lot of people, it is synonymous with the LGBTQ community as a late-night gathering spot after the bars and nightclubs close at 1 a.m., starting what the employees call the “bar rush,” serving sometimes thousands in a very short amount of time.

While Provincetown is well regarded for welcoming the outsider, there were at one time forces in town that wielded some power that were in opposition to the growing LGBTQ community. The after-hours gathering spot in the 1960s and early 1970s was the benches in front of Town Hall, nicknamed the “Meat Rack.” To discourage the gatherings, the town had the benches removed, causing outrage among the LGBTQ community and its supporters. While the benches eventually were put back in place, it was too late, as the crowd had adopted Spiritus as its new gathering locale, which itself faced challenges from those who didn’t like that they had turned what was then a quiet neighborhood into a bustling scene, open until 2 a.m. Spiritus and the LGBTQ community had each other’s backs.

“The connection between the queer community and Spiritus is unbreakable,” say Koehler. “They both came to each other’s aid in Provincetown.”

^{Michael Koehler at Spiritus with friends back in the day (left). John Yingling and Paul Schnider at work (right).}

Spiritus: No Business Like Dough Business features wonderful imagery of drag queens and Hare Krishnas bounding along Commercial Street as well as Super-8 clips of John Waters and Cookie Mueller. But perhaps the biggest archival coup is the footage of the famed Spiritus Riot from Labor Day Weekend in 1990, where an angry crowd surrounded a police car and demanded the release of a beloved drag queen named Vanilla, whom they believed had been arrested under false pretenses. The story was passed on via oral tradition until one day about 15 years ago artist Christopher Sousa was given a blank VHS tape from a co-worker at the Atlantic Spice Company. The tape was found in an attic in a house in Truro and the friend, a straight man, said he thought gay men should see it. It turns out it was 22 minutes of raw footage of the riot shot by underground filmmaker Jonathan Morrill. The tape was digitized and is shown annually at Fag Bash, the legendary weekly party created by Marc Louque, furthering the mythological status of the event. 

“It took me some time to get the footage, but the queer community really came through and made sure I got access,” says Koehler. “Back in the 1970s and 1980s Jonathan and I were seasonal, and we’d leave some stuff behind hoping to get it when we came back for the summer. That must have been how the tape got lost. Jonathan couldn’t believe it turned up! He thought it was gone forever.”

The Provincetown International Film Festival presents Spiritus: No Business Like Dough Business at Provincetown Town Hall, 260 Commercial St., on Sunday, June 15 at 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Tickets ($20) are available at the festival box office at 229 Commercial Street and online at provincetownfilm.org. For more information call 508.487.3456.