67 Shank Painter Road, by David W. Dunlap (2010).
To see the old Piggy’s Dance Bar now is like staying past last call, when fluorescent lights break the magic. For magic is what suffused this building in the 1970s. Straights danced with gays. Lisbons danced with Bravas. Fish cutters danced with matte cutters. Piggy’s offered an exuberant, bacchanalian cross-section. It began as Frank DeMello’s Pilgrim Club, which moved here in the early 1960s from 323½ Commercial. By 1972, the club was referred to as Piggy’s. Dennis Dermody recalled being a D.J., in an interview with Gerald Peary for Provincetown Arts: “You had two turntables, you weren’t in a booth, and people literally would come up and rip records out of your hands. But you could mix anything.” It was subsequently Captain John’s, then the Love Shack.
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