HAVENS; Everyman in Autumn, But Superman in Summer


By ALLEN SALKIN
Published: August 23, 2002
IN the world of New York theater, Adam Weinstock, a high school drama teacher who is occasionally the co-producer of an Off Off Broadway show, is pretty much a nobody. But in Provincetown, Mass., he's Mr. Entertainment.

For three months a year in Provincetown, a theater-friendly town that was once home to Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams, Mr. Weinstock, 39, rules Commercial Street, where he is producing eight shows this summer, including a two-week run by the comedian Margaret Cho and two nights at Town Hall by the Broadway diva Linda Eder.

Walk through Provincetown with the salt-and-pepper-haired Mr. Weinstock, who works nine months a year at Plainview High School on Long Island, and witness the full Leonardo DiCaprio treatment, with no cover charges at the hippest clubs and strangers shouting out greetings. ''I am not a high school teacher at the moment,'' Mr. Weinstock, a summer renter who winters in his two-bedroom house in Massapequa, N.Y., and his studio apartment in Greenwich Village, said on a stroll earlier this month. ''I'm a big-time producer.''

Mr. Weinstock is one of a breed of stars whose luster burns brightest from June to September. Toiling in relative obscurity during most of the year, these short-term celebrities -- like the jazz pianist whose softball skills helped open previously closed cabaret doors or the writer for a self-published newspaper who uses her gossip column to mix with the swells -- are able to reinvent themselves during the summer months, enjoying prominence and accolades previously unknown.

Jane Stanton Hitchcock, the author of ''Social Crimes,'' a novel about high society and murder in Southampton and Manhattan, takes a benign view of using a summer toehold in social circles to reach career aspirations. ''Some people want to pursue the thing that they love,'' she said, ''and they happen to use connections they made on the tennis court, the golf club, or wherever else to do it. It's much more noble than social climbing.''

John C. Henry, 34, has parlayed his skill at racing International One-class sailboats in Northeast Harbor, Me., into a dockside camaraderie with kings of industry. In the winter, he is an assistant in the securities bureau of the state attorney general's office in Lower Manhattan. But on Mondays and Saturdays in the summertime, he commands a rugged five-person crew in wave-bashing races against boats skippered by the likes of David Rockefeller Jr., the philanthropist and former chairman of Rockefeller & Company. ''He is the guy I am constantly chasing around the racecourse,'' Mr. Henry said one day after a race in early July. ''But I might say that this Monday, he was chasing me.''

Mr. Henry plans to practice law someday in the private sector, and he knows that the people who respect his seamanship in Maine can help. ''I got this job on my own,'' he said from his Broadway office. ''But there's great resources up there, a lot of very, very successful people.''

Joan Jedell also enjoys basking in the glow of the rich and famous. Ms. Jedell was an agent for advertising photographers who began summering in the Hamptons in the early 1980's. Thrilled after seeing a photo of herself taken at a party and published in the local weekly, Dan's Papers, she decided that another career was in order. After first working as a freelance social reporter for Dan's Papers from 1994 to 1996, she started her own publication, The Hampton Sheet, and now spends her summers mining the frantic party circuit for material.

''I go through the circles of society,'' said Ms. Jedell, who rents a house in Sag Harbor during the summer and lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan the rest of the year. ''There are certain people who hang with certain people, and I hang with all of them.''

Ms. Jedell, who declined to reveal how old she is (''Age is a number and mine's not listed,'' she said), zips from event to event in a white Mercedes convertible. She began one weekend this month at a charity event held by Allen Grubman, the entertainment lawyer, and his wife, Deborah (whose daughter Elizabeth S. Grubman, the Manhattan publicist, has recently been in the news for all the wrong reasons), to honor Princess Yasmin Aga Khan and the socialite Andrea Stark. The next afternoon at the beach estate of Loida Nicolas Lewis, the former chief executive of TLC Beatrice International Holdings, Ms. Jedell attended a barbecue benefit for the Dance Theater of Harlem. (''Not hot dogs,'' Ms. Jedell said. ''Grilled lobster.'') Then it was off to a benefit for People for the American Way, at which Alec Baldwin played host.

OTHERS enjoy their summer stardom without changing professions. Like many first-generation Southampton residents, Lisa Jackson, 43, an interior designer, made her entry into local society by joining the board of the Southampton Fresh Air Home, a summer camp for disabled children. Ms. Jackson, who is the co-owner of an antiques shop on the Upper East Side, lives during the week in a big Park Avenue apartment.

This year, fellow board members sponsored Ms. Jackson's membership in the more rarefied Garden Club, founded in 1913. ''She's known within our friends,'' said the club president, Dominique Buaron. ''She has all the regular memberships.''

Ms. Jackson's Hamptons connections have helped her land plum decorating jobs and raised her profile in the industry. When the socialite Tami Mack was in the market for an interior designer a few years ago, she chose Ms. Jackson, whom she had met during a round of golf.

Ms. Jackson's work on the Mack home is splashed over six pages in the August issue of Elle Decor. For someone who needs wealthy clients, the Hamptons is a dream. ''That's why you have to be out,'' Ms. Jackson said. ''Even playing golf, you can get a client.''

Then there are those who shine in a completely different field in the hot days of summer. Judy Carmichael was already a well-known Manhattan jazz pianist when she bought a two-bedroom house in Sag Harbor a dozen years ago as a Hamptons escape from her one-bedroom rental in Greenwich Village. But now, she is better known in the Hamptons for the weekly softball game she organizes than for her musical talent, even though Dan's Papers recently named her ''best live entertainer'' in the Hamptons, along with Billy Joel.

''One of the big thrills of my life,'' Ms. Carmichael said, ''was when someone came up to me in the city when I was eating in a restaurant last year and said, 'Haven't I seen you play . . .' I thought he was going to say 'play piano at a gig,' but then he said 'play left field.' He said, 'You have a great arm.' ''

Moreover, her on-field prowess has paid off professionally. A few years ago, her softball team's center fielder introduced Ms. Carmichael, who is in her 40's, to the owner of the Knickerbocker Bar and Grill in Greenwich Village. She's played there five weeks a year, including on New Year's Eve, ever since. ''It's a huge thing for me,'' she said. ''It's like my home club now.''

That kind of success back home still eludes others, like Mr. Weinstock, the Provincetown producer. True, he managed to parlay his expertise putting on shows like ''Naked Boys Singing'' into an associate producer credit (shared with two others) for a one-man Off Broadway show called ''21 Dog Years.'' But last spring, when he paced the aisles of the Cherry Lane Theater in Manhattan, where that play is running, no one called him by the nickname he's earned at the tip of Cape Cod. '' 'Mr. Entertainment' has a nice ring to it,'' he said.