NYMag.com – By Ariel Levy
With a new Broadway adaptation of Cry-Baby, John Waters is a member in good standing of the American mainstream. But he’s still got the same warped obsessions he had as a teen.
‘What adult comes to the beach every summer?” John Waters asked, standing by the side of the road with his sunglasses on and his thumb in the air one Wednesday in August. “Isn’t that something you’re supposed to do when you’re 16? What adult can do that?” Waters wore red jeans over swim trunks, with pointy-toed Comme des Garçons slip-ons and a green shirt, and had his towel over his shoulder and, of course, his distinguishing skinny mustache above his lip, as it has been since Waters was 19 years old. He was hitchhiking from Longnook beach to his seafront summer rental on Commercial Street in Provincetown. “Hitchhiking,” he declared, “is my midlife crisis—I didn’t buy a sports car.” He drives a Buick LeSabre, which on that day was parked on Commercial Street with a valid beach sticker on the windshield. The hitching was just for kicks.