This town is right by the top of cape cod. Considers itself alomst a sistertown to Key West. Ferries come from Boston. Even a shipwreck tourist spot. Lots of fudge. Tie-dye clothing.
The year-round population of 5,000, largely comprised of gays, lesbians and various artsy types. 50,000 visitors in the summer on the beaches. A premier gay vacation spot.
Provincetown is good entertainment, but I wouldn’t want to be a heterosexual guy without a female escort. All of Cape Cod is gorgeous. Provincetown is very scenic because it is surrounded by coast. I also liked Hyannis and Yarmouth and other Cape Cod towns that welcomed tourists. I recommend the Cape to anybody who likes scenery and to any guy looking to meet chicks from Ireland.
I frequently visited Provincetown for 30 years and then lived there full time for ten. In the 60s and 70s it made a fair bid to be called a hippie town, but real estate prices soared in the 80s and 90s, and now the tourist businesses have to bus in their kitchen and housekeeping help. A plain 2 bed & 2 bath house costs about $500,000, and one can’t make enough in tips to pay the rent.
The tourist season and its Manhattan-high prices extend from early summer to Hallowe’en, sometimes to New Year’s Eve.
There was a time when the various factions of the town were: 1) Portuguese (mostly fishermen who owned the property and businesses), 2) the aging straight artists (mostly seasonal and fairly well off—more than a few were/are famous, and their painting and writing sells), and 3) gays (mostly male). There were also Cape Verdeans and some black-white couples who found Provincetown comparatively tolerant in the 1950s – 1970s, as did the gays, and there has always been a straight alternative crowd that varies from biker types to ecologists and artists to hippies. The hippies are gone. Provincetown is for the rich. Few could resist cashing in their houses. AIDS did a number on the gay male community (who kept the theatre companies going summer and winter), and many who died found that their straight families took their property and their lovers were shorted. Gay women probably now outnumber gay men. Gays own half the town. Professionals took early or partial retirement.
Ptown is safe, well kept, and town government is more professionally run than 30 years ago. But it is no place for hippies. There are no places for hippies on Cape Cod. It is too expensive, increasingly crowded and more a place for professionals and yuppies, straight or queer.
If you simply wish to visit for a short while, you’ll find several camp grounds. The further you go out on Cape Cod (Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, North Truro and Ptown, the more beautiful the land is.
The previous 2 posters are so so true. Better be a trust fund millionaire if you want to do P-town.
Come to Greenfield, Mass..,. seriously. Plenty of super cheap apartmnets in cool old pharmhouses. Hippies, musicians, artists, poets, craftspeople. Easy to hook up. Friendly kynd folks.
Cafe Koko, Greenfields Organic Market, the Peoples Pint, Herm’s, Famous Bill’s, free summer concerts at Industry Park, skinny dipping along the Green River.
Greenfield, Mass -Summer of Love 2006