It's in your DNA

[davidn]

All in all, Provincetown is a bit gay. And because of the flagrant misuse of that word at the hands of most of the English-speaking world I should justify that immediately - it's probably one of the most liberal and... generally rainbow-coloured places that I've ever been in. And I've been to Berkeley.

It's probably best exemplified by the way that the gay/lesbian community site is the fifth Google result for the town. I didn't know this when we arrived, though - the first signs happened when we arrived at the bed and breakfast and looked at the brochures we'd been given, which seemed to advertise a surprising number of massage parlours run by men who appear rather more muscular and hairier than normal. I mentioned the people dressed in drag yesterday, who were out as adverts for a drag show and drag karaoke going on simultaneously.

If you're from America the idea of someone who you might think of being a bit proper and British being thrust into somewhere like this might be a funny one, but I think that even though it's nothing like I've seen before I'm coping reasonably well. Naturally Barack Obama posters hang everywhere, there's a psychedelic taxi called the "Funkmobile" that you occasionally see driving around, and there's a shop halfway down the main road that can only be described as stoner central. (We were in there briefly looking at the rainbow-coloured visual assault before Whitney had to leave because of the smell of marijuana, but I don't know what it smells like and so cannot detect it.)

We were in a shop that sells Christmas decorations - the kind of thing that you'd think wouldn't get much business apart from in one month of the year, but you go in anyway and buy something - and even their ornamental mermaids looked like they had stepped straight out of late-night chatline adverts. On one small artificial tree, there were "Just married" porcelain drawings of two types - one for two grooms, one for two brides, and none for any mixture in between.

They also had a couple of things that caught my attention, though. And if you go back and look at that quotation from Scott Kearnan's article on the front page, it's possible to interpret the first sentence in the wrong way entirely as you first read it. I know I did. (Ironically the next paragraph starts "You read that last part right", which I didn't.)

Comments

[kaedeko.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a nice place. :p

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it's hard to remember that not every person knows what a furry is yet. Although Mr. Kearnan goes on to write such lines as "my, what a big Schnauzer you have," and "pack up your pet [to] increase your chances of doing it doggy style." So now I'm not sure how to read that first paragraph.

[kjorteo]

You know, you'd think any tourism website devoted to telling you how wonderful a city is and where you can get hotels and all that good stuff would mention what state it's in. I found it after enough Googling, but you'd think that'd be fairly important information if you're actually trying to attract people.

Not that this place is alone in that regard. It's actually a disturbingly frequent pattern I've noticed. Even my own home town isn't immune--hope you just happen to already know where Albuquerque is, because we're certainly not going to tell you.

[jenny0.livejournal.com]

My mum and I went out to the Cape a few years ago (I lived in Mass. the first 24 years of my life but have only been there once) and while it did seem rather liberal (in many ways), I don't remember it being quite so flaming. But then, I also don't remember the shops full of sex toys and naked men holding hands on the beach from when Mum took me to Fire Island as a kid.

Sounds like fun, though.

[davidn]

It's not something I really noticed the lack of, myself, but this is because in Britain we don't tend to say place names like that, and it sounds jarringly out of place whenever someone from America mentions "London, England" or the like.

For a far longer time than I would admit, I thought that Albuquerque was just a made-up place - its name sounded far too fantastical to be real. But then my parents' house is down the road from somewhere called Meikle Wartle.

[davidn]

It certainly is - you'd fit right in. :)

[kjorteo]

Well yes, thanks to its somewhat bizarre name and how many times it was mentioned in Looney Tunes (undoubtedly because of said bizarre name,) you're not the first friend of mine surprised to learn that there really is a such place.

(It doesn't help that most of New Mexico looks like a Roadrunner cartoon, thus sort of making Alquerque a double reference....)

And I suppose I can see a lack of state/province name not being as important in other countries, but in the US, it's really good to know just where in the country a particular city is. Especially if I were to, say, suggest you should visit Springfield sometime, since there's only about eight of them. There are also two Kansas Cities, and only one of them is actually in Kansas.

[davidn]

There are certainly shops like that - I was quite amused by a sign telling people that (to make a name up that may be closer than I think) "The Devil's Basement of Lust has moved upstairs".

[bonappetite.livejournal.com]

1.) Pot smells like the bottom of Melville A block. (a little sweeter than armpit).
2.) There are two St Andrews in the UK. The other one is St Andrews By the Sea somewhere down south. I only know this because when I talked to (not very bright) business people in London they thought I was working there.
3.) Is Whitney not from the MA area? How could someone not know Provincetown wasn't a "haven"? It's the East Coast San Fran.