The compact fishing village of PROVINCETOWN ("P-Town") is right on the knuckle of what would be Cape Cod's clenched fist. Silvery clapboard houses, with gloriously unruly gardens, line its tiny winding streets. Provincetown is far from secluded: its population of five thousand rises tenfold in summer. Self-professed bohemians and artists have always flocked here for the dazzling light and vast beaches, and in 1914 Eugene O'Neill established the Provincetown Playhouse in a small hut. It has also become renowned, since the beatnik 1950s, as a gay and lesbian center. Commercialism, though rampant, is countercultural: gay, environmentalist and feminist giftshops join arty (not craftsy) galleries, restaurants and bars on the aptly named Commercial Street .

Provincetown retains a firm grip on its past. Strict zoning ensures that there are few new buildings in town, and there is barely a sign of ugly development. Albeit crowded and raucous from July through September, P-Town remains a place where history, natural beauty and, above all, difference, are respected and celebrated