Provincetown……again

Oct 1, 2019 – Cape Cod (this replaces the Oct 1 post I sent early Tuesday by mistake)

Today we went back to Provincetown(a.k.a. “P-town”). This is where the Pilgrims first landed in America in 1620……but they abandoned the sandy soil and fled across Cape Cod Bay and settled in Plymouth where the soil was m much more fertile. We got to town about 12 noon and left at 4. The weather was supposed to be warmer, with partly sunny skies and a high of 70. It turned out to be cloudy and chilly. While we were downtown, which is right on the water, it was cloudy, windy, and 66 degrees. I guess it sounds like decent weather. But it was actually pretty chilly. To help warm up a little, we had a very tasty bowl of hot chowder at the Lobster Pot, a popular downtown restaurant.

Provincetown has a very diverse population, including a large LGBTQ community. The popular downtown area includes the usual mix of restaurants, souvenir shops, clothing stores, art galleries, etc…..plus waterfront motels and salt style cottages, B&B’s, and Guest Houses. It also has a very active fishing industry.

Once you get into town, most roads are one way, and very narrow. All of the old buildings and houses are packed in so tight that there just isn’t enough room for two-way traffic……horses maybe, but not cars. Even the one way roads are tight to maneuver, especially in a RAM 3500 truck!

Parking is really challenging in Provincetown. There’s only so much available land and it seemed like they packed in houses without properly planning for traffic control. In an effort to provide as much parking as possible and still protect spaces for building owners, the town has marked virtually every allowable parking space around downtown. It looked like some city employees had walked around with a can of yellow paint and a paint brush and painted boundary lines for approved spaces. When we were here Sunday, we ended having to park pretty far out on the west side of town (that’s why we didn’t really see downtown that day). Today, we drove around looking for a while and were very lucky to get a “momentarily” open space in a public lot downtown. That was a relief……it its hard to find a space for a mid size sedan, let alone a RAM 3500 truck. If it’s this difficult to find a parking spot on a fall Tuesday in October…..I can’t imagine what it’s like during the season?! There are about 3000 full time residents…..but in the summer, the population explodes to around 60,000!

Although Provincetown is way out at the tip of the Cape, the housing is very expensive. We saw a 1Bed/1Bath home with 270 sq. ft. available for 275K! But it’s not nearly as expensive as Nantucket. I don’t know, but based on the density of homes packed in and around downtown, I’d say the zoning control was pretty lax for a while. There are lots of old houses packed very close together, and not necessarily in a rational pattern. And lots of narrow access alleys.

It’s obvious that the resident population, and the number of visitors, has really dropped off on The Cape. We have noticed some nice looking businesses and buildings that are already closed until next spring.

We will be moving a couple hours northwest tomorrow to Mansfield, a suburb of Boston.

Downtown P-town