by Laurie Kaiser

Created on: July 21, 2009   Last Updated: November 23, 2011

The danger in withholding the truth about a travel destination lies in misleading people to spend hard-earned money visiting a place that is very different from the one depicted in the brochure or magazine. Case in point: Provincetown on Cape Cod, which many travel writers tend to softpedal. To those in the know, Provincetown is a premier gay destination, and in the high season of summer, especially, it's very difficult to escape the raw sexuality, or homosexuality, of the place.

Kurt Kissler of Fredericksburg, Va., discovered this fact a bit painfully when he traveled to P-town, as locals call it, with his three children, ages 10, 13 and 14. To his chagrin, he reports, he and his family saw the following sights out in the open along Commercial Street:

-a poster of several naked men with their hands "strategically" placed.

-a stand-up cutout of Willy Wonka with a sign that read, "Willy Wanker and the Hershey Highway."

-two men standing outside a bar wearing nothing but towels and holding their privates.

-a T-shirt with a steam shovel on it that read something to the effect of "Let me dig in your hole."

"If these descriptions make you uncomfortable," Mr. Kissler wrote in a letter to the local newspaper, "imagine how I felt with my 10-year-old daughter walking next to me."

As mother of a 12-year-old girl, I can imagine it. And this is why, when I was editor of the Cape Cod Travel Guide (before the publishing company sold the magazine to the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce and it became just another cog in the public relations machine), I insisted on honest descriptions of Cape Cod destinations. Polite and creative ways of stating the truth do exist. To me, it's more important that visitors leave this place happy and with hopes of returning, rather than departing disgusted and disillusioned.

P-town offers many worthwhile activities for the Olive Garden set, but it's difficult to avoid the homosexual circus of summer. During the annual Carnival Week in August, for example, drag queens in go-go boots parade down Commercial Street in the shadow of the 252-foot Pilgrim Monument, commemorating the Pilgrims' first landing in the New World in 1620.

Part of the Cape Cod National Seashore, Herring Cove Beach is often touted as a great family beach because it lacks the waves and undertow often found on the Atlantic side of the Cape. It also offers stunning views. Some of the views parents might prefer their youngsters be spared from seeing, however. The northwestern half is a nude beach, not sanctioned but largely ignored by the National Park Service.

It's easy to see how Mr. Kissler was misled. I've read my share of articles that wax positively poetic about a charming and quaint P-town that doesn't really exist, rather like Disney's Main Street USA. And this amounts to a disservice to the reader who might be trying to make an informed decision about a travel destination.

"I thought Provincetown was a quaint, historic town I could show my kids," Mr. Kissler said. "If I'd known what they'd really see, I never would have come."

As a Cape Codder, a parent and a journalist, I feel we let Mr. Kissler and his family down.

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