Amateur, European, Female, Fetish" read the huge storefront sign that hung ominously above the Chevrolet Caprice in the photo.

The storefront signs on Main Street were brighter; the brick and stone commercial buildings a shade dingier; the town perhaps was a little poorer.

City law does not require storefront signs to be written in English, a spokeswoman for the City Buildings Department said yesterday.

Patricia Fitzpatrick, tourism director of Provincetown, said she had noticed a number of restaurants adding the words "and catering" to their storefront signs.

In a compromise, the restaurant's owner - an immigrant from Greece, where the Olympics originated - has agreed to remove the Olympic rings from a storefront sign.

In downtown Miami, where the storefront signs are mostly in Spanish and the pedestrians, many of them new Americans, talk of everything but football, Marino's retirement was barely noticed.

Near Ocean Avenue, many of the storefront signs are written in Cyrillic, reflecting the immigrant population in the neighborhood.

One can drive for a dozen blocks along Bolsa and Westminster Avenues and not see a single storefront sign in English.

The business advertised in the newspaper as Lucky Salon but removed a storefront sign after the first of three police raids this year.