- 0 1 0 1 0 - A Trip Inside the Goonie House: Criminal Trespassing in the Land of Fandom Posted - 03/11/04 5:35 PM PST - 0 1 0 1 0 - Mouth: Chunk, I'm pretty much OD'ing on all your bullshit stories! Two summers ago, I broke into the Goonie House with my sister and two undergrads from the University of Kansas. Well, we didn't "break in" per se. Maybe the right word is "trespass." Whatever it was, the door was unlocked and we didn't hesitate. The picture above was taken a few months ago. More on that later. At the time, August 2001, the Oregon landmark was unoccupied and had just been sold to an unnamed corporation. Its future was uncertain. The previous residents were long gone and the place was completely empty. The only exception was a tiny roll of toilet paper left on a kitchen counter. It's a tired cliche but crossing the threshold was like stepping into a recurring dream. To understand the significance of standing in that empty living room, you have to consider fandom and nostalgia. This place was, and still is, my Graceland. Maybe it's goofy but then so are the thousands that flock to Abbey Road to have their picture taken at a crosswalk. Need I even mention Trekies? They have their own language now. As kid, I watched The Goonies no less than once a week between 1986 and 1989. My copy was on a tape wedged between such perennial favorites as The Breakfast Club and National Lampoon's Vacation rmember spending many an afternoon patiently waiting for credits to finish rolling past Judd Nelson's upraised fist. After a trip through the HBO logo in that timeless bumper ad, the Warner Brother's shield would give way to the eyesocket of a skull. Guard: "It's lunchtime. The longer you animals bark, the colder your food gets." - 0 1 0 1 0 - Chunk: I just saw the most amazing thing in my entire life! Mouth: First you gotta do the truffle shuffle. For many who spent their preadolescent years in the '80s, it's Back to the Future, Teenage Mutant Turtles or the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. For others, it's John Hughes' catalog, Thriller or Return of the Jedi. My one way to ticket to childhood nostalgia will always be The Goonies. I imagine that every American generation from the 1950s and on will bestow unwarranted devotion to a collection of about a dozen albums, TV shows or films that help define it. Does Richard Donner's little movie about seven kids searching for treasure make the cut? I think so. 10 years ago, Generation X'ers were obsessing over Curious George and Schoolhouse Rock. As their younger siblings entered their 20s, a new batch of dusty pop culture took over. Stores such as Hot Topic are chock full of Rainbow Brite baby-dolls and Thundercats iron-ons. Websites like '80s Tees pitch Karate Kid shirts. In ten years, these will disappear and give way to the likes of Yu-Gi-Oh! and the Dora the Explorer. You can apply whatever half-baked Freudian analysis to this phenomenon that you choose. As this generation comes of age and faces the hassles of adulthood, many drift back to simpler times spent stuffing themselves full of Coco Puffs and binging on The Legend of Zelda. It's Citizen Kane's Rosebud on an epic scale with a market ready to corner the demand for sleds. Whatever it is, t-shirt makers won't go out of business as long as they continue to strip mine nostalgia. At least I'm not alone. The Goonies' resurgence began around 2000. As thegoonies.com raked up thousands of hits, midnight Goonie shows began selling out around the country. Sean Astin, AKA Mikey Walsh, appeared at several of them and hinted at plans for a sequel. Meanwhile, fans were making pilgrimages to Astoria, some of them from as far as England. There are now countless online photologs of the Northern Oregon burg. If the proposed sequel, Goonies Never Say Die, isn't made, the pinnacle of this cult of fandom may be The Goonies Vacation. The short video follows two fans from California as they visit the film's shooting locations and relive key scenes. In May of 2003, it was released online. It's since been downloaded over 30,000 times and even received a hat tip in Spin magazine. The filmmakers are currently editing a 30-minute long documentary that may one day be released on DVD. - 0 1 0 1 0 - Mikey: Nah, I was just trying to delate myself. No, no...y'know, um, uh, dic..dictate myself. Brand: That's delude yourself, dummy. I remember a family vacation from the late '80s. It was August and twenty of us were staying at various hotels in Cannon Beach. Barbie, an older cousin, mentioned Astoria and the Goonie House. Apparently, she and her brother had been there. The owners even gave them a tour and showed them an autographed photo of the cast. Did she make the whole thing up? This was the same girl that once led me down a beach and pointed to all the elaborate sandcastles she'd "made" the day after an annual contest. In the years to follow, I asked my parents a million times. A lengthy side-trip up the shore to see a mere house could never be adequately justified by my grade school rationale. Years later, I still hadn't seen the house. I forgot about the movie in middle school and was reminded sometime in college. A Tennessee dormrat down the hall had an unusual fixation with The Goonies. "Heeeeeeey yooooooooooou guuuuuuuys!" would waft down the hall on any given night. On a trip back to Portland, I dug out my old VHS copy. - 0 1 0 1 0 - Chunk: I don't wanna go on any more of your crazy Goonie adventures. Flash forward to August of 2001. I coaxed my sister, Shanna, into a day trip west. I notified her ahead of time of a side trip north but neglected to mention it would be a 50 mile detour. A CD collection of Japanese pop music and the promise of skee ball in Seaside deterred her harpie screams as we reached the Highway 101 junction. Astoria is a town of 10,000 people that sits at the mouth of Columbia River. Despite its maritime museum and 250 foot column, it's considered more of a community than a tourist burg. There are no video arcades and few, if any, Bev Doolittle art galleries. There's no telling how much $ Goonies fans contribute to the community each year. We dropped a dollar on "Shot in Astoria" guide at the visitor's center and bought ice cream later. As the guide points out, Kindergarten Cop, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3, Free Willy and Short Circuit were all filmed around town. The guide was published in 1993 so Arnold scores the biggest spread. The Joyce's House, at 414 Exchange St, gets an entire page. In 1992, $15 million followed into the community as Free Willy and TMNT 3 completed filming. The guide neglects to mention how much cash Spielberg’s production brought to town but the Goonie House is given a paltry two paragraph write-up: "Goonies was filmed in Astoria during the fall of 1984 while several City Hall employees were developing a city-wide safe alternative to Halloween trick-or-treating. They were able to arrange an 'autograph party' with the Goonie child stars in conjunction with the first Great Astoria Monster Bash. All six stars, decked in Hollywood-style Halloween costumes, came to the lobby of the YMCA for their first autograph party with the Hollywood stars. Crowds packed the small lobby so tightly that no could move. Even with a bull horn, instruction could not be heard over the excitement of the multitude of kids. Eventually, the adult stars volunteered to come to help control some of the crowd by signing autographs in another room. Thanks to the efforts of the Goonies, the Monster Bash was a huge success and has continued annually since that time." The guide neglects to offer any history of the house. In 2001, an Associated Press article took a look at Goonie fans and provided some background information. The Victorian-American house built in the late 1800s. It was later owned by a man named Jim Fuller and his family. They lived there for 30 years and through the filming before selling to "an unnamed corporation" in 2001. At some point, the upstairs was converted into an apartment and was rented by a woman named Trudy Duncan, also interviewed in the article. The Goonie House is located at 368 38th Street. It's tough to find if you don't know where you're going. The house sits on a nondescript hill on the town's outskirts and is barely visible from the Columbia River highway. The neighborhood itself is quiet but no one seems to mind the foot traffic. A house down the street has a Goonies mural on its chimney. My legal counsel, a friend with one semester of law school under his belt, assures me that under the statute of limitations it is now safe to post the pictures on the next page. If he's wrong, well, at least give me a five minute head to start towards the Mexican border. Do you dare enter the Goonie House? Click on the door above or HERE to proceed!