Astoria Goonies House Now Off Limits

Dang it, I guess Mikey didn't have enough in his marble bags to keep it open

"She was overwhelmed and looking for help to try to get some semblance of normal life back,” Regina Willkie, the chamber’s marketing director, said. “It’s just a constant stream of people coming at all hours of the day."

http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20150818/the-goonies-house-goes-off-limits

 

Y'know.. I know it's a real home and all, but the person shouldn't have bought and lived in it if they knew it was going to be quite an attraction for tourists who come year round to see something from such a famous film like Goonies.

Maybe ask for a $5 donation or something in some drop box to take a photo so she can have the fans collectively pay her monthly mortgage, haha!

 

I can't even imagine what it must be like to have so many tourists around your home constantly. I get iffy when the UPS guy comes up my driveway...

Sad to say, I really doubt this is a problem that can be fixed. Maybe some millionaire Goonies fan can buy the block and make it some kind of museum? Wishful thinking I guess!

 

How do you buy the Goonies house without realizing what it means that it's the freakin' Goonies house? The whole town is proud of it, they have an annual festival about it, the realtor made it a selling point. She had to know she was buying a * tourist attraction. Idiot. The only realistic approach is for someone to buy it and turn it into a theme B&B -- someone who actually knows what the house is and wants the interest and activity.

--Jonah

 

Didn't see that when I was there in 2013,but I did drop by the jail.

Never seen the film just noted it in the local attractions so I thought "meh I'm here may as well take a look"

 

Wow, Jonah, you're pretty quick to call someone an "idiot" over a situation you've completely oversimplified. Go actually read the linked article and try, just for a minute, to understand the situation from her point of view before you commit to jamming your foot in your mouth.

 

I've been to Astoria, when the festival was going on, saw the house, remember how long it was on the market, saw how it was being listed and advertised, have seen the full range of fans... I stand by my assertion that if one buys a house that featured prominently in a popular movie or TV series, one should expect it to attract the attention of the fans. I've seen it happen to far lesser extents (I'm an hour or less in any direction from locations used in Sleepless In Seattle, Twin Peaks, An Officer and a Gentleman, Frasier, Grey's Anatomy, Rose Red... and, unfortunately, only three hours from Forks), and know of the unfocused enthusiasm of thousands of fans who descend on Riverside, Iowa, every year for Kirk's birthday. If they had a farmhouse to focus that on, it'd probably be the same. I still call lack of foresight, especially knowing said popular movie had commonly-celebrated anniversaries coming up that would hang exponents on the number of people showing up.

--Jonah

 

I agree. This was a bad idea on her part knowing that it would attract tourists, this is why the house in Amityville got remodeled to be nearly unrecognizable.

 

You are blaming the victim here. People were showing up from 4:30am to past 11pm, AND leaving loads of trash behind. CHOMP CHOMP, Click Click, "OK, let's go" tosses McDonalds wrappers on the ground. Blame the Knuckle dragging mouth breathing SLOBS, not the house owner here. Once again People's lack of control and basic decency ruins it for everyone.
Same reason San Francisco is using an experimental Urine Resistant paint. Public Urination is so bad there that a light pole collapsed and crushed a car because of Urine Corrosion. Makes you proud don't it?

 

I totally agree, people should avoid buying houses that were featured in popular movies if they don't want strangers coming by all the time. But based on that article, she was pretty accommodating for many, many years when the traffic was more reasonable. Then, Goonies tourism exploded during the last four years. I'm not sure anyone 14 years ago would have had the foresight to anticipate 12,000 to 15,000 visitors in one month alone. That's an insane amount of foot traffic for any community neighborhood.

Residential movie locations being treated as shrines for thousands of fans is a relatively new thing, like Jaws-fest in Martha's Vineyard. You have to bear in mind, this isn't a prop house, it's not on a studio backlot. It's in a neighborhood full of regular people who are trying to live their lives. Most fans respect that sort of situation. Unfortunately, when you suddenly have thousands of people showing up all at once, things can get out of control pretty fast, which is what this particular situation seems to be.

 

Aren't humans awesome??!?!

 

I Remember this exchange from the movie "The Hidden"
Al-Haut What do you think of these Humans?
They're Allright.
Better than Altarans. Altarans are a filthy people.

Man if Altarans are Filthier than humanity, that's one planet I'd avoid.

 

I'm a HUGE Goonies fan but good for her, it's her house. SHe should do what she wants.

 

I agree she probably just had enough. Keeping distance and posing for photos in front of the house is WAAAAAY more different than people walking around on the porch and peering in the windows. To me, that crosses a line and becomes trespassing not to mention creepy.

 

in before the lock!!!

 

Why is the flag upside down?

 

Distress.

 

I think the city should buy the house and turn it into a museum or declare it a historical site. It's existence brings too much tourism for the town for it to essentially disappear.

 

The owner is a moron. She might as well have bought a house next to an active airport and then complained that the airplanes make too much noise.

 

So you think she's a moron because when she bought the house 14 years ago she didn't anticipate 1500 people a day trudging through her neighborhood? Again, she was fine with the visitors for many years until the city encouraged out of control tourism for a neighborhood not designed to handle it. After 14 years she's had enough. Only a moron with underdeveloped comprehension skills could blame her for that.

 

With that amount of people I'd start charging them $1 each to get close, could make a good living :lol

 

Actually that's what I'd do-post a sign with viewing times and either a fee or ask kindly for a "donation" and sit back and watch the cash come in.

 

So much money to be made and so many ways to make it.

Pic on Porch 20.00, Dominos Pizza 50.00, room for the night 1000.00.

That women is sitting on a gold mine

 

That assuming all these people trespassing would be willing to pay for the privalage. I for one would be willing to drive by if I was in the area, but I don't care about TheGoonies enough to be willing to pay for it. Plus, now you have a commercial property, which is another whole set of headaches, and possibly not even legal in an area zoned as residential.

 

On the one hand, yeah, caveat emptor. But on the other, Jesus, come on, showing up at 4:30am all the way through to 11pm? Have some ****ing decency, people!

I can see where, if this were a public establishment like Twede's in Snoqualmie, WA (the Twin Peaks diner) or the Llanerch Diner outside of Philly (from Silver Linings Playbook), yeah, you don't get to complain that customers keep coming in and ordering the cherry pie (which, by the way, is kinda lame at Twede's, or was when I had it, like, 10 years ago). But this is a private residence. And while it's fair to assume that people will wander around it and take pictures, it's quite another thing to have them leaving their ****ing garbage, traipsing around the property at all hours.

I know we're all fans here, and so are more accustomed to our own perspective, but really, there's a line and it sounds like fans were regularly crossing it. It's not as if the owner was unaware that it was a "fan shrine," but I can imagine being totally unprepared for the degree of disregard fans have for your privacy and lack of respect for your property.


I don't have a ton of sympathy for someone who wants their private home to be totally off limits to the public. I don't even get that privilege (e.g., Google Maps can drive by and snap a photo of my house). But if every day I had to clean people's garbage off my front step, you bet your * I'd be having a chat with the city and/or local gendarmes.

 

Nothing a 12 gauge loaded with rock salt would'nt solve! :lol

 

Very well said, Mr. Finch!

 

Sean Astin asks fans to back off the property
http://koin.com/2015/08/21/sean-astin-to-goonies-fans-back-off/

You can read his whole letter on his Facebook page

 

Yes, you buy a landmark, you should expect people at all times of the day and in numbers you won't like. Even if a small portion behave like douchebags, the rest are still going to show up constantly as it IS a landmark in film.

 

No, once you buy a "landmark" (and I don't consider this anywhere close to being a landmark) it becomes private property. If she was smart, she would take the Amytiville Horror route. A little exterior work will make it unrecognizable.

 

My whole take on it is that you work with the local authorities and city government who already recognize it as an attraction to set and enforce reasonable limits. Posted signs saying when it's too late and you'll be considered to be trespassing, donotation boxes for upkeep, surveillance, fines for littering... but above all, enforcement of those. For the first few months it'd be a pain for the city, but once people started getting the message, it'd settle down and people would eventually treat it like other attractions with set hours.

That said, I still wish that back when she'd listed it for sale someone had bought it to turn into a museum/theme bed-and-breakfast. After a few years, one would have been able to buy the house next door and regain one's privacy and living space somewhat, while still getting some decent supplemental income from the Goonies shrine one had set up.

I think my biggest gripe in all of this is more of a categorical one -- people who acquire things or places of greater or lesser geek cache who then don't know what to effective do with them. Paul Allen has the right idea, turning his personal collection into a museum. About the exact wrong approach is to sit back and do nothing, let the situation boil over to utterly unmanageable, then have a meltdown about it. How many of us would have been more than happy to step in and advise, if asked a decade ago, how best to manage the inevitable fan interest in her house? I have Palpatine in my head saying, "Now you will pay the price for your lack of vision".

--Jonah

 

i'd sit on the porch and make em all do the "truffle shuffle" before they could come up and take a pic!

 

Time to set up some booby traps!

 

can you imagine the charity that could be raised?! if it were me, i would do tours on the weekend and donate it all.

 

If you look at NeoRutty's photo you can see a "donations" box directly behind them.

Personally I think trying to close it off is the wrong way to go. Legally all she can really do is tell people to stay off her property, it won't stop them from swarming the property line (the town can't exactly ban people from a public road) and probably only make the situation worse.

I mean, asking people to stay out is only going to stop the courteous fans who likely wern't a problem to begin with. The jerks will still be jerks and hop over or walk past whatever signs or fences they put up. Is she going to turn the property into Fort Knox trying to keep people out?

I sympathize with her, i'm a private person and wouldn't want people peering through the windows. Which is why I wouldn't buy a house from an iconic film.

 

I'm at my girls house and she has dishnet. we are experiences major rain storms right now so the internet is super slow. before when scrolling the thumbnail wasn't there so i scrolled right by, now the thumnail is there but the sucker won't open, the pain! the pain!