By: Katrina Penaflor Managing Editor
What to do when you have thousands of movie fans swarming your property begging to see inside your house and get a tour? Block off all the windows with blue tarp.
Or at least that’s what the owner of the legendary Goonies’ house has done.
The house sits in Astoria, Ore., the filming location of the 1985 cult classic “The Goonies.”
The movie is a personal childhood favorite of mine. I recall watching the movie as a kid while chanting the famous phrase “Goonies never say die.”
But unfortunately, the home from the film, and its access for tours and visitors, has taken its last breath.
Over the summer, the owner of the home officially closed the doors for good. Blocking up windows with blue tarps and denying all access to the property.
The sudden closure came from an influx of visitors, nearly a thousand every day, knocking on doors, entering the property, and trying to get a taste of their childhood nostalgia.
It was also the result of the lack of respect show by visitors to the house, many of whom left beer cans and other trash all over the place.
I can understand the owner’s frustrations.
To deal with endless crowds of people every day would feel invasive and exhausting. How could a person wanting to live their normal, day-to-day life keep up?
I also can see the argument behind people who want to view the house and say things like, “the owner chooses to live in the Goonies house, she should welcome visitors!”
However, for the most part she has for years. It’s not that the owner isn’t welcoming, it’s a simple question of how much one person can handle when it comes to crowds of people wanting into their home.
If it were me, I would want to support visitors, but there would have to be consideration for my own privacy and a way to monitor the visitor’s safety, as well as my own.
I think if people want hope for the visitation rights to potentially return in the future, the owner of the house needs to receive support from the city, as well as more respect for her privacy, and acknowledgement that it is a functioning house in addition to being a landmark.
So far, the extent of what the city has done is put up signs indicating private property, and notifications that the Goonies house is closed. There has also been discussion of making the road to the owner’s house, which at the moment is public property, private.
Sure, people can question why this should become the city’s issue, but think about how much of an attraction the Goonies house is. This can be beneficial to Astoria. Thousands of people travel to the Oregon coastal town just to get a look at where the movie was made.
If the city helps to keep visitors away by eliminating all signs that lead to the Goonies house, because there are still quite a few official signs scattered across the town, and they help mark her road as private, maybe this will ease the frustration of the owner.
This could potentially lead to the return of more monitored visits in the future, potentially.
There’s really no way to tell what the future holds, but for now, I think the privacy of the owner needs to be respected.
She welcomed visits in the past, and we can only hope that the option will return in the future.
Never say die.
