Poconos ... OY!

[jtk]

Creepy Photos Show Abandoned American Resort Towns

These mountain resorts in Pennsylvania and New York, once thriving vacation spots, are now ghosts of their former grandeur.

www.nationalgeographic.com

Pablo Maurer

 

[CMoore]

I have always been very intrigued by the "Before and After" shots from those types of scenarios.

If the walls could talk...
Simpler times...
Better days...
Etc etc...

It certainly does make you pause, and wonder
Often times there were generations of people that experienced the rise and fall of those. establishments.

No doubt we all have a growing up, coming of age, near miss, or a dozen other memories that are stored in a series of photos like that.

San Francisco...and all cities... lost several big and BEAUTIFUL movie theaters that we will never see the likes of again.
Wonderful places where we saw everything from Marry Poppins to James Bond, American Graffiti and Star Wars

 

[pentaxuser]

Amazing, thanks for the link

pentaxuser

 

[jtk]

CMoore's observation about movie theatres and memory should inspire ...we have one spectacular (restored) example in Albuquerque...maybe I'll ask management for permission. Gold paint, sculpted plaster, architectural shapes....

Note that in-camera HDR (e.g. Pentax K70) can open shadows and hang onto highlights very nicely and without any of the perhaps-too-popular exaggeration, depending on what floats yer' boat. It's just a matter of adjustment, doesn't even require post-processing. Some of zone system's goals are similar but difficult in B&W. Whereas in-camera HDR can do it without drawing attention to itself. Seems and obvious tool for these abandoned views.

 

[Rick A]

Yeah, I saw that article when it was first published five years ago. Sad statement of the times.

 

[Cholentpot]

I experienced the tail end of this in the early 90's. The stuff we did as kids then would never happened now. Thank goodness social media didn't exist.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

My family use to go to the Catskill Mountains back then. As a kid I really like the summer activities like fishing and swimming and entertainment at the hotels at night. I was too young for Dirty Dancing. All the famous hotels like Grossinger's and Concord and Kutshers are all gone. People moved on especially as air fares became cheaper and people started to fly to the Caribbean, Europe and other destinations instead of driving to the mountains from NYC. A lot of of people would get away from the hot city. But people moved out of the city apartments to their own homes elsewhere and didn't need to get away. The hotel owners tried to reinvigorate the place with gambling. But they couldn't get the NYS legislature to pass a gambling bill until after it was all gone.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I experienced the tail end of this in the early 90's. The stuff we did as kids then would never happened now. Thank goodness social media didn't exist.

I was there in the Catskills during the late 50's and early 60's during its heyday. I was too young for Dirty Dancing though.

 

[Cholentpot]

My family use to go to the Catskill Mountains back then. As a kid I really like the summer activities like fishing and swimming and entertainment at the hotels at night. I was too young for Dirty Dancing. All the famous hotels like Grossinger's and Concord and Kutshers are all gone. People moved on especially as air fares became cheaper and people started to fly to the Caribbean, Europe and other destinations instead of driving to the mountains from NYC. A lot of of people would get away from the hot city. But people moved out of the city apartments to their own homes elsewhere and didn't need to get away. The hotel owners tried to reinvigorate the place with gambling. But they couldn't get the NYS legislature to pass a gambling bill until after it was all gone.

Many of the Bungalow Colonies fought the gambling tooth and nail. Those colonies and camps ended up taking over a few resorts in the end.

Those places were heaven for a little kid. There was a farmer that would give us a shotgun and a box of shells, tell us to go out in a field a look for rats. Cotton balls in ears and tuna sandwiches in boxes we'd march out there.

Never found any rats and no-one had the courage to shoot the gun but it was an adventure. Now that I think about it, I don't think the gun functioned. Farmer B was a swell guy though.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Thank you.
The contrast of the past with the present is eye opening.

When I was six years old my parents took the three of us for the first time [circa 1950s] to go to the New York City part of the family summer retreat in the Catskills, ho-ha-if-you-excuse-me, for the women and children could escape the heat while men had to stay in the city and shwitz in the heat during the workweek. The bungalows to me at the time were shabby with torn screens. So here are two memories from that summer:

All the kids ran around the area in packs during the day playing wherever they drifted to. At lunch they would all descend on one random bungalow and pack around the kitchen table. Out would come a open topped milk pitcher and a plate stacked high with Velveeta cheese sandwiches on white bread and placed on the table. In came a house fly through the torn screen, but only one lone buzzing around above the table. The mother of whose child I could never remember or tell grabbed a sprayer of Flit.​

​

The mother started chasing the poor fly with the Flit spray, pump-pump-pump and the fly deftly stayed ahead of the cloud [remember that a fire control system leads the aircraft not lag it]. Around and around went the fly and around and around went the cloud of insect spray. Eventually the fly gives up and goes down in a death spiral. Now as a dumb six year old I see the poison cloud condensing and precipitating on to the plate of sandwiches and into to open top of the milk pitcher and thinking this is not good. The mother entreats the children, "Essen, essen, essen mein kinder!" I promptly left and eat lunch at the family's place.​

​

The other memory is the women sitting around a table playing Mahjong under a shade umbrella.​

​

The bidding starts off :​

"One Crack"​

"Two Bam"​

"Shit!"​

That summer as a 6 year old I am walking around thinking that "Shit!" is a mahjong suit.​

​

​

​

 

[bags27]

No more Dirty Dancing. Just dirty.
At the end of the movie, they pressaged this, saying families were no longer going there in the summers because the kids were going to Europe.

 

[Cholentpot]

Thank you.
The contrast of the past with the present is eye opening.

When I was six years old my parents took the three of us for the first time [circa 1950s] to go to the New York City part of the family summer retreat in the Catskills, ho-ha-if-you-excuse-me, for the women and children could escape the heat while men had to stay in the city and shwitz in the heat during the workweek. The bungalows to me at the time were shabby with torn screens. So here are two memories from that summer:

All the kids ran around the area in packs during the day playing wherever they drifted to. At lunch they would all descend on one random bungalow and pack around the kitchen table. Out would come a open topped milk pitcher and a plate stacked high with Velveeta cheese sandwiches on white bread and placed on the table. In came a house fly through the torn screen, but only one lone buzzing around above the table. The mother of whose child I could never remember or tell grabbed a sprayer of Flit.​

​

View attachment 316271​

The mother started chasing the poor fly with the Flit spray, pump-pump-pump and the fly deftly stayed ahead of the cloud [remember that a fire control system leads the aircraft not lag it]. Around and around went the fly and around and around went the cloud of insect spray. Eventually the fly gives up and goes down in a death spiral. Now as a dumb six year old I see the poison cloud condensing and precipitating on to the plate of sandwiches and into to open top of the milk pitcher and thinking this is not good. The mother entreats the children, "Essen, essen, essen mein kinder!" I promptly left and eat lunch at the family's place.​

​

The other memory is the women sitting around a table playing Mahjong under a shade umbrella.​

​

View attachment 316272​

The bidding starts off :​

"One Crack"​

"Two Bam"​

"Shit!"​

That summer as a 6 year old I am walking around thinking that "Shit!" is a mahjong suit.​

​

​

​

Oh my.

1992-5 spent summers at my aunts Colony. Ripped screens were still ripped. Floors sloped. At this point though we had blue light bug zappers. We'd set out in the morning with a box of nails and a hammer to build another floor on the treehouse. We added to generations of shoddy work, six stories by the time I was there. At 12pm the 60's era PA system would crackle calling us to lunch in the stripped house communal eating room. There were no stripes since the 40's.

We'd settle down to a giant stack of buttered bread and apple juice. We'd all grab sliced and then pick off the bugs that fell on them from the zapper. Smarter kids would wait until the stack diminished and get the clean ones from the bottom. Even smarter would wait for it all to be gone and get a fresh stack from kitchen. No-one wanted to drink until Mrs. Shapiro would tell us 'Traink shoin! You gonna has a heat stroke gott in himmel!' If we were lucky someone had put the bottles in the ancient freezer the night before. Otherwise we'd drink two cups of tepid syrupy apple juice, bench and get back to throwing hammers at each other or digging up Salamanders.

Colony had a Yentes circle. The woman would make a giant circle with plastic chairs, they'd be six deep. The ones with better gossip would get moved forward into a better position to be heard in the middle. The boys were banned from earshot of the place. However, after a day of collecting lizards and salamanders, one of the more engineered minded kids rigged a shoebox on a rollerskate that would pop open when it hit something releasing the zoo.

We aimed it at the yenta circle and pulled the string. And then ran.

Turns out Old Mrs. Goldberg used to be a track and field star. She still had it. She got Mo by his ear and J.B. by his left shoulder. I got away.

Mrs. Goldberg was on dinner duty that night.

I didn't eat dinner in the Striped House.

 

[madNbad]

Growing up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the Poconos were a favorite destination. In the early 1960s my father bought the first of a series of travel trailers, starting with a 13' Scottie (no potty) and ending with a 23' Airstream.The trips were basically in two directions, south to the Chesapeake Bay where my dad would make friends with a random stranger, return with baskets of crabs, clams and a couple of cases of beer. Between boiling crabs and drinking beer he would use the amateur radio in the car to chat with other operators around the world. Meanwhile, I spent the time carrying five gallon jerry cans of water, finding wood for the fire, trying my hand at whittling and occasional attempts at meeting girls. The trips to the Poconos were almost identical except the seafood was replaced with sausages and hamburgers. There were still the cases of beer and the random stranger. The best Pocono trips were to Ontelaunee Park in Lehigh County with is the southern edge of the mountains. my father was a huge country music fan and every summer the park would host what was a lighter version of the Grand Ole Opry with many of the stars of the day giving outstanding performances. I still had to carry five gallon jerry cans of water and gather firewood but ther were more girls. Plus there were pierogis.

 

[Arthurwg]

Susan Sontag said we should like this stuff.

 

[CMoore]

I was there in the Catskills during the late 50's and early 60's during its heyday. I was too young for Dirty Dancing though.

My family use to go to the Catskill Mountains back then. As a kid I really like the summer activities like fishing and swimming and entertainment at the hotels at night. I was too young for Dirty Dancing. All the famous hotels like Grossinger's and Concord and Kutshers are all gone. People moved on especially as air fares became cheaper and people started to fly to the Caribbean, Europe and other destinations instead of driving to the mountains from NYC. A lot of of people would get away from the hot city. But people moved out of the city apartments to their own homes elsewhere and didn't need to get away. The hotel owners tried to reinvigorate the place with gambling. But they couldn't get the NYS legislature to pass a gambling bill until after it was all gone.

I was there in the Catskills during the late 50's and early 60's during its heyday. I was too young for Dirty Dancing though.

Wow, color me jealous.

"The grass is always greener"............... i realize that.
There were problems and inequities in the world then that do not exist today. But there was a certain charm and wonder of those "simpler times" that (for the most part) we do not experience today. I was born in 1960. So, even if i had lived in that area of the usa, i was too young to have enjoyed it the way you did.

These discussions always make me think of a Jerry Seinfeld interview. He was asked about the huge success of his show.
He remarked that "clean humor" has to have a heightened level of cleverness. Working in a "G-Rated" show forces you to rely on intelligent innuendo and smart language to talk about
sex
drugs
infidelity
crime
unethical behavior
etc etc etc

Thanks For The Memories

 

[Sirius Glass]

My family use to go to the Catskill Mountains back then. As a kid I really like the summer activities like fishing and swimming and entertainment at the hotels at night. I was too young for Dirty Dancing. All the famous hotels like Grossinger's and Concord and Kutshers are all gone. People moved on especially as air fares became cheaper and people started to fly to the Caribbean, Europe and other destinations instead of driving to the mountains from NYC. A lot of of people would get away from the hot city. But people moved out of the city apartments to their own homes elsewhere and didn't need to get away. The hotel owners tried to reinvigorate the place with gambling. But they couldn't get the NYS legislature to pass a gambling bill until after it was all gone.

But you missed the fact that Dirty Dancing was filmed decades after the Catskills went into decline so the was no clairvoyance in predicting the decline of the Catskills. That is like predicting today that the American Revolutionary War would be won by the colonists.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

But you missed the fact that Dirty Dancing was filmed decades after the Catskills went into decline so the was no clairvoyance in predicting the decline of the Catskills. That is like predicting today that the American Revolutionary War would be won by the colonists.

Where did I predict the decline of the Catskills? I only explained why it happened.

 

[reddesert]

The headline is a little weird since it's the resorts that are abandoned, but the towns do still exist, although often fallen on hard times like much of rural America.

My grandparents went a few times to a bungalow colony near White Lake NY. I went once or twice in the 1970s. Simpler times, to the point of near-dilapidation as everyone says, simpler entertainment in a lower-tech world. It's easy to be nostalgic for that (and I am), but if you were transported back to one of those places you'd also be adjusting to the lack of amenities that has made them less viable. The all-in-one comprehensive resorts pictured here such as Grossinger's had all the trimmings - but were also really expensive.

Things that contributed to the decline included travel to more exotic locations, people not being able to get away for long periods in the summer, air conditioning making city life tolerable. Another factor - people in NYC who could afford it used to send their kids out of the city for the summer for fear of sickness and disease. Especially polio. Families would forbid their kids from going to the public swimming pools, and if a kid got infected their family would become pariahs. My parents remember that time well. The good old days weren't all good.

 

[jtk]

Susan Sontag said we should like this stuff.

Where did Susan Sontag say anything like that? Where?

 

[Arthurwg]

It's in the book.

 

[jtk]

It's in the book.

What book?

 

[Sirius Glass]

It's in the book.

Does one have to read the book or is having the book sufficient?

 

[Arthurwg]

"On Photography." I don't have a copy handy but I remember she said that photographers are supposed to like ruins and old things falling apart.

 

[jtk]

"On Photography." I don't have a copy handy but I remember she said that photographers are supposed to like ruins and old things falling apart.

OK... maybe that explains the minority's enthusiasm for film cameras

 

[jtk]

The headline is a little weird since it's the resorts that are abandoned, but the towns do still exist, although often fallen on hard times like much of rural America.

My grandparents went a few times to a bungalow colony near White Lake NY. I went once or twice in the 1970s. Simpler times, to the point of near-dilapidation as everyone says, simpler entertainment in a lower-tech world. It's easy to be nostalgic for that (and I am), but if you were transported back to one of those places you'd also be adjusting to the lack of amenities that has made them less viable. The all-in-one comprehensive resorts pictured here such as Grossinger's had all the trimmings - but were also really expensive.

Things that contributed to the decline included travel to more exotic locations, people not being able to get away for long periods in the summer, air conditioning making city life tolerable. Another factor - people in NYC who could afford it used to send their kids out of the city for the summer for fear of sickness and disease. Especially polio. Families would forbid their kids from going to the public swimming pools, and if a kid got infected their family would become pariahs. My parents remember that time well. The good old days weren't all good.

That's one of many great posts on this thread.

Add to that litany, there's the huge change in marriage and child rearing.... I've read (Tablet.com ?) that a third of marriages by Jewish people may now be to non-Jewish people.