Standing in front of a trim Victorian house overlooking the Columbia River, a man suddenly lifted his shirt and began to shimmy. Onlookers egged him on.
“You’ve got to do it!” a woman shouted from across the street.
“My family would be disappointed if I didn’t!” he called back, continuing his gyrations.
The man, Matthew Craugh, 32, from Carson City, Nev., was doing the Truffle Shuffle, re-enacting a scene from the 1985 adventure-comedy film “The Goonies,” in which Chunk, played by Jeff Cohen, does a humiliating dance at the request of his friend Mouth (Corey Feldman).
Decades’ worth of fans like Mr. Craugh have made pilgrimages to Astoria, Ore., the small town where “The Goonies” was set and mostly filmed. For the 40th anniversary of its release, an estimated 10,000 people gathered in Astoria over one June weekend this year.
Astoria, in turn, has mostly embraced the fans of the movie — which has a Facebook page with more than two million followers — aiming to turn them into a boost to the local economy. Many of the sites from the film still stand, and the town, on a peninsula near the mouth of the Columbia River, also offers visitors a rich history, a lively dining scene and easy access to state parks and beaches.
“Iowa has the ‘Field of Dreams’ and it’s an incredible place to go, but it’s just a field,” said Mike Schulte, a longtime “Goonies” fan who has visited Astoria three times, including once for his movie review podcast, “The Confused Breakfast,” which he hosts with two friends.
“There were five of us out there basically on a ‘Goonies’ adventure for a couple of days, like finding hidden treasure and finding film locations,” Mr. Schulte said. “It really ingrained itself as a top core memory of my life.”
Perfect Place for a Shipwreck
The plot of “The Goonies,” directed by Richard Donner and featuring young up-and-comers like Martha Plimpton, Sean Astin and Mr. Feldman, centers on a treasure hunt. A group of teenagers facing the foreclosure of their Astoria neighborhood, affectionately called the Goon Docks, embark on a hunt for pirate treasure, pursued by the Fratellis, a family of bumbling criminals.
As I drove across the four-mile Astoria-Megler Bridge toward town, I recalled watching the film when I was young and hearing endless references from my Gen X siblings. I wondered how the film, and four decades of economic change, had transformed the once-gritty logging town. Would it live up to the film’s famous catchphrase, “Goonies never say die”?
I was planning a three-pronged pilgrimage: First, I would visit the Oregon Film Museum, which features “Goonies” exhibitions. Then I would head for the Goon Docks and check out the house where Mikey and his brother, Brand (Josh Brolin) lived. Finally, I’d finish my trip 25 miles south, in Ecola State Park, the setting of the Fratellis’ hide-out and the spot where the Goonies used a doubloon to find the pirate ship. (Disappointingly, the scene at the end when the ship sails out of the cave was shot in California.)
Astoria is a perfect setting for a movie about pirate treasure. Fast currents, shifting sandbars and tumultuous weather have led to more than 2,000 recorded shipwrecks in the area, known as the “Graveyard of the Pacific,” and the craggy coastline could conceal just about anything.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Feldman, a.k.a. Mouth, agreed. “Where else can you do it? Where you’re going to be off the coast of a fishing town and you’re going to have these great rock formations, where there is this possibility that some ship went into an open cave at some point,” he said.
‘OK to Be a Chunk’
At the Oregon Film Museum ($6) — which was used as the jail in the opening scene of “The Goonies” — visitors can pose in the cell where Jake Fratelli (Robert Davi) made a run for it and gawk at the gadget-laced outfit worn by Data (Ke Huy Quan). A replica of the Fratellis’ Jeep Cherokee, complete with bullet holes, sits outside.
In one section, index cards invite visitors share their feelings with prompts like, “I love ‘The Goonies’ because … ” and “Tell the Goonies why you’re here.” Over the years, the board has filled up with stories of cancer survival and lost loved ones. A veteran wrote about watching “The Goonies” for comfort before going out on patrol in Afghanistan.
“I have hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of notes,” said Mac Burns, the museum’s director, in a phone interview, citing a few examples: “‘We’re here celebrating a birthday.’ ‘We’re here celebrating an anniversary.’ ‘This movie taught me it was OK to be a Chunk.’”
Nearby, at the bowling alley where Chunk, mesmerized by a police chase, smashes a pizza and a milkshake against a window, visitors can re-enact the scene with Chunk-like Hawaiian shirts provided. The bowling alley is still in business. The lanes were mostly filled when I visited on a Wednesday afternoon.
A few blocks from the Goonies House, I stopped in at the Astoria Coffee Company, which has the feeling of a “Goonies”-themed general store, with books, T-shirts, games, prop replicas and other souvenirs.
The Goonies House, built in 1896 and bought by an entrepreneur in 2023, features a Rube Goldberg-like machine outside that, as in the film, can open the gate (though this one substitutes a mechanical chicken for the live one). It draws a steady stream of visitors — and Truffle Shufflers — and the new owner has restored the entire place to appear as it did in the movie, down to the attic where the Goonies found the treasure map.
In the movie, the working-class neighborhood surrounding the house faced the threat of development, echoing the real Astoria of the 1980s, when fishing and logging jobs were vanishing.
“The town was a little depressed,” said Mr. Burns. “In 1900, you might send a group of 40 or 50 guys into the woods to chop down some trees if you’re a logger. And now you have to send five or six guys because of mechanization.”
These days, Astoria counts more bustling breweries than a weekend visitor can sample, and many of them serve some combination of local oysters, chowders and fried seafood. Even businesses not associated with “The Goonies” gravitate toward merchandise with a pirate theme. One tiki bar, Dead Man’s Isle, sells a drink called Mutant Skull, which you can sip from a mug shaped like a warped cranium.
A Rock and an Old Coin
On their quest for treasure, the Goonies use a doubloon with holes in it to view a giant rock and place the pirate ship on an old map. That landmark, Haystack Rock, sits just offshore about 25 miles southwest of town in Cannon Beach, visible from a viewpoint at Ecola State Park. A sign commemorates the scene and the former location of the fictional abandoned restaurant that served as the Fratellis’ lair.
The set is long gone, but a hiking trail through an oceanside forest offers a close-up look of the landscape featured in the film.
After buying some of the reddest roadside strawberries I had ever seen, I walked farther south along Cannon Beach to get a better view of Haystack Rock, which loomed much larger than I had ever imagined when I was watching the movie.
With fog above the water, it almost seemed impossible there wasn’t a pirate ship loaded with treasure lurking somewhere among these rocks. The conditions were perfect. Now, if only I had a doubloon and a treasure map.
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Will Dudding is a staff editor.
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