The house from The Goonies, and the back of the County Jail.
The Astoria Riverfront Trolley travels up and down the shore of the Columbia, and you can hop on for a buck and ride as long as you like. “Old 300” was a streetcar built in 1913 for San Antonio, but it’s been in the Pacific Northwest for some time now. It’s volunteer-run and is entirely funded by donations and sales of tickets and souvenirs. If you’re ever in Astoria, you should definitely look up the trolley schedule and take a ride. The entire round trip takes about an hour, and you’ll get to see many of sights, narrated by whoever happens to be your tour guide for the day.
From the trolley we got to see two landmarks from The Goonies: the house and the old County Jail. Our tour guide noted that when the Fratellis break out of the jail, they end up in Cannon Beach about five seconds later, even though that’s about 25 miles away. We didn’t have time to make the trek to see the house up close, but it was pretty fun to see it from the trolley. The house is up on a hill and is quite visible from down below. If you happen to be in Astoria on June 7, 2012, you can even celebrate Goonies Day!)
Astor Elementary School, the location for Kindergarten Cop.
Another movie location we spotted was Astor Elementary School, where Arnold Schwarzenegger went undercover as Kindergarten Cop, thus setting the stage for other action heroes to star in movies for kids (cf. The Pacifier, Tooth Fairy … Hmm, come to think of it, maybe he just paved the way for Dwayne Johnson). “Who is your daddy and what does he do?”
Claude Kurtz of Fernhill Glass Studios at work.
After lunch we stopped for ice cream and then wandered over to the Fernhill Glass Studios, where we watched Claude Kurtz creating some glass bottles. My kids had never seen glass blowing, so it was really cool to watch one bottle being made from start to (almost) finish. At the end the bottle was placed in the kiln (the square-ish box on the left edge of the photo), which lets it cool down very slowly. Kurtz explained that if it cooled too quickly it would shatter, so it sits in there for a day before they take it out.
If you’ve never watched a glass blower at work, you should. It’s a fascinating process to see a glob of molten glass become a bottle or vase or sculpture. Fernhill Glass Studios even has a “Blow Your Own Ornament” option, but you have to wait until the next day to pick them up so we’ll have to try that some other time.
This was just a short trip to Astoria — we left Saturday afternoon — but there was so much more to see. I don’t know when exactly we’ll get back next, but I’m hoping to check out some of the other museums, go across the bridge to Washington, and maybe rent a kayak.
Oh, and hunt down some of the locations where Short Circuit was filmed.
All photos by Jonathan Liu
