Photos by Michelle and Brian Davidson

Do me a favor.

Before you read anything past this paragraph, open another browser window and go to this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XU9q4dGOz0&feature=related

Let the music play while you read.

Of course, die-hard fans of The Goonies, the 1985 film by Stephen Spielberg and Richard Donner, already have this music – Dave Grusin’s “Fratelli Chase” – playing in their heads.

As we drive around Youngs Bay on the US Highway 101 business loop from Fort Clatsop to Astoria, the Fratellis, Mikey, Brand, Data, Mouth and the other Goonies are very much on my mind, along with Grusin’s music on an endless loop.

How can I explain the Goonies’ cult following? It is one of those movies either you’ve never heard of or you’re a rabid, Superman-shirt-under-suspenders-wearing fan. What is it about a movie that follows a rather snotty group of pre-teens and their teen elders who, in the sarcastic words of Steph, “feel like I’m baby-sitting, but I’m not getting paid” as they dodge the thuggish Fratellis and seek the treasure of One-Eyed Willy, a pirate who haunted the Oregon shores?

For me it’s Chunk,the fat kid played by Jeff Cohen. In 1985, when the movie came out, I was 13, a little older than Chunk. But I was the fat kid. Watching him suffer through the Truffle Shuffle – a dance he had to perform to gain entry to Mikey’s house in which he had to raise his shirt and gyrate, making his flab flap all over – helped me sympathize with him. So did his clumsiness. And his incredible knack to smell frozen ice cream through locked freezer doors. And that time he made a bottle of fake puke, went to the movies, hid the puke in his jacket, went to the balcony, then made a noise like this: Huuuuh. Huuuuuuulllllh. Huullllllllllllhhh! Then he threw the puke over the balcony, onto the people below, and they started getting sick. It was the most terrible thing he did in his life.

Like Jake Fratelli, chuckling at Chunk’s confession while Ma Fratelli and brother Francis get sick, I had to say, “I’m beginning to like this kid, mamma.”

We plan our route (well, “plan” is a loosely-used term here) from south to north, west to east, as Astoria is on our return trip home to Idaho. For real Goonies, there are points of interest further south at Cannon Beach; I’ll get to those later.

First stop: Astoria High School. Since the school is seen only briefly in the movie, we don’t stop, but drive by. But if you’re in the mind to re-create Andie’s victory Pyramid, this is the place to do it. The school is on the right of the Hwy 101 business loop, about a third of a mile past the point where the road loops from south to west.

Continue west on the business loop to the roundabout, then go north on Hwy 101/US 26. On your left, you’ll see the Port of Astoria, where Data experiments with his homemade belt winch and ends up winching himself head-first into the garbage can.

From the port, continue north on Hwy 101 and you’ll quickly pass the Astoria-Megler bridge, which can be seen in several background shots in the film. Pass the bridge and get on US Highway 30, headed west.

At the intersection of Hwy 30 and 8^th Street, turn south and you’re suddenly in the heart of Goonie Country. Park near the corner of 8^th and Duane streets to see the county jail, where the Fratelli chase begins, and the Flavel House Museum, the place where Mikey’s Dad works as curator.

The county jail, like most movie actors, is much smaller in person than it looks on the screen. The building no longer functions as a jail – indeed, it hasn’t since 1976 – but it’s still used by the county and is off-limits to visitors. As a sop to Goonie fans, however, the county tolerates photographers in the parking lot, and points out via a paper placard on the jail’s door that the building has been featured in other movies aside from The Goonies. As if we care.

The Flavel Museum – built and named for Captain George Flavel, a Columbia River boat captain and one of the area’s first millionaires – is open for tours to anyone, Goonie or not. Admission to the museum is $5, and affords a fascinating, rambling view into the life of the Flavels, who lived in Astoria and had the house built in 1885. Its 11,000 square feet is stuffed with family heirlooms and era antiques along with six fireplaces, a music room and library, and towering 12- and 14- foot ceiling height rooms.

The Goonies, of course, flash by the museum on their bikes after they find One-Eyed Willy’s treasure map in the attic at Mikey’s house, where his Dad housed the museum’s “rejects.” For all its Victorian and Italiantie architectural grandeur, the house is in the movie for all of about seven seconds.

Of more interest to Goonies on an Astoria tour is a nondescript and rather shabby building at the northwest corner of 9^th and Marine Streets. It’s the video arcade/bowling alley from which Chunk observes the police chase and squirts strawberry milk all over himself as he presses his meaty fists to the glass to get closer to the action. To get there from the museum, go on a loop west on Duane, south on 7^th, east on Exchange, and then north on 9^th to Marine.

Do that loop again and you’re set for the piece de resistance of Astoria’s Goonie Tour: Mikey’s house. So sought-after a landmark in town, the house, on a not-so-easy-to-access stretch of 38^th Street, appears on most tourist maps offered in the area. Travel east on Hwy 30/Leif Erickson Drive to 37^th Street, turn south, then east on Duane. Park somewhere in that neighborhood and look up on the hill to the northeast. Perched there, appearing very much in white with red trim as it does in the movie, is Mikey’s house, with Data’s blue shipboard house next door.

Here, be polite. There is a road up to the house, but it’s very steep and there’s not a lot of room to park or turn around up there. So don’t drive up there, just walk. Re-enact the Truffle Shuffle. Have a friend – Goonies should always travel in pairs – re-enact the scene where Mikey’s brother Brandon steals the little girl’s bike out from underneath her. Or just stand there and wish you could meet Miss Rosalita, or climb up into that attic to see all the rich stuff.

From the hill, look to the north and you’ll see the final stop on the Astoria Goonies tour: the pier at 36^th Street. We drove out onto the pier to find the sea lions we could hear barking, and we found them. But, more importantly, as I leaned against the pier rail, listening to the sea lions bark and growl, I realized something: Steph had been here. Bobbing for crabs. Before she became a Goonie.

So I became a Goonie.

It’s more than Chunk. It’s that sense of doing something big. Doing something fun to avoid just another “nuclear Saturday,” as the boys bemoan at the beginning of the film. And not just something for fun. Something with meaning. Mikey decides finding One-Eyed Willy’s treasure will be the best and the only way he can help his parents pay their mortgage, and their friends’ mortgages, before the neighborhood is razed to allow for a nearby golf course to expand. He wants to help but feels powerless not only because he is, but because his parents regard him as such. He’s not even allowed outside on a rainy day – a common occurrence in Astoria – because his mom doesn’t want his athsma getting worse. Mikey’s sense of purpose amid uncertainty and a little bit of hopelessness spoke to me, I realize now, much more than Chunk’s antics. When the movie came out, my Dad was recovering from open–heart surgery. Physically, I may have resembled Chunk, but mentally, I was in that same seemingly powerless state Mikey was in. I wanted to find One-Eyed Willy’s treasure just as badly as Mikey.

Standing there, looking up at the house, standing on the pier where Steph, the most reluctant Goonie, showed she wasn’t exactly a sissy, and where Mikey developed his “Goonies Never Say Die” attitude, helped me know how Chester Copperpot felt when he said “I have the key to One-Eyed Willy.”

Other sites: Fourteen miles south of Astoria on Highway 101 is Cannon Beach, Oregon, home to Haystack Rock. The Fratellis race past Haystack and continue along the beach as they enter the ORV rally to elude the police.

Just north of Cannon Beach is Ecola State Park, where some of the bicycle scenes were filmed, including the part where Brandon careens off the road on his stolen little girl’s bicycle after Troy grabs his arm and takes him for a ride in his car.

Want lunch? Stop at the Pig ‘n’ Pancake at the intersection of Hwy 30 and Bond streets. The restaurant may have had a role in an earlier version of the film – when Mouth sarcastically chastises Chunk’s wild imagination by saying, “And the time you ate your weight at Godfather’s Pizza,” the line is dubbed. Reading Mouth’s lips, I’m tempted to say he really said something instead about the Pig ‘n’ Pancake, a local restaurant chain headquartered in nearby Seaside.