Let's be the Catskills!

I'm the veal.

I'm the motel office shaped like a teepee with a non-working unironic neon sign reading KAMP TIPPPI TOES or some such other bullshit.

I'm the wood spider the size of your head living under the second pillow in cabin #3 at R3.

I'm the Martense Family.

I'm the gross tonnage of used condoms, discarded diapers and broken glass left behind at Katterskill Falls by witless tourist trash.

I’m the Borscht Belt comedian who apparently never learned Vaudeville is as dead as the Catskills.

I'm the "Irish Alps" to families from Brooklyn and Queens in the 1960s/70s.

I'm the Zen monastery tucked up at the end of some dirt road, replete with Sung Dynasty architecture.

I'm the sudden one-lane covered bridge.

I'm the ghost of Patrick Swayze.

I'm the Phonecia Diner. Here is your delicious buttermilk biscuit.

I'm the trip from Manhattan by car, and I'm fuckin' endless.

I’m the abandoned resorts that could double for Pripyat.

I'm the brooding rotting stone castle that was never finished or lived in or loved. I am scrawled all over inside and out with bogus Satanic graffiti. Fuck with me and I'll drop a gargoyle on your head.

I'm shitty antiques sold out of a garage technically condemned 20 years ago.

I'm the spoilage of the swimming holes by Instagram hordes.

I'm yet another roadside stand of sweet corn and clover honey.

I'm the trout fly-fishing club from the 1790s. Although I look like a collapsing woodshed, my membership requirements are more challenging than those for the gentlemen's clubs of St. James.

I am the mighty Ashokan, greatest of all reservoirs. They drowned eight village to build me.

Laugh? I literally wet myself.

I am the black bear peeking into your tent to see if you still have any bacon.

I already ate all the stuff in your car.

We're Brooklyn hipsters, and we just discovered this incredible region of natural beauty. No one has ever been here before us, not ever.

I am the ironic Airtream trailer camp run by the retired wingnut member of an 80s pop-rockabilly band.

I'm the time of my life.

I've just been had.

The Catskills you are all talking about is disappearing. Plenty of New Yorkers moving there to escape Corona/NYC real estate prices.

I live in the dump.

It ain't going' nowhere, R24.

I'm the steady march of artisinal cheese and goat soap.

I'm a dish of charcoal ice cream at the Deer Mountain Inn.

I am "Shrieking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness chasing one another through endless, ensanguined corridors of purple fulgurous sky . . . formless phantasms and kaleidoscopic mutations of a ghoulish, remembered scene; forests of monstrous overnourished oaks with serpent roots twisting and sucking unnamable juices from an earth verminous with millions of cannibal devils; mound-like tentacles groping from underground nuclei of polypous perversion . . . insane lightning over malignant ivied walls and daemon arcades choked with fungous vegetation..."

Otherwise known as "Platte Cove Road in July".

I am the local community theater. I look forward to an amateur production of Lysistrata. Again.

DL fave Susan Dey has lived in the area for over a decade now.

I am the Manhattanite seething that I had to buy in the Catskills because I couldn't afford the Hamptons.

I am someone with the word "Van" as part of their surname. Either I have 26 toes on each foot or more money than God. Either way I am about as pleasant to encounter as a hornet's nest made of shit.

[quote]I'm the Phonecia Diner. Here is your delicious buttermilk biscuit. —$49.99, please

Ha, ha, ha! It's so true!!

I remember when the Phoencia Diner first opened. It was a typical diner. Now, it's so overpriced (ie, not for the natives).

I'm OP's grandmother at Woodstock.

Tripping on acid, spread-eagle, sundress pushed up over my head, taking on all cummers.

AcI'm fat, racist, 55-years-old-and-older white guys with red faces and smoker's coughs who make up American motorcycle culture today. Watch us drive our tattoo-bedecked humpback-whale girlfriends back and forth in packs of 20 bikes on narrow, otherwise peaceful roads in order to destroy whatever quiet and charm it was you were hoping to experience when you got here in the first cunting place.

I'm the choke-cherry smoked bourbon perfect Manhattan at the Peekamoose Lodge.

I'm the cocaine vacuumed out of the carpets at the Bearsville Theater.

I'm the t-shirt that says, "CATSKILLS VS. THE HAMPTONS"

I'm a Dallas Hot Weiner. I am the best food in the Catskills. And still affordable!

I'm the frightening fact that although all of the above is true, the Hamptons are still objectively worse.

I’m mourning the death of my beloved husband David Bowie.

I'm the scenic pictures that will soon choke this thread I hope

We're all too busy choking on something else, R42.

I'm Debbie and Eddie's wedding cake at Grossingers.

I'm the only non-Jew who stayed in one of the resorts in the decades after the war. The Catskills were one of the few places which allowed Jews to vacation there.

"Restricted" was the word that was used to get the point across.

I am the village of Catskill that is not actually in the Catskills.

We just have a swell view of them from the back porch.

I'm the adorable little Ukrainian church of traditional architecture topped with a tiny dome and put together with wooden pegs.

Why am I here? And well you might ask!

[quote]I am the village of Catskill that is not actually in the Catskills.

We're all the different cat statues that line the main street of Catskill. Somebody made bank on that art project.

I'm the brain-dead business council in Catskill that actually approved "Cat'n Around" as the slogan for the monthly gallery crawl.

I personally wouldn't have fucked any one of them with Bojack's dick

I am the actual Overlook Hotel, up on Overlook Mountain. I burned down many years ago but my eerie walls and sunken gardens remain. Sometimes, late at night, you can hear the ghostly sound of Shelley Duvall tell Stanley Kubrick to stick his head up his ass.

I'm the nest of white supremacists camped out on the old Lundy Estate. Our boy-parts shrivel in racially pure terror at the sight of bird-watchers.

I'm the delicious edible mushrooms OOPS I'M NOT

I’m an aged Jewish widow, who comes every year because my husband Mort and I always did, and I have nowhere else to go.

[quote]I'm the Phonecia Diner.

I had to look up Phonecia Diner. I stopped in there a few times after a day of hiking. It was 6-7 years ago and don't remember what I paid but it felt like a cheap roadside diner.

Keeping to the spirit of the thread I'm the hotel that burned down when the owners realized the insurance money was worth more than the hotel.

I'm Mohonk Mountain House. Rich people pay ridiculous amounts of money to stay here.

I am a 1965 Cadillac parked in the woods many years ago and left to quietly decay. Maybe I have something unusual in my trunk!

Who knows?

[quote]I had to look up Phonecia Diner. I stopped in there a few times after a day of hiking. It was 6-7 years ago and don't remember what I paid but it felt like a cheap roadside diner.

They changed ownership a few years ago. The menu is now targeted to NYC people who are used to paying ridiculous prices.

I admit I find the food delicious, but it is expensive if you're expecting a regular upstate diner.

I'm the Appalachians. It's cute how you pretend I'm not

I am the statue of the Minotaur standing in the center of the Arkville labyrinth. I am also the cliff a trespasser killed himself by falling off while trying to jump over the wall to see the statue.

Points to R60 for local knowledge

R59, with the exception of the Laurentians, the Adirondacks and a few others, all of the major mountains on the East Coast are the Appalachians. The Catskills are considered a dissected plateau.

R62. Precisely. Rather, more precisely, their mountains are an eroded plateau, which makes them one of the oldest geological formations in the world. Note the Gilboa fossil forest, from 380 million years ago.

I'm the Hasidic Jewish enclave.

I'm the seething hatred with which the other Jewish enclaves in the Catskills regard the Hasidic one.

I am the call of herons at dusk as you walk through the deep woods. I sound like a timber wolf being stabbed to death by a vampire.

I am the nearly imperceptible shadings that separate "quaint" from "creepy".

Folk art displays, abandoned barns, Victorian mansions, decaying hotels, bird calls, dew-covered spider webs, the rustlings of wild animals - I'm everywhere.

I'm a bungalow colony near Monticello that's been taken over by Hasidim.

Sixty years ago I was home to families of secular outer borough Jews, but today I feel more like 19th century Poland.

I am Sullivan County: Monticello, South Fallsburg, Loch Sheldrake et al.

I am home to the old school Jewish Catskills and I have mostly been taken over by Hasidim, Russian Jews and Koreans.

I am very different from Orange County and (especially) Ulster County, which is where the hip Catskills are.

I'm the old Game Farm

I'm the Old Profession, available up the street.

I'm the fact that the lights are on at the old Slaughterview Hotel! Let's split up and die stupidly!

I'm the dining room waiter who says to a group of ladies "Is anything alright." Sydelle tells me "the soup is terrible and such a small portion."

I am the Roxbury Motel and I am simply FABULOUS!!!!

Hi Folks! I'm R73! I just flew in from Vegas and boy are my arms tired!!

I am the ghost of John Burroughs.

I'm Rip Van Winkle, the OG Catskills guy!

I am Onteora Park. I was founded in the 1880s as a restful retreat for lady artists. I consist of exquisite landscaped gardens and gigantic Noah's Ark-like Arts & Crafts "cottages". Go away, hipsters. I have zero interest in your facial hair.

I'm Baby.

In the corner.

I'm the Kingston Stockade, New York's first capital. I was burned by the British.

I’m the Jews!

I am the deep divide between weekenders & full time residents.

I'm the fully-dressed guy who joins a game of Simon Says led by the tummler (recreation director/comedian/mischief maker) of the 1950's era Catskills vacation resort. I'm one of the first to make a mistake, and the tummler tells me to to get into the swimming pool. The others who erred jump in fully clothed, they're all in. I'm prodded by the other players to do it. I don't want to be a spoil sport so I do what I am told.

The socks squish in my shoes for the next few hours.

Look up Allan Tresser and Lou Goldstein. They were the men who were paid to do this.

I'm the views.

I'm the affordability of home air conditioning and the great White Flight to the suburbs in the 60s and 70s, 2 factors that pretty much destroyed the well-established Catskill resort culture of post-war New York.

Kind of a shame.

I'm the comedian only Jews can appreciate.

I'm Jackie Mason, looking for a good place where my ashes can be spread.

I'm Frederick Church. I live across the Hudson in a sham Persian palace, but admire my views of the Catskills, which are indeed, sublime.

I'm the waves of smug boiling off the green-gold folds of the lovely Schoharie Valley.

I'm the name itself, derived from the Dutch Kaaterskill (“Wildcat Creek”).

I'm the shitty little cottage my grandmother paid 10k for in 1960 that went for $350k after a kitchen and bathroom rehab.

I'm Rena from Zena. Do not enter unless you are aware!

I'm towns full of freakish architecture, like a house built entirely of window panes or one shingled with rubber tires.

I'm Mohonk Mountain House, miraculously still standing. But are the Gunks really the Catskills? Geologists would say no, I think.

I'm that little church in the woods, down the road from the trail up Overlook Mountain behind Woodstock.

The Gunks are not the Catskills, although they fade into them around Ellenville. However Mohonk is rightfully famous for its view OF the Catkskills.

I'm a tiny waterfall glimpsed from the car during the ride up into the mountains. On the way back to New York I will seem to have vanished.

I'm the sudden sensation of being watched.

I'm Athens, probably safer than Hudson and you'll pay less for a Greek Revival.

I am a faded driveway marked by a pair of grand wrought iron gates.

You might think it would be a good idea to check out where I lead.

You would be wrong.

I'm Windham in the 70s when we were deluded it was a little Vail.

I am Casa Suzanna, a retreat for drag queens in the 1950s and early 60s. I am tolerated by the locals, although I am thought ridiculous.

It was just a little vale.

I'm whitewashed rubber tire planters. And these chairs.

I am Wyndam today, when I am spelled correctly and doing just fine, thank you so very much.

i am the Old Stone Fort in Schoharie. I served as meeting hall, church, fortress and communal living space for settlers circa 1720. I am quite handsome and surrounded by a beautiful cemetery. I am now a museum. I mark the outer edge of the Dutch/German/French Huguenot settlement pattern in New York State. Isolated occurrences still appear farther afield but New York State from here on in was settled mostly by New Englanders.

I’m the bullets lodged in the back of your rental car when you decide to use just the very end of someone’s driveway to stop, turn and go the other direction, on a long skinny road.

“It’s been ten miles since I saw anywhere to turn around! The house is so far from the road anyway. What, are they sitting on their porch waiting? Oh my god is that gunfire?!”

I'm a zillion abandoned places. For example I'm abandoned Catskill Game Farm

I'm a honeybee conservation center.

I am ten thousand picturesque places simply perfect for the bride's special day.

I am the village of Medusa. I am actually rather quaint, moniker aside. I host a very ambitious Halloween party.

I am various cults, religious orders, monasteries, camps and "wellness centers".

I am somehow less unhinged than the locals.

Medusa is so obscure or evil that Google street view hasn't photographed it.

It's actually quite cute, R113. It used to have a fantastic general store, but they shuttered about five years ago.

I'm New York City which decided it would be cheaper the buy the land to prevent development than actually treat the Catskill water. I'm the future domestic terrorist learning "water soluble poisons" who is planning to make them regret that choice.

I'm every boomer who was dragged to Monticello, the Concord or Grossinger's as a kid and wanted to dig a hole and bury myself in it.

What was so awful about big comfortable resorts in the Catskills with lots of hokey activities for kids?

I am the wine from the dozen or so wineries. I am worse than Finger Lakes wine.

I'm the Better Days that the whole region has seen.

[quote]I'm the name itself, derived from the Dutch Kaaterskill (“Wildcat Creek”).

I'm Shitskill, the name of a daring new Dutch situation comedy.

Gorgeous up there. Peaceful.

Port Jervis, NY: The southwestern gateway to the Catskills, and the point where The Catskills, The Poconos, and The Kittatinnys come together. Note:: The Catskills in New York State, The Poconos in Pennsylvania, and The Kittatinnys in New Jersey

I'm the Poconos, the Catskills' trashy cousin. I am coated in post-war Deplorable no-tell motel goo. No artist colonies or hippie bullshit here, no-siree! 400,000 fireworks stores instead!

Port Jervis seems pretty far south of the Catskills proper. A lot of the Borscht Belt seems to have been in the Southern counties and not even in the Catskills at all. Just the hills.

I’m the expression of undying friendship cited on every third page of your 5th Grade NYC Public School autograph book

I'm the massive swimming pool every Catskills resort had.

[quote] "Shrieking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness chasing one another through endless, ensanguined corridors of purple fulgurous sky . . . formless phantasms and kaleidoscopic mutations of a ghoulish, remembered scene; forests of monstrous overnourished oaks with serpent roots twisting and sucking unnamable juices from an earth verminous with millions of cannibal devils; mound-like tentacles groping from underground nuclei of polypous perversion . . . insane lightning over malignant ivied walls and daemon arcades choked with fungous vegetation..."

I thought that was borscht.

I'm the heroin.

I am that same Manhattanite smugly enjoying my Catskills chalet while watching news about the Category 5 hurricane that destroys the Hamptons.

The Catskills? We wouldn't be caught dead in the Catskills!

haha wrong link but OK! I'm sure Blake insists on Nantucket or the Adirondacks

We're the phone ringing in the new home of the the former New Yorkers who lived in Manhattan for 16 years and finally moved upstate. Who could be calling? Surprise! It's roughly 600 friends, acquaintances, and people we flat-out don't know from the city practically inviting themselves to "come visit." They can't wait to see us!

I am a mouser.

I’m Jay Carucci’s Hurley Ridge Market where the proprietor never forgot a name. You’re visiting? That’s okay. You still get a hearty greeting.

I’m Meredith. My sugar-free, gluten free pies are worth the trip.

I was just there last week--driving through the southern part, then Monticello and Port Jervis. Most of the observations ring true. Lots of poverty and neglected buildings/towns. OTOH, I had the best frozen custard in ages in Monticello.

According to the Wikipedia article "Catskills", they end at Port Jervis in the southwest. A map in the article shows The Catskills and The Poconos clearly. The Kittatinnys in New Jersey are not clearly outlined on the map in the above mentioned article, and may be known mostly by people local to the area. The Kittatinnys are actually a high ridge that stretches from Delaware Water Gap to High Point State Park in New Jersey roughly following the east shore of the Delaware River.

R136, that is arguably the most depressed part. The towns to the north are much more prosperous and Woodstock is very wealthy.

The Schoharie Valley, at the northwest border of the range, is gorgeous.

WHET the Adirondacks? Does anyone still summer there?

Only chairs do.

I’m affordable jet travel, now Mrs Mandelbaum can go to EUROPE on vacation!

I’m Oy vey.

I'm "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and its fabulous recreation of the late '50s/early '60s era.

I'm the former city friends who call and invite themselves to come visit you at your upstate home to go apple-picking like they saw in The New York Times.

I'm the friends visiting from Brookyln who legitimately ask, "Do we need to wear a mask upstate?"

Sometimes, Delores, Jewish Lightning can be an unhappy woman's best friend...

I’m Marjorie Morgenstern in a midnight canoe with my crypto-Lesbian friend Marsha on our way to SODOM.

I'm the film, "A Walk on the Moon", the best and most realistic portrayal of the last gasp of the Catskills summers at those legendary bungalow colonies ever.

R139 - The Adirondacks are further away than the Catskills (over 200 miles as opposed to under 100 miles and a better than three-hour drive), and, yes, there are people summering there, but they tend to be very well-heeled types who can afford "rustic" homes around areas like Lake George . . .

It's a protected area, and the lakefront isn't called Million Dollar Beach for nothing.

Georgia O'Keeffe once lived there and despite being best known for her work in the southwest, produced work now known as her Lake George Period.

It's also where the British fort, William Henry, fell to the French and their Mohawk Indian allies during the French and Indian wars - the fleeing British were massacred by the Indians despite the French general giving assurances of their safety as they evacuated the fort (cf. "The Last of the Mohicans", despite it being filmed in North Carolina rather than the actual site in the Adirondacks).

It's also breathtakingly beautiful, cf. an American school of painting called, The Adirondack School.

R131 - The Nantucket and Cape Cod areas are one of the loveliest places in America I visited. Unfortunately, the erosion of the shoreline is increasingly visible and the friends I know who had homes there are trying to sell before it gets worse.

I am the steadily rising home and land prices starting in Putnam and Sullivan Counties as NYC residents flee COVID infested areas and now doing same in Dutchess County and other points north, where I'm also finding an increasingly large gay community.

I’m the person who lived in the city for 5 years coming upstate for the first time and literally having panic attacks from all the quiet.

so gorgeous up there, I'd love to live there.

Phoenicia is a dump. A couple of queens have gift shops there but it's a shithole

It's a bit run-down, but not what I would call a shithole, R154.

Hunter? Now there's a shithole.