Hello and thank you for being a DL contributor. We are changing the login scheme for contributors for simpler login and to better support using multiple devices. Please click here to update your account with a username and password.

Hello. Some features on this site require registration. Please click here to register for free.

Hello and thank you for registering. Please complete the process by verifying your email address. If you can't find the email you can resend it here.

Hello. Some features on this site require a subscription. Please click here to get full access and no ads for $1.99 or less per month.

Tasteful Friends, behold this East Stroudsburg, PA home

A rather interesting and unique home.....

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 71February 7, 2022 3:41 PM

You could not pay me to live in this place. JES, it is a hot mess. No character, no charm, no good bones, just a fucking fulgy mess.

by Anonymousreply 1October 16, 2021 1:01 AM

my first thought was, it is a HORROR film.

by Anonymousreply 2October 16, 2021 1:03 AM

Like a 1980's trailer and the Sopranos house fucked and had a retarded gangster/hillbilly kid.

by Anonymousreply 3October 16, 2021 1:04 AM

This has some potential but it is a mish mash of mess. I could turn that into a great house. Anyone want to finance me?

by Anonymousreply 4October 16, 2021 1:04 AM

it's a HORROR

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 5October 16, 2021 1:05 AM

That was one atrocious picture gallery of horrors, one after the other.

OP: you're a cunt for posting this.

by Anonymousreply 6October 16, 2021 1:06 AM

and that price

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 7October 16, 2021 1:07 AM

Why did they choose to highlight what appears to be a trash strewn breezeway/basement?

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 8October 16, 2021 1:09 AM

Oh my god. I lived in East Stroudsburg for six horrifically long months in 2013. Trust me when I tell you that you wouldn't want to live there even if you were living in a palace -- and that's no palace.

Only the most naive and urbanized NYC denizens think "the Poconos" is a "cool" place to live/vacation. It's not.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 9October 16, 2021 1:09 AM

No. Just no! Such a mishmash of, well, everything. That kitchen almost gave me an epileptic seizure. It looks like someone moved 2 different houses next to each other and connected them with a walkway.

by Anonymousreply 10October 16, 2021 1:10 AM

I wanted to wait till a few comments were in........this one mystifies me.

Atrocious decor aside - how the FUCK does a house like this go from 375K to over a MILLION dollars?

I know there's some kind of reno going on but nothing in those photos suggest any updates worth that price.

Is this land THAT valuable?

by Anonymousreply 11October 16, 2021 1:10 AM

[R8]

For the FBI, serial murder unit?

by Anonymousreply 12October 16, 2021 1:11 AM

Wow, I’ve been to that town, and yeah, a hot NO Thanks

by Anonymousreply 13October 16, 2021 1:12 AM

No lawn, just dirt.

by Anonymousreply 14October 16, 2021 1:13 AM

I'll take it. Have the realtor meet me alone at midnight. I pay in cash and your...

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 15October 16, 2021 1:15 AM

Sweet suffering Jesus.

It's like Big Brother was getting ready to be videoed at the white trash version of the set of Saw.

by Anonymousreply 16October 16, 2021 1:28 AM

[quote] Atrocious decor aside - how the FUCK does a house like this go from 375K to over a MILLION dollars?

Oil? Isn't there oil in parts of Pennsylvania?

Think about it. You could buy this house. Strike black gold and move to Beverly Hills.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 17October 16, 2021 3:07 AM

For $150,000, maybe.

by Anonymousreply 18October 16, 2021 3:48 AM

r9 what was so awful about it?

I was born there but left when I was 8 like almost 30 years ago.

It seemed nice to me (but I mostly only saw our street and my school.)

by Anonymousreply 19October 16, 2021 3:59 AM

Good god. Has all the charm and warmth of the Overlook Hotel.

by Anonymousreply 20October 16, 2021 4:01 AM

Where's the value? It isn't the house and I don't think 3.74 acres in that part of Pa. is that valuable. I usually go for odd mid-century houses, but not this time. Awful

by Anonymousreply 21October 16, 2021 4:06 AM

Why is there no foundation?

Why is the ceiling mirrored in the kitchen?

Why are there 2 laundry rooms?

Why are there 2 fridges?

Why would anyone pay $200k for this, let alone 1M?

by Anonymousreply 22October 16, 2021 4:07 AM

Ah snap. How weird. I grew up in East Stroudsburg, and my family has been involved in real estate there for over 60 years. My uncle went to medical school and met a rich woman, married her and used her money to buy huge parts of the poconos and sold them to New York and New Jersey people.

Anyway, East Stroudsburg is a total and complete shithole. The summer I turned 18 I left for college, and only went back to help my parents move once. Every kid I grew up with is dead. Seriously, drugs, barfights, tazed to death by cops. I got on Facebook in 2008 and learned the fate of all those poor fuckers who never got out. One guy moved to Florida, but he died last year in a DWI car accident. 48 years old. He was one who got out.

Angry poor New Yorkers, inbred local shack people mongloids (in 1980 Monroe County had the highest rate on inbreeding in the USA, it was on Donahue). At my school, there were two families - The Countermans and the Beseckers, and they were related and in special classes. Down syndromey looking and super violent. A Cutterman was a word used to describe any PA hillbilly.

As to that house? Be sure all neighbors are Cuttermans. Literal Countermans. I'm not kidding. They eat roadkill. I'm not kidding.

by Anonymousreply 23October 16, 2021 4:07 AM

This is fun. I inspected the house, and believe it is a "modular home" which my uncle pioneered in the area in the mid 1980's. It's a fancy trailer basically. They drive it to a lot in pieces and put it together.

It could be one of his. They leak. They are impossible to heat. The glass is crazy cheap and cracks in the cold. He also used to sell the A frames, which were nicer, easier to heat and snow would fall over.

I used to clean these out for him, he rented them too. Half of the houses were hoarderd out. At the time, I didn't know what a hoarder was, and his theory was they were angry for being evicted.It was classic hoarding though, garbage up to my knees. However, I used to find some antiques sometimes, once I found a Victrola, sold it for 500 bucks, which was 10 times what he paid me to clean them out.

by Anonymousreply 24October 16, 2021 4:12 AM

OMG r23! I remember that. Cutterman (although we pronounced it cunnerman) was the ultimate insult.

When did it go downhill? May I ask when you were born? Was it bad when you left at 18?

by Anonymousreply 25October 16, 2021 4:13 AM

by the way r25 was me, r19

by Anonymousreply 26October 16, 2021 4:14 AM

I'm pretty sure photo #28 is Buffalo Bill's crawl space with his spare supply of formaldehyde.

by Anonymousreply 27October 16, 2021 4:16 AM

t19 I went to high school there and yeah, it was bad. Like kinda northern Deliverance bad. Shitloads of skinheads. 15 year old girls getting gangbanged in the Stroud Mall parking lot by a train of like 10 dudes was a pretty common occurrence.

Let's see, crazy crooked cops (the chief of police, Pansy, stole ALL the change from the parking meters every day for like ten years, they raided his house and he had like 50k in change laying around).

Drugs from the Martz bus line. Little town with big city problems. No culture. Fat people galore. Guidos. Inbred shack people.

It is- however - a college town. A very shitty college town. Madison Wisconsin it is not.

by Anonymousreply 28October 16, 2021 4:17 AM

But fat whores rejoice, there is a WaWa just around the corner!

by Anonymousreply 29October 16, 2021 4:17 AM

[quote] in 1980 Monroe County had the highest rate on inbreeding in the USA

At one point it was Corry, PA or maybe it was Franklin, PA. I went to a year of college near those places and one was the inbred leader and the other one was the unwed mother one.

I'm sure Fayette County and Cambria County were in the running for inbred leader, too.

by Anonymousreply 30October 16, 2021 4:18 AM

yikes r28. I didn't see any of that! (I did see the fat people. I remember my grandmother being shocked by how fat the people were when she visited.)

Did you go to ESHS? What year did you graduate?

by Anonymousreply 31October 16, 2021 4:21 AM

R24, that house is not from the 1980s. Look at the bathrooms.

I just double checked. The house was built in 1954.

by Anonymousreply 32October 16, 2021 4:23 AM

r26 I left in 1991. I hated it so much I dropped out of high school early just to get away. Got my GED, and went to Temple, and then transferred out of the state.

The crime rate has gotten worse, but it was just a small minded, mean, angry place. Nothing to do but get in trouble, do drugs, wreck cars on serpentine mountain roads, teen pregnancy, all this crazy shit. Mostly middle class people too. Worst of New York/Jersey culture, mixed with conservative religious redneck types, and then college kids thrown into the mix.

Since then I've lived all over, SF, Albuquerque, Ames Iowa, Honduras, Brazil, Tucson - and NEVER have seen some the crazy shit that went down in the burgs. Maybe it was my group of friends. Three of my friends did actually live and get out, one became a professional snowboarder, and two are real musicians.

One guy I knew was the skinhead murderer who killed a homeless guy for no reason. He was 18 and got life. He's still in prison. Totally normal kid, we had black friends, the one day he's a skinhead. People I knew who fucking crazy.

by Anonymousreply 33October 16, 2021 4:29 AM

I went to Smithfield Elementary. I can see a lot of those kids going on to become what you described. (Did you go to elementary school there too?)

I reconnected with some of them and one teacher on facebook. They were all pretty negative about the place. (and most of them strangely religious now.)

A few of them did seem to go on to ok lives though once they got older. Funny they were the 'academic types" like me even in elementary school. I guess every school has some that get out ok.

They all hate the New Jersey/New York types who moved in I guess in the 90s. At the start of the pandemic they were dreading all the New Yorkers who were fleeing there. Posting stuff like close the bridge.

It must have been a great place once. The Pocono Playhouse has an interesting history and I've seen it referenced in a actor's bios. Gloria Vanderbilt made her stage debut there and they showed a picture of it on some bio she did with AC on CNN i guess.

The Poconos was were comedians went to hone their material I guess like in the 1950s when New York was too hot. Neil Simon, Woody Allen those people. Lee Grant's bio writes a lot about that scene.

by Anonymousreply 34October 16, 2021 4:45 AM

r3 Remarkably accurate comment. The area is filled with wannabe Italian gangsters, and not so gentle mountain folk on meth. It's two modular homes stuck together.

by Anonymousreply 35October 16, 2021 4:47 AM

What was East Stroudsburg High School like?

Some of my class mates teach there now and have kids in it.

Was it wild? Druggy? (I just sent this thread to my oldest brother who went there briefly.)

He seemed to think it was ok if you stuck with the good teachers and the high academic people and he liked the band.

He hated the football culture and some of the neighborhood kids who were kind of angry and jealous of us for living in a nicer house.

by Anonymousreply 36October 16, 2021 4:54 AM

Are we sure the one on the right isnt some sort of train car ? Its sad to say,but the only thing I sorta kinda liked were the bathroom floors.

by Anonymousreply 37October 16, 2021 4:57 AM

r34 It was a nice place until the mid to late 1980's. People like my uncle sold the Pocono's as a place for NYC and Jersey people to live and actually COMMUTE to work. There were daily morning buses too. The people wanted to get away to the country for their kids, bad educational systems, and crime. They brought a lot of those problems with them. Pocono Country Place (It was actually called PCP!).

There was a good ski industry, resorts, some manufacturing jobs. Have you checked the dead motel series on the Poconos on Youtube? Very sad what happened. The whole heart shaped bath romantic getaway died after the 70's.

There is still a gay resort - Rainbow Mountain or something? I remember that. Everyone in my family eventually bailed. Some still sell real estate there, but are based in North Carolina. People don't believe half the stories I have about ES.

Last story, there was this one girl who was a total ..., ah she was really really wild. Did mushrooms, Grateful Dead, and was into group sex at a young age. So today...she is a Trumpian right winger politician, like city councilwoman of some Philadelphia suburb. I saw her have sex with a stranger once for a tie-dye shirt. Now she is super wholesome and judgmental. So yeah, the whole religious thing is odd.

by Anonymousreply 38October 16, 2021 4:58 AM

r36 I have been gone 30 years and I got into trouble all the time. There is a new high school, I don't know. There were students who excelled around me. One went to Harvard, became an actress (Abby Royal or Royale?). There were a lot of hippy families, and musicians around too, and they seemed to do ok. But drugs were common at the time, like 1990, and everyone I knew started around the ninth grade. Also recreational burglary. I'm not kidding. Breaking into vacation home or real homes for fun and profit (mostly to buy drugs).

But yeah, I can't really say it was fucking normal. I was invited to a wedding about 15 years ago. It's in Albuquerque. I meet the bride and it's the president or whatever of our senior class. She was also wild let's leave it at that, but super cool, wealthy family. Her little brother was a friend of mine. He was gifted. Where is he? Here in Albuquerque living in his parents basement? My friend tells me he did so much LSD when he was 18-20 that he "isn't there anymore". Weighs 300 pounds and watches TV all day. These were kids from normal families.

My uncle still sells homes there, and is very negative about it. He's been selling real estate there since 1971.

My mother and father met at the kind of comedy resort you are talking about. My mother was from Scranton and waitressed in the summers during college. I watched all the dead resort videos on the Pocono's, I guess there was also like a labor union summer camp that was famous. I used to go to Mt. Airy Lodge to play video games, and famous people still played there.

Shawnee, Camelback, Delaware Water Gap, Jazz festival, there were some nice physical parts of it. The people all seemed like deranged David Lynch characters to me.

by Anonymousreply 39October 16, 2021 5:12 AM

r34 Oh, education in ES. At the time, not great, not the worst. I only went to 8th-11th. I was a bad kid, so don't know what opportunities existed. Sports were huge. Hunting was a big thing.

You probably lucked out getting out young. I went to elementary school in Conn and it was better. And college was awesome because there was no high school bullshit, or ES people around. Philadelphia was better. People seemed more normal to me. Everywhere I've ever been has been better, and that isn't some teenage angst. It's objectively a strange place.

Many "good" kids went to Notre Dame when I was there. And my uncle sent his kids to Moravian Academy because he thought the schools in ES and Stroudsburg were bad, but they were also kinda snobby so that is probably the real reason. The schools are probably average for PA.

Oh, and one friend started a huge landscaping empire there. Straussers Natures Helpers I think it's called. His parents were like some monks of a hippy religious sect and musicians too, totally strange family. He got a lawnmower, then a pickup truck, and now he has like 400 employees and government contracts. High school diploma.

A friends little brother is a leading researcher in physics at Illinois-Champagne. His older brother is in jail though. His other brother is professional snowboard world champion Keir Dillon. I couldn't make this shit up.

So yeah, not everyone died. But 80 percent of kids I ran around with were dead by 25. Christopher Cassabaum? Childhood friend. Shotgun blast to chest over a bar disagreement over a girl down by Dansbury Park. It sounds like I grew up poor and in a inner city ghetto. Nope, East Stroudsburg.

Haven't thought about this shithole this much in at least 20 years. Thanks OP. 1.5 million for a bunch of modular trailers stuck together out near the ski area is fun. I'm sure they think Corona has made people want to live in that monstrosity in the "woods" near the McDonalds.

by Anonymousreply 40October 16, 2021 5:39 AM

Another Pennsylvania beauty from DL Homes, a Tasteful Friends LLC.

by Anonymousreply 41October 16, 2021 5:42 AM

Thanks to all of you who also lived there for your comments. Since I only spent six months there, I couldn't be sure my impressions of the place were correct, but I guess I was spot on.

I had gotten a job at ESU as a data analyst and my boss was a batshit crazy workaholic. She wrecked her truck trying to come in to school in three feet of snow (the school was actually closed!) and gave herself a bad concussion. She was instructed to go on bed rest but she was (as I said) a workaholic so she only stayed away for three days and then came back to work. By not taking the bed rest, she ended up giving herself irreversible brain damage and (I think) ended up having to take disability retirement. What a clusterfuck! The way that school's administration was run was deeply flawed, and I couldn't wait to get the fuck outta there. I mean, when you're eager to escape a job/town to go to Harrisburg, that tells you something!

This is bringing back some awfully bad memories. I'm grateful that I made it through the bullshit I did (there and in Harrisburg) and managed to retire, albeit as practically a pauper compared to most of you.

Some things are worse than being poor.

by Anonymousreply 42October 16, 2021 6:05 AM

I've seen those youtube videos too of old abandoned resorts. Sort of shocking that they were just left there to rot. You'd think someone would have bought them or did something with them.

What part of town did you live in? I was ove in a wooded area near Spring Lake Estates that was considered sort of for rich people. I wonder what it is like now. I drove through a couple of years ago and people were upset with all the N-words that had moved in. Yes they actually said the word out in the open.

It must have been terrible place to be gay. I had trouble making friends as a kid there. The neigborhood kids were kind of bullying. In retrospect I've thought about how stupid they were. It's kind of shocking to see how our house had deterorated when I drove thru like 10 years ago. It was brand new when I was there. Just no money or effort was made to maintain it.

My brother has found this thread interesting. He was there about the same time as you were in the high school I'd estimate. He didn't see the wildness you saw so he found that a bit shocking too. I guess we were kind of sheltered kids. It was so rural where we lived it would have been hard to get in trouble. Someone would have had to drive him to a place to get drunk or high! There was nothing in our neighborhood but dear.

One girl I was friends with in school did stay thru high school. She was from a family with eight kids. Two of them died in drunk driving accidents I've seen her post.

So interesting to hear your stories. Thanks. I can't believe what was going on outside the Stroud Mall while I was there seeing kids movies and buying music and stuff.

Breaking into houses and gang bangs were just not something I thought happened there.

I guess I had romanticized views of it. I mean the hills were fun to sled on but they are all mini-malls now I hear.

How were you a bad kid? In what way I mean. My brother said that seventh and eighth grade were in a really dreary old building. 9th was nicer but then we left. He hated the football culture and tells me unbelievably the same football coach is still there (Mr. Christian oddly enough named!) He didn't see much drugs since he was afraid to go to the bathroom he says during times other kids were there. (terrible story about a kid being beat up in one scared him.) I do remember that smoking at the supermarket across the street was what we thought bad kids did. I can remember picking him up in the car and him telling my parents that those were the bad kids. He does remember it being a bit of a scandal when the National Honor Society had a pregnant girl as one of its officers and there being talk that she wouldn't be allowed to appear on the stage.

Sometimes I've thought about what it would be like to own a business there. The local radio station seemed exotic to me. (I guess I got the idea from Steel Magnolias where Olympia Dukakis bought the radio station. I actually googled it once like how much does a small town radio station cost.)

My friend in school were mostly foreign kids whose parents were doctors who'd come there to work at the hospital. One girl I knew was actually married to the mayor in recent years. (I sort of thought that seemed like an achievement until I looked them up online. She's very pretty but her husband is huge. Typical Eastburg I guess.)

by Anonymousreply 43October 16, 2021 6:13 AM

oh and I guess I should give up that idea of buying the radio station. Eastburg doesn't sound like a good investment.

I can remember going back when I was about 13. We helped move the library to a new location since my mother remained friends with a woman who ran the library off and on for years.

It seemed to me like progress was being made. Now it seems sort of sad that the quaint old building was left to lawyers and they have a generic library like most cities.

Man, the stories those libarians must have to tell. Libraries are just havens for the troubled it seems. I'd guess the Sburg one must be a mess.

by Anonymousreply 44October 16, 2021 6:25 AM

This is what they call a "manor house" in East Stroudsburg.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 45October 16, 2021 12:52 PM

What is East Stroudsburg east of? Is there a Stroudsburg proper?

by Anonymousreply 46October 16, 2021 1:14 PM

Looks like the only saving grace is that it's not that far from NYC.

by Anonymousreply 47October 16, 2021 1:18 PM

R46 this is how the town got its name.

[quote] Originally known as "Dansbury," East Stroudsburg was renamed for geographic reasons when the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad opened a station in town

by Anonymousreply 48October 16, 2021 1:21 PM

I went down the rabbit hole of abandoned resorts a while back. I love all that shit. Lots f pictures of places that have never been torn down - just abandoned. I guess nobody even wants the property.

by Anonymousreply 49October 16, 2021 11:46 PM

Yes r46. There is a Stroudsburg too. They used to be rival football times and the thanksgiving game was a big deal.

by Anonymousreply 50October 17, 2021 3:16 AM

r43 Your brother went to Bunnel, or Brunner, or Bonnel, can't remember. But holy shit that building was like something from a horror movie, like an old insane asylum.

It was up the 8th grade, so I never went, but it was right next to the high school. I will never forget that brick facade.

My father was a high school chemistry teacher, but he taught in New Jersey, a 40 minute drive. He earned 20k more teaching there. Like I said, other members of my family were very entrenched in the real estate scene, which is why this thread was so funny. Do you remember a funny looking castle looking house across from the Stroud Mall?

I was a really really bad kid. Was a skater, back when that was mostly illegal everywhere, and liked smoking pot and was messing around with girls. I skipped school everyday, and would show up after school to hang out. Not sure how much ES had to do with me being a fuck up, but it was a weird fucking place.

Ask your brother if he knows Mike Brennan. He is also dead, but it was some crazy cancer.

Being gay in ES was probably no worse than being straight in ES. The place was fucking crazy. I bet people on here could really talk about growing up in the south under extreme homophobic conditions, that isn't something I could say about East Stroudsburg.

In retrospect, it was a community of old locals, who really were inbred and from like 9 families, mixed with runaway people from New York and New Jersey. There was the resort scene discussed, that was literally based in the swinging era of wife swapping etc.

AND....the MAFIA! I have mafia stories too. There was a pizza place, Palumbo's or something, near the Stroud Mall, that was never opened, never. It was around for decades as a money laundering scheme for the mafia. They were involved in some of the resorts, like Mt. Airy and Penn Lodge (?), There was an Ice skating rink there I remember.

Getting out was the best thing I ever did. I'm sure many people here have stories about leaving their hometowns for something better, but I always had the sense that I would die if I stayed there.

Also, the haunted house with raining walls? That story? For a town of like 40 thousand people Stroudsburg and ES have a real history of being fucking nuts.

And yes, the gangbangs were only a few girls, and a set of guys, and not the norm, but still casual enough for me to be freaked out at the time. Last Exit to Brooklyn type situation If I am referencing the correct novel.

by Anonymousreply 51October 17, 2021 8:09 AM

r45 Mainline Mansion? The Philadelphia Mainline is like 150 miles away. It's not even Bucks County or New Hope. That listing is confusing me, I will research.

r43 My family lived all over the area. For three years I lived across the street from the WAWA, which was across from ESU. WaWa is a frequent topic here too, which is also funny. If I looked out my bedroom window, I could see the WaWa. We also lived in Cresco, and had cabin on Emerald Lakes. My childhood was pretty rad until moving to ES.

I ran the streets there. I quit school mostly by 10th grade and lived in a dorm at ESU. My friend had a roommate who joined a black fraternity like 2 weeks after school started. He left and I moved in. I learned to sneak into the cafeteria and had a large group of friends, all of them knew I was a high school kid. I co-hosted an "alternative music" ESU radio show. I was 16. My parents were checked out. This was like 1990.

At 18 I went to Northampton Community College for a semester, then Temple. My life immediately became "normal". I realized ES was nuts, it wasn't just teenage angst.

There are no scenarios - no matter how delusional or romantic - that could make ES habitable. I realized I could write 10 more stories involving ES that I can hardly believe. One of my friends was one of those guys hired as a "hitman" to kill a spouse, and then he turned the person in to the police, involving a wire . The intended victim was a Mt. Pocono policeman. There was pedophilia involved. Too complicated to explain. Poconos shit.

I've lived for 30 years outside of ES, and have zero of these stories to tell.

by Anonymousreply 52October 17, 2021 8:39 AM

Yuck! It looks like a cult committed suicide there.

by Anonymousreply 53October 17, 2021 8:49 AM

maybe they just lived there?

by Anonymousreply 54October 17, 2021 1:17 PM

r51 My brother sort of remembers Mike Brennan. He's not sure though. He said he once got curious about his old teachers and googled a lot of them and Pocono Record.

He was shocked at how many had died young. Mr. Stem, history, Mr. Giffels, German, Mr. Keglovitz, Gym, the assistant principal. I wonder if the healthcare is really bad there or people just didn't take it seriously and have checkups.

Funny I remember that wawa! Wow that's kind of cool that you made yourself home at ESU. What did you think of the college as a whole? I remember really liking their campus arts building and theater. I went to a "better" school but I sort of wondered sometimes what it would have been like to go to ESU and hung out in that theater or been in plays and stuff. I guess it kind of had a stigma as being the place that the underperforming local students went to. I guess to some people in PA the Poconos were an upgrade and the school looked nice.

No I don't remember a castle by the Stroud Mall. What was it? The mall is in sad shape now. It used to be kind of the main social point of the town I think.

Yes I can remember the Bunnell. It was a really old school. It was torn down. Not sure when.

I kind of remember Palumbo's and mafia rumors. Some Italian kid in my school was rumored to have parents in the mob. Not sure if true or just a sterotype.

40 miles into NJ is a different world. So much nicer and more affluent.

I sometimes think back on the kids I knew and have a like a dirty feeling that I was around them all. My class pictures have a lot of poor disheveled looking kids. The kids were so much cleaner at the suburban area we moved to.

I do remember it being oddly insular. I remember getting into a disagreement with kids at the bus stop. They were saying that East Stroudsburg had the best high school band in the whole country. I was like didn't you ever watch tV? The Macy's Parade? Football games? Some of them have incredible huge bands. They were like no. Mr. Casagrande a former band director studied every band in the country and came back and said East Stroudsburg was the best. It was like if he said it it must be true.

It is kind of amazing that you pulled yourself out of that town. You could have gone down a dark path like others. I don't know of anybody who really self destructed. One kid on my block I looked up I did find an obituary for and a funeral notice. He must have died young but it didn't say how. More recently I looked him up again and found a Jr. with the same name who had been arrested for drug dealing. Probably his son.

You know what is funny about the town in a DL sense. There's always those jokes and threads about Lucy in Mame. In that movie they mention East Stroudsburg. When the nanny goes off on her sex adventures, Mame says the last time she heard from her she was staying at the Shangri-La motel in East Stroudsburg Pennsylvania. She says it like it is the most obscure sleazy place in the world. (I think she then may open the door and the nanny is pregnant. Not sure though.) Lucy enunciates the Stroudsburg so clearly. They must have taught her how to see it. (I guess that comes from the comedy influence in the fifties and prior. The writers probably stayed there.

by Anonymousreply 55October 20, 2021 4:56 AM

r42 where did you live?

Did you go elsewhere for social connection? Doesn't sound like there was much there.

I left too young to go to the ski resorts. I don't know if they are nice at all. I'd guess New Yorkers may still go there for that. Shawnee Inn is supposedly one of the resorts that survived.

by Anonymousreply 56October 20, 2021 4:58 AM

That house looks like it was built by a VoTech as a project and they failed.

by Anonymousreply 57October 20, 2021 5:02 AM

R52 LMAO. Years ago I drove into NYC. On the way back, we stopped for gas at Bartonsville off I80 a little West of Stroudesburg. Really weird vibes in the truck stop like we were fresh meat I learned later that there were two ADultbookstores next door.

by Anonymousreply 58October 20, 2021 5:14 AM

r51 Harrisburg is better in more ways. State capital and more people. 6 months - you did your time. Your boss was probably desperate to keep a job in an area with very little work outside tourism. ES wasn't an ordinary small town, it had some strange stuff going on. It's also the I80 pathway into New Jersey, a drug hub, and then there was always some kinky stuff going on at some of the resorts that catered to "swingers" etc. Mix all that shit together - recipe for high strangeness.

ESU is no Kutztown! I am joking, but yeah, kids from ES with B's and C's ended up at Kutztown. At least you get out of ES. I ended up at ESU for one semester, and it was fine. I took one professors film classes, forget his name, but he was some theater guy from NYC and his classes were awesome. One was on SCI-FI film, and we saw 2001 on the big screen, and I learned how to analyze film. His lectures were really outstanding. I had to take the S.A.T's to get into ESU, after NCC, so to me ESU was pretty fancy, even though I had already lived there for a semester. I literally lived across the street. But I think anyone could get a decent education there, and it was cheap at the time.

I ended up in various colleges for 7 years, and that film class was one of the best I had. Northampton Community College was also ok, a good value and they let me in with just a G.E.D.

I remember Mr. Stem. Some teachers really like to drink, that is all I can really think of. The Medical Center can't be that bad.

I think ES is a shithole, put like anywhere there were some good normal people, and I don't particularly blame the schools, hospital, ESU, for making it shitty, they are probably the highlights of the community. It was the racism, ignorance, small mindedness, and just plain boredom that got to me. And it also had an evil druggy degenerate vibe to me.

Maybe if I associated with different people? That house though - is a pretty good symbol for what I'm talking about. It looks fucking deranged, they want 1.5 million dollars for it, and I'm sure there are dead bodies buried in the backyard. Parts of it look almost normal, but under close inspection, it's all fucked up. Like three different cults lived there at the same time. The kitchen is all cheesy 70's glam mirrors, and then there is some Parisian catacomb area? That is ES.

by Anonymousreply 59October 20, 2021 5:31 AM

I reconnected with one girl I knew as a kid on facebook and correspond a lot. She said her son went to the ESHS prom (though they no live a ways away in Nazareth. I guess that is still nice according to her.)

It was funny. She said something when I first reconnected with her like her son went to the prom and wow has the school changed. City people she said. I thought that was a reference to black people like I've heard some of my neighbors say outright. I was a bit turned off to her but in following her in recent years she doesn't seem like a racist at all and was actually upset last year when other people she went to ESHS with were calling her a bleeding heart liberal for being upset about George Floyd. She doesn't seem like the racist type but still something about the high school must have freaked her son out enough that he told her about it. I'd guess drugs. He seems like a pretty clean cut kid and she has posts stuff about him being very shy and socially awkward. So I guess ESHS really freaked him out.

Yeah I guess if you'd had met different people. It's funny you mention Kutztown. As I said we knew the library people really well. I can remember one of the women had gone there. Funny she was a blonde proper well dressed woman. I'd have thought she would have been a good student! I do remember the women gossiping that the area was no place for a single woman. There were no prospects for marriage I guess for her they thought.

Yes drinking was a big part of the town. Lots of the teachers moonlighted as bartenders. (A guy I reconnected with on facebook posts a lot about seeing teachers at some bar and updates the rest of his class. He just moved back there after years in Harrisburg coincidentally.)

Funny took me six years to get thru college. (with a year off in between and one semester part time.) I used to be ashamed of that. My early film classes were the best though too.

I can remember seeing Godspell on a field trip to ESU. It looked so fun and exciting that the students were in it. I guess that's where I got the idea of maybe I should have gone there. Only one of the people I reconnected with on facebook went there. She still lives there. That's rare. Most people seem to have left.

I guess it did have a trashy vibe! I have a picture in my childhood photo album from my first camera. There's one picture of three teachers on a field trip. I can remember my grandmother disapproving of the short skirt the teacher had on. It is kind of trashy for a teacher!

Do you remember any other teachers?

by Anonymousreply 60October 20, 2021 6:16 AM

bump

(I was loving this thread!)

by Anonymousreply 61October 29, 2021 5:54 AM

“City people” refers to people from NYC primarily hispanics, but also including blacks, whites and Asians. Many of these folks come out for weekends and drive like maniacs.

by Anonymousreply 62October 29, 2021 9:07 AM

“Inner city” folks….

by Anonymousreply 63October 29, 2021 11:52 AM

What….what the fuck am I looking at?

Are those mirrored ceilings in the kitchen? What is happening

It looks like someone designed this house in Minecraft

by Anonymousreply 64October 29, 2021 7:14 PM

Are there any nice towns near the Poconos left? Either in NJ or PA?

by Anonymousreply 65October 30, 2021 4:55 AM

t65 You go North you get the Scranton area, which is ok, but kinda depressed, once a coal area, not much going on. I went to a Clinton rally in 1992 at an airport there. My mom's whole family is from that area. Biden.

You go into New Jersey and there are some nice areas running into New York, and then South you get Bucks Country and New Hope which is a nice artists colony.

In the Pocono's? I haven't been back in 20 years, but I remember Jim Thorpe being nice. Not sure if that counts. The towns aren't nice mostly because there are few jobs and it's a little "country". The scenery can be great, and some nice forests and state parks.

I stopped posting because someone started the worst/shittiest town and ES can't compete with some of those towns when it comes to crime and poverty.

by Anonymousreply 66October 30, 2021 6:45 AM

r60 I had an English teacher named Mrs. Cramer in 9th grade. She was nice. It was funny because I'm a technical writer now, and a verbal person, so even when I was high and skipping school I would get 100 on every test in her class, and was failing everything else, and she thought that was odd. My math teacher thought I was slow. I took a typewriting class! 1989 I think. It was probably the best class I took, most useful.

The principal at the time threw me over a photocopying machine once. He knew it was crazy and the secretary's were all freaked out. So after that I just never went to school and he never sent a truant officer or called my parents. I forget his name. I really hated that place.

On the "city people" thing - it's not racist. My parents were progressive politically, and they also just thought the city people didn't fit in and were rude. It was mostly Italians at the time, but not racial, more just a "newcomers" thing. They really couldn't afford to live in NYC, and actually commuted that far. Honestly, the long time residents were just as bad or worse. There was a sprinkling of normal people because of the University.

So one of my friends that was tazered to death, had a son right after I left, and the son is already dead of a heroin overdose. I guess he was a dealer in ES, because there was a bunch of new stories about him getting arrested with guns and drugs. There is this ghetto Youtube remembrance video with tatooed gross people, white but acting like rappers and speaking ebonics. Fucking nuts.

All of my family are college educated, so I figured out I just needed to get the fuck out of there and go to college, any college. and I was right. It's not like i worked my out of the ghetto. I just think that town is a little cursed.

The Lucy thing? The whole Poconos had a reputation at that time for being a cheap place to go on your honeymoon, with the heart shaped bathtubs and mirrors on the ceiling,etc. It was already known as a place for "swingers" and a weekend retreat from the city - like you mentioned with shows and comedians, a little bit like Vegas, Atlantic City, or the Catskills, but closer and more woodsy. So the connotation might be "sleazy" and/or "backwater".

by Anonymousreply 67October 30, 2021 7:00 AM

r64 I looked at the kitchen picture for ten minutes and could not figure out what the fuck I was looking at. So incongruous. I guess it was the whole Poconos mirror on ceilings, coin operated vibrating beds, heart shaped bathtubs thing, so when they had sex in the kitchen they could watch themselves go at it.

The front and the back of the house look like two different buildings. It must have been like ten additions over time, to build over the dead Mafia hits buried all over the property.

by Anonymousreply 68October 30, 2021 7:05 AM

To R58, you are correct about the 2 adult bookstores on I-80; that's big business up there. Lots of truckers, drugs and "cheap, sleazy, meaningless impersonal sex". It's like the 80's (with HIV-meth all over the place) Mob influence all over the Poconos Mtns. They run a casino up there(Mount Airy Casino) in Mt Pocono, Pa(controlled by the MOB). The daughter is the front for her father.

by Anonymousreply 69February 6, 2022 4:20 PM

I don't see any pics, just a floor plan but it looks like a bunk house for camping.

by Anonymousreply 70February 6, 2022 4:32 PM

^^^ When OP started the thread, there were plenty of pics of the inside of the house.

by Anonymousreply 71February 7, 2022 3:41 PM
Loading
Need more help? Click Here.

Yes indeed, we too use "cookies." Take a look at our privacy/terms or if you just want to see the damn site without all this bureaucratic nonsense, click ACCEPT. Otherwise, you'll just have to find some other site for your pointless bitchery needs.

×

Become a contributor - post when you want with no ads!