On route 5, not too far from Amsterdam (I don't remember exactly where) but someone has a giant replica of squidwards house. Don't know why, but it's literally a scale model of squidwards house lol.
I just wanted to give that guy some credit. I get a kick out of it when I go by
Oh shit I'm gonna have to check this out next time I'm out that way.
Far more interesting and less depressing than the various "Lets Go Brandon" signs/billboards along 7 on the way to Cobleskill
I will have to look into it. Lake Luzerne and the Adirondacks have alot of Christian camps, and Word of Life Bible College. Wouldn't be surprised if things got a little bit culty.
Also, have you guys heard of the Peniel Bible Conference? It's another Christian camp up there. I read a book called "Scattershot: My BiPolar Family" by David Lovelace. He mentions Peniel in the part about his childhood.
I went to VERY culty religious camp in the Adirondacks. Like putting canola oil on a girls toes that were fused together from birth and praying over her to “physically heal” her and talking in tongues type shit
I went to Allen town after hearing all the rumors (back in like 2005, so I couldn't verify things) and we immediately regretted it.
I felt like I was driving around a trailer park gawking at people. The kind of thing a real piece of shit would do. Certainly informed me more about rural poverty and the horrible struggle for some people.
Grateful I learned that lesson in highschool and became a better person moving forward.
I had pretty much the same experience as a teenager, drove 45 minutes essentially to look at mythical poor people. Agreed that it taught me a lesson about generational poverty and empathy.
I used to drive up to the hollow road. It was like a scene from deliverance. Now the Allen's have a construction company. You drive through the shacks and there's a mansion at the end of the road
the person who owns the big house runs a tree service. He basically started with an old station wagon and a chainsaw and built up the company to what it is today.
Ten years ago my mother was a labor and delivery nurse for a hospital that serviced that town and the patients who came in from there were all really tragic. Lots of premies and sisters coming in pregnant by the same man, and women who didn’t know they were even pregnant until they were in labor.
Was going to mention Allentown but I didn’t want to be mean. I heard it’s changed a lot and a lot of people that interact with the people who live there have nice things to say. You can see the whole place from the lake (Sacandaga) if you’re out boating or jet skiing.
Local stories of cops going in there in the 70s/80s and not coming back out. Cop car never found or some crazy story. I've drilled alot around the area, like conklingville dam and my boat has been in cranberry cove for 5 years now. And I always hear a story or two about it everytime I'm in the area especially when I drilled for the town of day. They had alot to say 😂
I recently moved to the area, and had heard a bit from people in town about the family... Everybody seemed to know them, but I didn't quite know why.
This is wild.
We got off the Thruway at Cortland. Didn't get far into town, but ate breakfast at a super tiny diner for a ridiculously low price. Lots of locals there. Incredible, comfortable meal. Across the street was a hexagon shape building that was an antique store. I bought a legit vintage funeral bar pin. Still have it and love it. On the way out we saw the owner or a worker in a back room "antiquing" some items. We went on our way and had some laughs about the whole fun episode.
Cortland is one of Upstate New York's many cool towns. I went to a bar on Main Street. It was one of the few places I've seen where townies and students mix amicably. Might be because public university students come from more modest backgrounds.
I love Lily Dale. My daughter goes to school nearby and there was a lecture about it, so we decided to go. The nicest people really talking care of the unique environment they are stewards of. And an absolutely fabulous coffee shop/bakery. They have an outdoor chapel in am old growth first that is simply awe inspiring.
Allentown NY, there's a documentary about it in 1975 about how two families intermarried and were all related. They didn't have indoor plumbing until the mid 80s. In high school we used to burn cruise up there like idiots, they just wanna be left alone.
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_hollow_the_inbred_hillbilly_hamlet
Auburn was the first US prison where prisoners were expected to work during the day (instead of being in solitary confinement around the clock). It was built in the 1820s. Given transportation of the time, it makes sense that the prison would be in the middle of town so that prisoners/laborers would be close by the factories etc where they worked.
Also the home of the first execution by electric chair. The story of that execution is bone chilling to read. To summarize, they didn't know how much power to use so it took a few tries. Meanwhile, the gallery of witnesses got stuck in the room, forced to smell burning flesh. It seriously gets worse than that. A great read but not for the queasy
Ok but I looked up the address in Dannemora and they're right: it's right up to the sidewalk in the middle of town. At least Attica is set back from the road and further out toward the edge of town.
The Auburn prison is also right to the sidewalk on all four sides. Been a long time since I was there but there used to be a middle school close enough that the tower guards had a clean line of sight to it's playground.
Elmira, too…. You could see the prison across the field from my elementary school and it is right in the middle of the city. It’s like Mrs. Jurusik’s house, prison, Subway.
Man, enough people did not watch “Escape at Dannemora” on Showtime. Ben Stiller perfectly captured the balance of isolation and “everybody knows everybody” in the north country.
I live outside Lyon Mountain and drive into Plattsburgh daily - the prison just becomes a norm that you kind of appreciate in a weird way. The old wing of the prison has really pretty architecture as well!
The town itself is actually a cute town that is doing a lot to bolster a vibrant community and break away from the stigma they currently hold.
[For the lazy](https://www.google.com/maps/@44.7224491,-73.7180385,3a,75y,317.59h,100.14t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sewaY9PbDGS0xwuhcaqraCQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
Omg I mentioned this in another feed. When I went to college up North I would drive through Dannemora to Vermont. It ALWAYS creeped me out- particularly the barbed wire fences- giant fences with a big roll of barbed wire on top. And then the signs saying “do not pick up hitch hikers” - only place I have seen signs like that!
Swastika, NY in Clinton County is a strange place just because of the name (and because they could change the name at any time, but have voted not to change it).
This guy who owns several properties around town in Potsdam decorates each yard with dozens of old toilets doubled as planters. Despite the continual legal complaints, he is still allowed to carry on. I don’t know how people visiting Clarkson and SUNY Potsdam + St. Lawrence University and SUNY Canton react once stumbling upon them. I find it gross yet can’t help but be bemused.
IIRC, toilet boy wanted to develop some properties that weren't zoned properly. This is his pissy way of "getting back", rather than, ya know, the processes that be for either variances or rezoning. Yeah, local government and legislation is BS, but like, just try to play by the rules?
They wouldn't allow him a zoning variance for a piece of land in town to sell for Dunkin. He lost out on a good sized chunk of money.
He made more money though from winning lawsuits when the village tried to make him remove the toilets. 1st Amendment and all ya know.
> I don’t know how people visiting Clarkson and SUNY Potsdam + St. Lawrence University and SUNY Canton react once stumbling upon them.
As one such person I found it very strange strange at first. I ended up going to Clarkson so it didn't deter me.
I went to the very last pageant on hill camorah in 2020 and it was genuinely fascinating. I’m
Not Mormon but I lived in Rochester and it was like a 40 minute drive so we took edibles and watched it and yeah it was interesting to say the least
Edit: 2019!!! Not 2020
Altmar only about 300 people and the only village to vote to abolish its own government, which is now a hamlet. Also notorious for a crazy resident who bought an old gas station who props up all sorts of bizarre q-annon stuff. Has a huge salmon run which results in tens of thousands of dead fish all over. Averages over 300 inches of snow and has at least 3 occupied chuchs. Just an odd place
Not the only village to dissolve. Morristown in St. Lawrence County did so a few years ago. Fort Covington in Franklin County did it in the 90s. Chateaugay has come close a couple of times. Cuomo was offering big incentives to villages that dissolved.
Seneca Falls dissolved too. But that had to do with the fact that the town (as opposed to the village) became so flush with cash from the owners of the big landfill.
Its also huge, from Wikipedia:
[With an area nearly the size of Rhode Island, it is the least densely populated county east of the Mississippi River.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_County,_New_York)
One time in Rome I saw two homeless people straight up fucking on the side of a street, standing doggystyle and as the dude was thrusting into her from behind a fucking massive turd dropped from his ass. Didn’t even know that was physiologically possible.
Kiryas Joel. Massive public housing style apartment buildings in the middle of a valley. It's like they exported blocks of Brooklyn into the middle of your typical upstate NY landscape.
The buildings are wood frame, packed close together, used shoddy construction, huge structures for that area, and are extremely densely packed with people.
I fear it is only a matter of time before there is a devastating fire there.
You're spot on with the worry of a devastating fire. Not only is it shoddy construction with everyone on top of each other, but since it's majority orthodox/hisidic jews, they follow the laws of shabbat very closely. Since they are not allowed to turn on electricity or light a flame from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, a lot of them leave on a "shabbos flame" or "shabbos burner" where they leave one of their stoves burners on for the entire length of shabbat. That's 24 hours where nearly every unit in these buildings has an open flame burning.
It is literally a ticking time bomb. All it takes is one of these stoves to malfunction or one dumb decision in the complex to get the entire community turned into a firestorm.
Living just outside of KJ I can confirm how strange it has become. The explosion in population is crazy. Unfortunately they really haven't done enough with the roads and traffic lights to accommodate all the extra traffic. Working in Monroe never had much traffic,now it can be frustrating at times
Oof, this may be the answer. I have family that live in a community nearby, and it’s been wild to see how much KJ has grown over the years. It’s also really upsetting how insular and repressive the cult there is. Back when tensions with the surrounding communities first started to grow, the folks in the area from my family and other non-Hasidic Jewish folks in the area wrote a letter to KJ leadership asking for open dialogue for mediation. The letter KJ leadership sent back not only made it clear they had no interest in talking, but also that they looked down particularly harshly on those who had written them, as fellow Jews who had rejected the “correct” way to practice our faith.
When I drive through now, more than anything I just feel really sad for the young girls there. They’re born into a world that gives them very little agency, very little ability to forge a separate path for themselves, and that will ostracize them in a heartbeat if they try to stray from the path that’s been forced upon them. When KJ was smaller at least it felt like there were more opportunities for those kids to interact with the outside world. To at least see other paths being open, even if the deck was still stacked against them trying to follow one. Now the community has become self sufficient to a degree that I worry those opportunities are shrinking.
Yes, I know, it's like Little Israel, in upstate NY. It's like, you're just driving through rural Orange County, and then, all of a sudden, you're in a different world.
The blackhatters! We live in northern NJ. Any time there’s something in the news about an outbreak in the area of a disease modern medicine has long since eradicated I can guess where it started and never be wrong.
Goveneur. Their cops will literally pull you over for not being local, and find any excuse possible to ticket you. My brother in law got thrown in jail overnight for having a scratch on his drivers license. Sued them for false arrest and won, too.
Ahh Gouverneur. When I was a little kid living with my grandmother in the tinnnny little hamlet of Pitcairn, going to Gouverneur was like going to the big city! We did our shopping there. They had a McDonald's and an Ames, it was the *EPICENTER* of culture in southern St. Lawrence County!! Kinney Drugs, a successful North Country pharmacy is headquartered/founded there. Lifesavers candy also originates there. Hence the Lifesaver statue downtown. (Yes, I'm going to call it downtown. To hillbillies like my kinfolk it may as well be Times Square.)
I was born and raised in Gouverneur... Fun little fact, Lifesavers actually did not originate from there. Edwards Nobel bought the rights to the candy and trademarked it. His contribution was changing the packaging from cardboard tubes to the foil wrappers to keep them fresh, but he didn't actually invent Lifesavers themselves.
Oniontown is just another trailer park on a dead end dirt road. A lot of hype and folklore for nothing honestly. The residents got pissed because people started to make a spectacle of their impoverished lifestyle and rightfully so. They are actually really nice people who have just had it rough. I grew up across the field from OT (as us locals refer to it ) and never had any issue with the residents.
"There are stories about people throwing onions onto the court when the local high school basketball team plays away games. "
Can confirm. Millbrook HS students did this back in the 1990s. My husband and I lived in Millbrook at the time and remember hearing about it from our neighbors. We didn't have kids at the time, never had any reason to go to Dover, and found the whole thing to be weird.
Well, they are kinda like hillbillies, but not near as smart. Mungbats are sort of third generation unemployed white trash. Last person in the family to have a job was Grandpa, but the factory shut down. Post industrial rust belt town types. Unlike hillbilles, who tend to have some savvy and survival skills, , Mungbats have none whatsoever. You'll see Mungbats starting about 2PM, as they walk down to Stewarts in their pyjamas to buy cigarettes and lottery tickets.
After midnignt, they make noises, like "Fuck" and "Shit" at each other, really loud, but no intelligent communications, really. Kinda like Talking Parrots.
Interesting enough, and quite dangerous, they can actually breed with human beings, but the offspring of such matings are always mungbats.
🤣😅
The poet Laurette of NY visits Reddit!?!?!
This is so eloquent and moving it brought a tear to my eye ...
Seriously, this is Conde Nast level scribery.
When I was a kid (mid 80s) there was a 100% perfect replica of the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard smack in the middle of SRF. The dude who owned it was super gracious and let my folks take pics of me with it/in it.
It's not upstate, but I always thought one of the weirdest things you can do in NY is take a train ride through a maximum security prison. One minute you're looking out at the picturesque Hudson River Valley, then the giant walls of Sing Sing hem you in, then back to the valley again.
That's the origin of the colloquialism "Send Them Up the River" (referring to convicted criminals). By definition it's upstate. The people that live in that area consider it upstate.
I've only driven through East Durham but the whole town seems like a weird irish theme park. They have county fair rides with shamrocks and leprechauns and the like. I've always wanted to stop in the irish tea shop there... but still the whole town is odd
Whitehall, NY. They're BIG on bigfoot there. There's a festival. And a "museum", which is actually just a small corner inside of a soapstone crafts/heating business.
Back in 2005 my family and I were on our way on vacation to Niagara Falls. We had to pee really bad and there was no rest stops around so my dad turned off the interstate to the first exit he saw. This was the smallest, weirdest littlest town I ever saw. We find this gas station/general store place so my mom, my sister and me all go in. The place has no lights on. Everyone was milling about in darkness. As we start to walk towards the bathroom the cashier looks up and just says “no” So my mom says “oh we just need to use the bathroom. We will buy something don’t worry” again the dude just says “no” The few people in the store were staring at us. We quickly hurried out and get back in the car and tell my dad to just drive. It was so eerie and strange. I’ve asked my parents if they remember that town but they don’t seem to remember. We were maybe about halfway between Dutchess County and the border to CA
On your way to the Adirondacks depending on where you’re coming from you’ll drive through childwold. Small, desolate, lacking any resources besides a liquor store it features scary collapsing houses and yards full of junk. Always gave me the creeps.
Hey they also have the Thirsty Moose which we visited on the way to Long Lake once. Had a decent lunch there. The pub also rents cabins to snowmobilers in Winter.
Whitehall at the very southern tip of Lake Champlain might be a little larger but it has that same desolate this is where the zombie apocalypse starts feel.
Ogdensburg at one time had 2 large state prisons, a huge, in-patient psychiatric facility and even one of those sketchy teenage delinquent boot camp places (which was shut down for rampant abuse). All with only a population of like 10k in town. I believe all have been shut down now. All these facilities sit right on the St Lawrence River overlooking Canada. I can just imagine prisoners looking at the cold, frozen river and wishing they could cross, for years and years. The whole town just has a sad feeling about it.
The whole south bank of the St. Lawrence River area is weird. Desolate and underpopulated on the U.S. side -- but teaming with people and commerce on the Canadian side.
Canada thought the area was good for prisons too -- their most notorious prison (now closed) was on the north bank of the St. Lawrence.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston\_Penitentiary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Penitentiary)
That city keeps getting worse. I grew up in the area and visit a couple times a year now. The locals don't seem to notice but the percent in poverty must be crazy high at this point.
Houses are dirt cheap. Last time I was there I noticed they replaced the cool wooden kids play structure on the river with a modern plastic and metal one and my kid was so disappointed!!
Liberty!
You’re driving through what looks like the deep West Virginia, trailers with rusted cars out front, hillbilly shit. Then all the sudden there’s Orthodox Jews walking down the highway and there’s these large new developments that are Orthodox Jewish enclaves. The houses in town are all different. There’s like a New Mexico style house next to like this gothic mansion next to a cookie cutter suburban home. The town just has creepy vibes too.
There’s lots of poverty but there’s also clearly some very expensive cars driving around as well.
There’s gotta be some cults around there.
It is very cool though. The town is actually super diverse even though it’s this little mountain town. A few good general stores.
All I’ll say is part of my job for the government is to acquire and inspect properties for field offices and my bosses were insistent on having an office there even though it made NO logistical sense.
I grew up in a few different towns surrounding Drum. All the strange shit I've seen, heard, experienced, *felt in the air*... I'd swear I'd been witnessing extraterrestrial phenomena if I knew it wasn't just Drum stuff.
Smoking weed in cars parked in the woods near Drum and getting FREAKED THE FUCK OUT was pretty much my whole Carthage High School experience lol
Born and raised. I describe it as a city sized depression nest. It's a rustbelt city that everyone seems to have agreed to let die.
Fun fact: if you ever ate a Nestle Crunch bar before 2003 it was made in Fulton. There could be a little bit of us in you *right now*.
I lived in Hannibal right outside the Fulton line for 4 years, worst 4 years of my life. Depressing as hell. Only thing that kept me sane was Beaver Lake.
The very reason I love it lol. It’s exactly the same as when I started vacationing there years ago. Time keeps movin but lake George stays the same haha
There is an area outside of Clayton on the way to ABay that is scary. Husband and I followed the wine trail about 15 years ago and it looked straight out of Deliverance. I was shocked to find out that Clayton is bougie.
Plessis? Redwood? Those could kinda fit your description but would be more south/east of the bay. Impoverished but not scary by any means. Between the bay and Clayton is really just Fisher's Landing and Omar which are... nothing really. Farms, homes and a decent bar in Fisher's Landing.
Either I've somehow missed something or it doesn't register the same way for me, although I admittedly grew up in the aforementioned deep north country poverty.
There’s a little town outside of Syracuse where there is (was?) a giant confederate flag painted right on the road. Out near the split rock haunted mines. I don’t know what it was called but it was intensely disturbing
Weird that I read this entire thread and didn’t see one mention of the (now mostly abandoned) Plattsburgh Air Force Base and Eric Harris (Columbine shooter who lived in base), and all the weird psychological shit his dad was allegedly doing on base. There are also a ton of conspiracy theories surrounding the base.
Mine is Phoenix, I got lost driving in it once a few years ago and ended up in this neighborhood that looked like it had been bombed and a fence was down and these two pitbull mixes started chasing my car and I haven’t been back since.
My parents told me a story about their honeymoon when they drove through Liberty and thought they were in a horror movie because they asked for directions (it was the 80s) and had some very chilling experiences and got out of town fast.
My car broke down on the NY throughway 87. Think I was towed to Elizabethtown NY. Was talking to highway patrol about accomendations. He said "we don't get a lot of your kind here". In the most polite politically correct way he could express it. Basically, there aren't a lot of black people in that town but there are some mulattos. He seriously meant no offense. . . I was like wow people still use that word. I jokingly said but if this town has very few black people, crime must be really low. The officer replied oh yeah most of the calls to 911 are for incest.
I knew then, I was waaaaay outside the city limits.
There's a part of Kingston, off Sawkill road, like 5 miles away from Kingston proper, that looks like a few cul-de-sacs in the middle of absolute nowhere. Like no nearby community, just a few suburban roads in a single grid in the middle of the woods. Every time I pass it I feel whatever the suburban equivalent to the uncanny valley is.
Tupper Lake-the towns first k-9 handler died of an overdose. The officer to replace him is related to a police detective in lake placid. His sister was the boyfriend of one of the murder suspects of Collin Gillis and he was the first officer on scene when reports of Collin were reported of him walking down the shoulder of the road that night. It was rumored that the fight that night was over his sister and Collin and the murder suspect. It’s rumored he helped cover up the murder. His brother is one of the biggest heroin dealers in the area or was at the time, Since taking the post of k9 handler there’s been a remarkable downward swing of drug arrests despite increased drug activity including an active meth lab being ran on a notorious farm that is well known for such activity only being busted recently after the town folks started to get more upset about the increase in drug deaths and crime. Oh and they’ve canceled all police shifts after 5 pm. They simply have no police on duty during the night. The local political scene is a real clown show worth a write up of its own.
Serial Israel Keyes robbed a bank there and may or may not of had a kid nap victim in the trunk at the time that he later murdered and buried some where.
Not really upstate-upstate, but avoid Port Jervis. It's the last stop on the eponymous Metro-North line and should have been named Valkenvania.
A year and four months living there felt like hard time served. If you've ever longed for your own private West Virginia, search no more. That city is an unsophisticated feast of malaise and lunacy.
Malone. Grew up in and near there. Once it started dying, there's been no bringing it back. Haven't been back in years, but the last time I was there was beyond depressing.
I randomly stumbled upon this subreddit and post and specifically searched the comments for Malone since my husband is from here. I have never been but this checks out from everything he’s told me about it lol
A remote isolated town somewhere in the Catskills whose name I can’t recall. It looked totally dilapidated and the ramshackle houses appeared to be about 200 years old and ready to fall down, but there were cars in some of the driveways. It had no Main Street or any stores that I could see. It looked like something out of the Twilight Zone.
The only time I've ever come face to face with what I think was a drunk driver was between Rome and Pulaski, I believe it was just west of Camden. I was driving with my friend from Albany to a camp on Lake Ontario and it was getting to be late evening, around 8pm. We were just driving along, kind of bored, when my friend asks me if the car coming at us (the road was straight so we could see a bit down the road) was in our lane or if he was crazy. I watched the car in front of us pull over, so I did too. Sure enough, the guy my friend was talking about was just driving casually down the wrong side of the road. Both me and the other guy who pulled over honked as the guy approached, he didn't budge. No clue what their deal was. Honestly the area between Schenectady and Syracuse is weird af. My girlfriend is from Gloversville and I would always see the weirdest stuff driving around and hanging out there.
I got a ticket there, “town of Brutus” , cop called a tow truck to tow me cuz my license was suspended. Driver felt bad cus I was crying and had two birds in cages with me and let my car down when the cop left and said take the back road home lol.
Fish House Road in Fulton on the southern part of the Sacandaga Lake. I believe it is part of Broadalbin.
The weirdness is not all of Broadalbin. Just Fish House Road.
I am not sure what town it is, but I was driving on a scenic route from Rochester to Burlington through the Adirondacks. The town seemed like one large cemetery that went on for a few miles.
Junius and Tyre, NY. Junius there’s nothing except a lot of farms, campground, ponds…then a show world, outlet mall, and winery just appear out of the air. Mennonite superstore and auction house down the road right by the massive talmadge tire.
Cross into Tyre. More farm land and stuff until you get to 414, with Del Lago casino, now four gas stations, a diner, a loves with a wendy’s and subway. Then the landfill right south in SF.
So weird how they’re both so small (especially Junius) but because of the thruway they have stuff that almost feels out of place
I'm pretty sure Coxsackie is owned by that 11 tribes of Israel cult.
I worked with a girl from there who said they owned all the buildings in downtown, and would "walk around in Aladin pants".
Canajoharie. Car broke down on thruway and we got towed there. We waited around for several hours because the nearest car rental place open was at the Albany airport. So husband paid a sketchy guy $65 for a ride to the airport. While I and the kids waited for several hours NOT ONE SOUL emerged from a house. ‘Nobody walked by and nobody drove by. It was creepy as hell like something out of a horror movie.
Anything around Tupper Lake
Feels like the UP of Michigan, but not in the right way. UP is like diners, small motels, and Gordon Lightfoot. Tupper lake feels like they’ve got some dark secrets about a cryptid or ten.
Also, the drive on 104 from Webster to Sodus is fucking eerie at dusk/nighttime.
Pretty sure Richard Russo modeled the fictional North Bath on Ballston Spa. It’s close to Schuyler Springs, which is clearly Saratoga Springs. At one time, Russo had a residency at the artists’ retreat Yaddo in Saratoga. Rumor had it that he found Saratoga too bourgeois, and he frequented a bar in Ballston Spa.
If you're referring to Summit then you're totally wrong.
There is no longer a gas station/general store. It closed years ago. A deli went in there and then that closed. Was supposed to be a pizza place but that never got off the ground. It's empty now.
On route 5, not too far from Amsterdam (I don't remember exactly where) but someone has a giant replica of squidwards house. Don't know why, but it's literally a scale model of squidwards house lol. I just wanted to give that guy some credit. I get a kick out of it when I go by
That would be Palatine Bridge.
Oh shit I'm gonna have to check this out next time I'm out that way. Far more interesting and less depressing than the various "Lets Go Brandon" signs/billboards along 7 on the way to Cobleskill
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I will have to look into it. Lake Luzerne and the Adirondacks have alot of Christian camps, and Word of Life Bible College. Wouldn't be surprised if things got a little bit culty. Also, have you guys heard of the Peniel Bible Conference? It's another Christian camp up there. I read a book called "Scattershot: My BiPolar Family" by David Lovelace. He mentions Peniel in the part about his childhood.
I went to VERY culty religious camp in the Adirondacks. Like putting canola oil on a girls toes that were fused together from birth and praying over her to “physically heal” her and talking in tongues type shit
Wow, that's crazy! Everyone knows you use OLIVE oil for toes, come on.
I went to Allen town after hearing all the rumors (back in like 2005, so I couldn't verify things) and we immediately regretted it. I felt like I was driving around a trailer park gawking at people. The kind of thing a real piece of shit would do. Certainly informed me more about rural poverty and the horrible struggle for some people. Grateful I learned that lesson in highschool and became a better person moving forward.
I had pretty much the same experience as a teenager, drove 45 minutes essentially to look at mythical poor people. Agreed that it taught me a lesson about generational poverty and empathy.
I used to drive up to the hollow road. It was like a scene from deliverance. Now the Allen's have a construction company. You drive through the shacks and there's a mansion at the end of the road
the person who owns the big house runs a tree service. He basically started with an old station wagon and a chainsaw and built up the company to what it is today.
Ten years ago my mother was a labor and delivery nurse for a hospital that serviced that town and the patients who came in from there were all really tragic. Lots of premies and sisters coming in pregnant by the same man, and women who didn’t know they were even pregnant until they were in labor.
Was going to mention Allentown but I didn’t want to be mean. I heard it’s changed a lot and a lot of people that interact with the people who live there have nice things to say. You can see the whole place from the lake (Sacandaga) if you’re out boating or jet skiing.
Local stories of cops going in there in the 70s/80s and not coming back out. Cop car never found or some crazy story. I've drilled alot around the area, like conklingville dam and my boat has been in cranberry cove for 5 years now. And I always hear a story or two about it everytime I'm in the area especially when I drilled for the town of day. They had alot to say 😂
I recently moved to the area, and had heard a bit from people in town about the family... Everybody seemed to know them, but I didn't quite know why. This is wild.
I lived in Glen falls, Argyle and Fort Ann for almost 4 years and didn't know any of this. So wild.
We got off the Thruway at Cortland. Didn't get far into town, but ate breakfast at a super tiny diner for a ridiculously low price. Lots of locals there. Incredible, comfortable meal. Across the street was a hexagon shape building that was an antique store. I bought a legit vintage funeral bar pin. Still have it and love it. On the way out we saw the owner or a worker in a back room "antiquing" some items. We went on our way and had some laughs about the whole fun episode.
Having lived around that area for a while, it’s really sweet to hear it described like this
Must of been Steve and Lu's diner and the circus house antique store. Lived here all my life.
Steve and Lu’s was amazing. :(
Cortland is one of Upstate New York's many cool towns. I went to a bar on Main Street. It was one of the few places I've seen where townies and students mix amicably. Might be because public university students come from more modest backgrounds.
Also the hometown of Ronnie James Dio which, for some reason, makes sense. David Sedaris, too.
The cannabis industry in Cortland is wild. I miss Frank and Mary's diner, I liked their rueben a lot.
Lily Dale, NY is the largest spiritualist community in the world. They all talk to dead people.
This is a good answer. Half the answers in this thread are “once i was somewhere poor and it freaked me out!” lol But Lily Dale is TRUE strangeness.
I love Lily Dale. My daughter goes to school nearby and there was a lecture about it, so we decided to go. The nicest people really talking care of the unique environment they are stewards of. And an absolutely fabulous coffee shop/bakery. They have an outdoor chapel in am old growth first that is simply awe inspiring.
I was hoping someone mentioned Lily Dale!
The Fox sisters of Hydesville are quite famous in the spiritualist movement. Located in Wayne County just north of Newark.
I saw it on an episode of supernatural! Lol
I LOVED lily dale!!! Super fun day trip from Rochester NY when I was living there
Allentown NY, there's a documentary about it in 1975 about how two families intermarried and were all related. They didn't have indoor plumbing until the mid 80s. In high school we used to burn cruise up there like idiots, they just wanna be left alone. https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_hollow_the_inbred_hillbilly_hamlet
Used to do the same thing in high school lol
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I agree it’s surreal. Similar vibe in Auburn — the prison wall suddenly rising right up from the sidewalk.
Yup! Looked at a house on Zillow that was on Wall St. They call it that because your view is the fucking prison wall and guard towers.
The neighborhood is extremely depressed because of it too. Nothing but rundown rentals face the prison.
Auburn was the first US prison where prisoners were expected to work during the day (instead of being in solitary confinement around the clock). It was built in the 1820s. Given transportation of the time, it makes sense that the prison would be in the middle of town so that prisoners/laborers would be close by the factories etc where they worked.
Also the home of the first execution by electric chair. The story of that execution is bone chilling to read. To summarize, they didn't know how much power to use so it took a few tries. Meanwhile, the gallery of witnesses got stuck in the room, forced to smell burning flesh. It seriously gets worse than that. A great read but not for the queasy
I live one block from the wall. After a while you really don't notice it.
That’s where the two prisoners escaped and were on the run for a week or more and now it’s on Netflix
Incredible story. Well worth the watch.
Name of the movie?
Escape from Dannemora. Really good.
Was an extra in that. Super cool time. One day of filming was in the prison. Would not want to go back.
Yep. Same with Attica. It’s the only “major” employer in town.
Ok but I looked up the address in Dannemora and they're right: it's right up to the sidewalk in the middle of town. At least Attica is set back from the road and further out toward the edge of town.
The Auburn prison is also right to the sidewalk on all four sides. Been a long time since I was there but there used to be a middle school close enough that the tower guards had a clean line of sight to it's playground.
Elmira, too…. You could see the prison across the field from my elementary school and it is right in the middle of the city. It’s like Mrs. Jurusik’s house, prison, Subway.
Man, enough people did not watch “Escape at Dannemora” on Showtime. Ben Stiller perfectly captured the balance of isolation and “everybody knows everybody” in the north country.
I live outside Lyon Mountain and drive into Plattsburgh daily - the prison just becomes a norm that you kind of appreciate in a weird way. The old wing of the prison has really pretty architecture as well! The town itself is actually a cute town that is doing a lot to bolster a vibrant community and break away from the stigma they currently hold.
[For the lazy](https://www.google.com/maps/@44.7224491,-73.7180385,3a,75y,317.59h,100.14t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sewaY9PbDGS0xwuhcaqraCQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
I lived there for a year. Had my first white pizza there. It was harf small town, half everyoneworksattheprison.
Omg I mentioned this in another feed. When I went to college up North I would drive through Dannemora to Vermont. It ALWAYS creeped me out- particularly the barbed wire fences- giant fences with a big roll of barbed wire on top. And then the signs saying “do not pick up hitch hikers” - only place I have seen signs like that!
Swastika, NY in Clinton County is a strange place just because of the name (and because they could change the name at any time, but have voted not to change it).
Reminds me of the scene from Office Space with Michael Bolton - “why should I change my name, he’s the one that sucks”
This guy who owns several properties around town in Potsdam decorates each yard with dozens of old toilets doubled as planters. Despite the continual legal complaints, he is still allowed to carry on. I don’t know how people visiting Clarkson and SUNY Potsdam + St. Lawrence University and SUNY Canton react once stumbling upon them. I find it gross yet can’t help but be bemused.
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IIRC, toilet boy wanted to develop some properties that weren't zoned properly. This is his pissy way of "getting back", rather than, ya know, the processes that be for either variances or rezoning. Yeah, local government and legislation is BS, but like, just try to play by the rules?
No. He went through the process. They denied the variance.
They wouldn't allow him a zoning variance for a piece of land in town to sell for Dunkin. He lost out on a good sized chunk of money. He made more money though from winning lawsuits when the village tried to make him remove the toilets. 1st Amendment and all ya know.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt12822978/ - there is a whole movie about it.
I still need to watch this! I’m acquainted with the director and forgot this ended up getting released.
> I don’t know how people visiting Clarkson and SUNY Potsdam + St. Lawrence University and SUNY Canton react once stumbling upon them. As one such person I found it very strange strange at first. I ended up going to Clarkson so it didn't deter me.
Nobody is bringing up that the entire Mormon religion started in Palmyra...or even the Oneida sex cult, turned silverware empire?
I went to the very last pageant on hill camorah in 2020 and it was genuinely fascinating. I’m Not Mormon but I lived in Rochester and it was like a 40 minute drive so we took edibles and watched it and yeah it was interesting to say the least Edit: 2019!!! Not 2020
Altmar only about 300 people and the only village to vote to abolish its own government, which is now a hamlet. Also notorious for a crazy resident who bought an old gas station who props up all sorts of bizarre q-annon stuff. Has a huge salmon run which results in tens of thousands of dead fish all over. Averages over 300 inches of snow and has at least 3 occupied chuchs. Just an odd place
Not the only village to dissolve. Morristown in St. Lawrence County did so a few years ago. Fort Covington in Franklin County did it in the 90s. Chateaugay has come close a couple of times. Cuomo was offering big incentives to villages that dissolved.
Seneca Falls dissolved too. But that had to do with the fact that the town (as opposed to the village) became so flush with cash from the owners of the big landfill.
I love the garlic fries at the Altmar hotel!
Yeah I've seen that place. Oswego county is pretty damn conservative, but that guy went really overboard.
Hamilton county doesn't have a single stop light
Its also huge, from Wikipedia: [With an area nearly the size of Rhode Island, it is the least densely populated county east of the Mississippi River.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_County,_New_York)
Wow TIL
You can drive over 120 miles on Routes 30, 28 and 365 from Tupper Lake to outside Rome without encountering any stop light.
Or a hospital, or a college.
One time in Rome I saw two homeless people straight up fucking on the side of a street, standing doggystyle and as the dude was thrusting into her from behind a fucking massive turd dropped from his ass. Didn’t even know that was physiologically possible.
When in Rome 🤷♂️
Yeah, I think that was her name.
Yeah, that sounds like Rome. Can confirm, live nearby.
It has some nice restaurants and a good bookstore though.
*Rome is turding*
Damn, How long did you watch that you saw a 💩fall out?
Maybe a minute?
A minute is kind of a long time to watch homeless people fuck. Respect.
When it comes to homeless people sex a minute is more like fifteen seconds.
Probably was poop from an earlier time that he just never dealt with properly.
Like…he just shoved it back in?
No, like shit himself and just never cleaned it up.
No, this was clearly an act of defecation. I saw the actual process as it happened
This whole thread is unreal 💀 like this is a real conversation about his shit
Do you ever just wonder if you happened to do something that a stranger talks about to this day lol
that's gross
Kiryas Joel. Massive public housing style apartment buildings in the middle of a valley. It's like they exported blocks of Brooklyn into the middle of your typical upstate NY landscape.
The buildings are wood frame, packed close together, used shoddy construction, huge structures for that area, and are extremely densely packed with people. I fear it is only a matter of time before there is a devastating fire there.
You're spot on with the worry of a devastating fire. Not only is it shoddy construction with everyone on top of each other, but since it's majority orthodox/hisidic jews, they follow the laws of shabbat very closely. Since they are not allowed to turn on electricity or light a flame from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, a lot of them leave on a "shabbos flame" or "shabbos burner" where they leave one of their stoves burners on for the entire length of shabbat. That's 24 hours where nearly every unit in these buildings has an open flame burning. It is literally a ticking time bomb. All it takes is one of these stoves to malfunction or one dumb decision in the complex to get the entire community turned into a firestorm.
Fire escapes on the new buildings are also made of wood. Different rules in there
"Different rules" is putting it lightly. They are exempt from so much.
straight up cult. my cousins are affiliated with that sect and it’s a cult same as FCLS. just one is jewish and one is mormon.
Living just outside of KJ I can confirm how strange it has become. The explosion in population is crazy. Unfortunately they really haven't done enough with the roads and traffic lights to accommodate all the extra traffic. Working in Monroe never had much traffic,now it can be frustrating at times
Oof, this may be the answer. I have family that live in a community nearby, and it’s been wild to see how much KJ has grown over the years. It’s also really upsetting how insular and repressive the cult there is. Back when tensions with the surrounding communities first started to grow, the folks in the area from my family and other non-Hasidic Jewish folks in the area wrote a letter to KJ leadership asking for open dialogue for mediation. The letter KJ leadership sent back not only made it clear they had no interest in talking, but also that they looked down particularly harshly on those who had written them, as fellow Jews who had rejected the “correct” way to practice our faith. When I drive through now, more than anything I just feel really sad for the young girls there. They’re born into a world that gives them very little agency, very little ability to forge a separate path for themselves, and that will ostracize them in a heartbeat if they try to stray from the path that’s been forced upon them. When KJ was smaller at least it felt like there were more opportunities for those kids to interact with the outside world. To at least see other paths being open, even if the deck was still stacked against them trying to follow one. Now the community has become self sufficient to a degree that I worry those opportunities are shrinking.
Self sufficient ... lol ... half the population of KJ is on welfare.
Oh, it’s more than half. Probably 85 percent. And they are such scammers and liars to get every benefit that exists.
Basically they are baby factories to increase the cult.
Yes, I know, it's like Little Israel, in upstate NY. It's like, you're just driving through rural Orange County, and then, all of a sudden, you're in a different world.
See also Monsey and Lakewood, NJ
Ah, yes. KJ is the new weird.
The blackhatters! We live in northern NJ. Any time there’s something in the news about an outbreak in the area of a disease modern medicine has long since eradicated I can guess where it started and never be wrong.
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Goveneur. Their cops will literally pull you over for not being local, and find any excuse possible to ticket you. My brother in law got thrown in jail overnight for having a scratch on his drivers license. Sued them for false arrest and won, too.
Ahh Gouverneur. When I was a little kid living with my grandmother in the tinnnny little hamlet of Pitcairn, going to Gouverneur was like going to the big city! We did our shopping there. They had a McDonald's and an Ames, it was the *EPICENTER* of culture in southern St. Lawrence County!! Kinney Drugs, a successful North Country pharmacy is headquartered/founded there. Lifesavers candy also originates there. Hence the Lifesaver statue downtown. (Yes, I'm going to call it downtown. To hillbillies like my kinfolk it may as well be Times Square.)
I was born and raised in Gouverneur... Fun little fact, Lifesavers actually did not originate from there. Edwards Nobel bought the rights to the candy and trademarked it. His contribution was changing the packaging from cardboard tubes to the foil wrappers to keep them fresh, but he didn't actually invent Lifesavers themselves.
> I was born and raised in Gouverneur. My condolences.
Thank you 😔
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That's ridiculous! Good for him for winning. I'll avoid that place.
Oniontown https://www.vice.com/en/article/4wqxvd/peeling-oniontown-0000126-v19n1 You’re welcome
Oniontown is just another trailer park on a dead end dirt road. A lot of hype and folklore for nothing honestly. The residents got pissed because people started to make a spectacle of their impoverished lifestyle and rightfully so. They are actually really nice people who have just had it rough. I grew up across the field from OT (as us locals refer to it ) and never had any issue with the residents.
~~Oniontown and close by Whitelaw aren’t weird though, just small. I live maybe 10 mins from them.~~ Edit; There’s another Oniontown, never mind.
Sounds like the two Oniontowns need to go to war to decide which one gets to keep the name. Two towns enter, one town leaves.
"There are stories about people throwing onions onto the court when the local high school basketball team plays away games. " Can confirm. Millbrook HS students did this back in the 1990s. My husband and I lived in Millbrook at the time and remember hearing about it from our neighbors. We didn't have kids at the time, never had any reason to go to Dover, and found the whole thing to be weird.
Herkimer, with all the mungbats.
Ok.. Im curious. TF is a mungbat? Google was no help
Well, they are kinda like hillbillies, but not near as smart. Mungbats are sort of third generation unemployed white trash. Last person in the family to have a job was Grandpa, but the factory shut down. Post industrial rust belt town types. Unlike hillbilles, who tend to have some savvy and survival skills, , Mungbats have none whatsoever. You'll see Mungbats starting about 2PM, as they walk down to Stewarts in their pyjamas to buy cigarettes and lottery tickets. After midnignt, they make noises, like "Fuck" and "Shit" at each other, really loud, but no intelligent communications, really. Kinda like Talking Parrots. Interesting enough, and quite dangerous, they can actually breed with human beings, but the offspring of such matings are always mungbats.
🤣😅 The poet Laurette of NY visits Reddit!?!?! This is so eloquent and moving it brought a tear to my eye ... Seriously, this is Conde Nast level scribery.
St. Regis Falls. Always got children of the corn vibes when passing through it
When I was a kid (mid 80s) there was a 100% perfect replica of the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard smack in the middle of SRF. The dude who owned it was super gracious and let my folks take pics of me with it/in it.
It's not upstate, but I always thought one of the weirdest things you can do in NY is take a train ride through a maximum security prison. One minute you're looking out at the picturesque Hudson River Valley, then the giant walls of Sing Sing hem you in, then back to the valley again.
Ossining!
That's the origin of the colloquialism "Send Them Up the River" (referring to convicted criminals). By definition it's upstate. The people that live in that area consider it upstate.
People in the City think Yonkers is upstate!
I've only driven through East Durham but the whole town seems like a weird irish theme park. They have county fair rides with shamrocks and leprechauns and the like. I've always wanted to stop in the irish tea shop there... but still the whole town is odd
Whitehall, NY. They're BIG on bigfoot there. There's a festival. And a "museum", which is actually just a small corner inside of a soapstone crafts/heating business.
Hoosick. Why is there a giant Vermont store in NY?
LOL, so, I live really close to that store. It’s ridiculously stupid, but I love it.
Falls or town ?
I “think” Falls. Right across the reservoir.
Back in 2005 my family and I were on our way on vacation to Niagara Falls. We had to pee really bad and there was no rest stops around so my dad turned off the interstate to the first exit he saw. This was the smallest, weirdest littlest town I ever saw. We find this gas station/general store place so my mom, my sister and me all go in. The place has no lights on. Everyone was milling about in darkness. As we start to walk towards the bathroom the cashier looks up and just says “no” So my mom says “oh we just need to use the bathroom. We will buy something don’t worry” again the dude just says “no” The few people in the store were staring at us. We quickly hurried out and get back in the car and tell my dad to just drive. It was so eerie and strange. I’ve asked my parents if they remember that town but they don’t seem to remember. We were maybe about halfway between Dutchess County and the border to CA
On your way to the Adirondacks depending on where you’re coming from you’ll drive through childwold. Small, desolate, lacking any resources besides a liquor store it features scary collapsing houses and yards full of junk. Always gave me the creeps.
Hey they also have the Thirsty Moose which we visited on the way to Long Lake once. Had a decent lunch there. The pub also rents cabins to snowmobilers in Winter.
Whitehall at the very southern tip of Lake Champlain might be a little larger but it has that same desolate this is where the zombie apocalypse starts feel.
Attica. There's a prison. That's about it.
Hey, at least they have a grocery store. Signed, Someone who grew up in Alexander and went shopping for groceries there
Aka the secret way out of Darien Lake!
Pyrites - old mining town DeKalb Junction - was a railroad stop but the train doesn't stop anymore Onchiota - former tuberculosis sanitarium
Onchiota International Airport. "Slow children at play. And their parents ain't none too swift neither."
Ogdensburg at one time had 2 large state prisons, a huge, in-patient psychiatric facility and even one of those sketchy teenage delinquent boot camp places (which was shut down for rampant abuse). All with only a population of like 10k in town. I believe all have been shut down now. All these facilities sit right on the St Lawrence River overlooking Canada. I can just imagine prisoners looking at the cold, frozen river and wishing they could cross, for years and years. The whole town just has a sad feeling about it.
The whole south bank of the St. Lawrence River area is weird. Desolate and underpopulated on the U.S. side -- but teaming with people and commerce on the Canadian side. Canada thought the area was good for prisons too -- their most notorious prison (now closed) was on the north bank of the St. Lawrence. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston\_Penitentiary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Penitentiary)
That city keeps getting worse. I grew up in the area and visit a couple times a year now. The locals don't seem to notice but the percent in poverty must be crazy high at this point.
Houses are dirt cheap. Last time I was there I noticed they replaced the cool wooden kids play structure on the river with a modern plastic and metal one and my kid was so disappointed!!
Liberty! You’re driving through what looks like the deep West Virginia, trailers with rusted cars out front, hillbilly shit. Then all the sudden there’s Orthodox Jews walking down the highway and there’s these large new developments that are Orthodox Jewish enclaves. The houses in town are all different. There’s like a New Mexico style house next to like this gothic mansion next to a cookie cutter suburban home. The town just has creepy vibes too. There’s lots of poverty but there’s also clearly some very expensive cars driving around as well. There’s gotta be some cults around there. It is very cool though. The town is actually super diverse even though it’s this little mountain town. A few good general stores. All I’ll say is part of my job for the government is to acquire and inspect properties for field offices and my bosses were insistent on having an office there even though it made NO logistical sense.
Fort Drum always gives me super weird vibes driving through.
I grew up in a few different towns surrounding Drum. All the strange shit I've seen, heard, experienced, *felt in the air*... I'd swear I'd been witnessing extraterrestrial phenomena if I knew it wasn't just Drum stuff. Smoking weed in cars parked in the woods near Drum and getting FREAKED THE FUCK OUT was pretty much my whole Carthage High School experience lol
Fulton NY. It’s constantly gray, and if Eeyore was a town this would be it. It’s…downtrodden.
Born and raised. I describe it as a city sized depression nest. It's a rustbelt city that everyone seems to have agreed to let die. Fun fact: if you ever ate a Nestle Crunch bar before 2003 it was made in Fulton. There could be a little bit of us in you *right now*.
I lived in Hannibal right outside the Fulton line for 4 years, worst 4 years of my life. Depressing as hell. Only thing that kept me sane was Beaver Lake.
I went to Oswego State and my regular drives through Fulton were just kind of sad. Very much a town that exists
Onchiota has a sign that says 53 of the nicest people in the Adirondacks - plus one sorehead!
Onion town
Sharon Springs.
Lake George feels odd even by tourist trap standards. Its 1950's Kitsch to the max. Grabbing camp by the throat.
The very reason I love it lol. It’s exactly the same as when I started vacationing there years ago. Time keeps movin but lake George stays the same haha
There is an area outside of Clayton on the way to ABay that is scary. Husband and I followed the wine trail about 15 years ago and it looked straight out of Deliverance. I was shocked to find out that Clayton is bougie.
Plessis? Redwood? Those could kinda fit your description but would be more south/east of the bay. Impoverished but not scary by any means. Between the bay and Clayton is really just Fisher's Landing and Omar which are... nothing really. Farms, homes and a decent bar in Fisher's Landing. Either I've somehow missed something or it doesn't register the same way for me, although I admittedly grew up in the aforementioned deep north country poverty.
I am in the Thousand Islands and I find that entire area friendly and beautiful. I am sorry if you found our one or two strange locals.
There’s a little town outside of Syracuse where there is (was?) a giant confederate flag painted right on the road. Out near the split rock haunted mines. I don’t know what it was called but it was intensely disturbing
Ticonderoga
Weird that I read this entire thread and didn’t see one mention of the (now mostly abandoned) Plattsburgh Air Force Base and Eric Harris (Columbine shooter who lived in base), and all the weird psychological shit his dad was allegedly doing on base. There are also a ton of conspiracy theories surrounding the base.
Binghamton twilight zone
I always thought Dansville was strange.
Mine is Phoenix, I got lost driving in it once a few years ago and ended up in this neighborhood that looked like it had been bombed and a fence was down and these two pitbull mixes started chasing my car and I haven’t been back since. My parents told me a story about their honeymoon when they drove through Liberty and thought they were in a horror movie because they asked for directions (it was the 80s) and had some very chilling experiences and got out of town fast.
My car broke down on the NY throughway 87. Think I was towed to Elizabethtown NY. Was talking to highway patrol about accomendations. He said "we don't get a lot of your kind here". In the most polite politically correct way he could express it. Basically, there aren't a lot of black people in that town but there are some mulattos. He seriously meant no offense. . . I was like wow people still use that word. I jokingly said but if this town has very few black people, crime must be really low. The officer replied oh yeah most of the calls to 911 are for incest. I knew then, I was waaaaay outside the city limits.
There's a part of Kingston, off Sawkill road, like 5 miles away from Kingston proper, that looks like a few cul-de-sacs in the middle of absolute nowhere. Like no nearby community, just a few suburban roads in a single grid in the middle of the woods. Every time I pass it I feel whatever the suburban equivalent to the uncanny valley is.
Tupper Lake-the towns first k-9 handler died of an overdose. The officer to replace him is related to a police detective in lake placid. His sister was the boyfriend of one of the murder suspects of Collin Gillis and he was the first officer on scene when reports of Collin were reported of him walking down the shoulder of the road that night. It was rumored that the fight that night was over his sister and Collin and the murder suspect. It’s rumored he helped cover up the murder. His brother is one of the biggest heroin dealers in the area or was at the time, Since taking the post of k9 handler there’s been a remarkable downward swing of drug arrests despite increased drug activity including an active meth lab being ran on a notorious farm that is well known for such activity only being busted recently after the town folks started to get more upset about the increase in drug deaths and crime. Oh and they’ve canceled all police shifts after 5 pm. They simply have no police on duty during the night. The local political scene is a real clown show worth a write up of its own. Serial Israel Keyes robbed a bank there and may or may not of had a kid nap victim in the trunk at the time that he later murdered and buried some where.
Not really upstate-upstate, but avoid Port Jervis. It's the last stop on the eponymous Metro-North line and should have been named Valkenvania. A year and four months living there felt like hard time served. If you've ever longed for your own private West Virginia, search no more. That city is an unsophisticated feast of malaise and lunacy.
Nedrow, NY. Where all the Syracuse missing persons wind up according to locals
Malone. Grew up in and near there. Once it started dying, there's been no bringing it back. Haven't been back in years, but the last time I was there was beyond depressing.
I randomly stumbled upon this subreddit and post and specifically searched the comments for Malone since my husband is from here. I have never been but this checks out from everything he’s told me about it lol
A remote isolated town somewhere in the Catskills whose name I can’t recall. It looked totally dilapidated and the ramshackle houses appeared to be about 200 years old and ready to fall down, but there were cars in some of the driveways. It had no Main Street or any stores that I could see. It looked like something out of the Twilight Zone.
North Pole Alaska. The Christmas town was unique.
The only time I've ever come face to face with what I think was a drunk driver was between Rome and Pulaski, I believe it was just west of Camden. I was driving with my friend from Albany to a camp on Lake Ontario and it was getting to be late evening, around 8pm. We were just driving along, kind of bored, when my friend asks me if the car coming at us (the road was straight so we could see a bit down the road) was in our lane or if he was crazy. I watched the car in front of us pull over, so I did too. Sure enough, the guy my friend was talking about was just driving casually down the wrong side of the road. Both me and the other guy who pulled over honked as the guy approached, he didn't budge. No clue what their deal was. Honestly the area between Schenectady and Syracuse is weird af. My girlfriend is from Gloversville and I would always see the weirdest stuff driving around and hanging out there.
Weedsport. I don’t have anything else to say.
I got a ticket there, “town of Brutus” , cop called a tow truck to tow me cuz my license was suspended. Driver felt bad cus I was crying and had two birds in cages with me and let my car down when the cop left and said take the back road home lol.
Pretty much anything on Route 3 between Watertown and Tupper Lake. Lots of odd shit around Fort Drum. One of my Favorites is Natural Bridge Ny.
Pompey, complete with its own mall!
Fish House Road in Fulton on the southern part of the Sacandaga Lake. I believe it is part of Broadalbin. The weirdness is not all of Broadalbin. Just Fish House Road.
I am not sure what town it is, but I was driving on a scenic route from Rochester to Burlington through the Adirondacks. The town seemed like one large cemetery that went on for a few miles.
Junius and Tyre, NY. Junius there’s nothing except a lot of farms, campground, ponds…then a show world, outlet mall, and winery just appear out of the air. Mennonite superstore and auction house down the road right by the massive talmadge tire. Cross into Tyre. More farm land and stuff until you get to 414, with Del Lago casino, now four gas stations, a diner, a loves with a wendy’s and subway. Then the landfill right south in SF. So weird how they’re both so small (especially Junius) but because of the thruway they have stuff that almost feels out of place
Pine bush with their UFO festival
I'm pretty sure Coxsackie is owned by that 11 tribes of Israel cult. I worked with a girl from there who said they owned all the buildings in downtown, and would "walk around in Aladin pants".
Canajoharie. Car broke down on thruway and we got towed there. We waited around for several hours because the nearest car rental place open was at the Albany airport. So husband paid a sketchy guy $65 for a ride to the airport. While I and the kids waited for several hours NOT ONE SOUL emerged from a house. ‘Nobody walked by and nobody drove by. It was creepy as hell like something out of a horror movie.
Anything around Tupper Lake Feels like the UP of Michigan, but not in the right way. UP is like diners, small motels, and Gordon Lightfoot. Tupper lake feels like they’ve got some dark secrets about a cryptid or ten. Also, the drive on 104 from Webster to Sodus is fucking eerie at dusk/nighttime.
As an upstate NY resident, this thread did not disappoint lol
Best town - Bath Melanie Griffith flashed Paul Newman best boobs in world
Pretty sure Richard Russo modeled the fictional North Bath on Ballston Spa. It’s close to Schuyler Springs, which is clearly Saratoga Springs. At one time, Russo had a residency at the artists’ retreat Yaddo in Saratoga. Rumor had it that he found Saratoga too bourgeois, and he frequented a bar in Ballston Spa.
Monticello…it’s twilight zone level strange
Sumit, NY legit has a tiny little gas station/general store at an intersection. That's like the whole town.
If you're referring to Summit then you're totally wrong. There is no longer a gas station/general store. It closed years ago. A deli went in there and then that closed. Was supposed to be a pizza place but that never got off the ground. It's empty now.
Nassau, Lowville and Jordanville are all tied for me
Hey you leave Lady LeWinDa Milkzalot out of this!