Fairway to Heaven
March 14, 2014 1:39 PM Subscribe
Mefites are awfully fond of abandoned places, whether they be water parks, train stations or even entire communities. But how about golf courses? A look at what has happened to some of the abandoned courses in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (via Salon).
Don't leave me standing here, I can't get use to this lifestyle...
posted by mudpuppie at 1:56 PM on March 14, 2014 [11 favorites]
posted by mudpuppie at 1:56 PM on March 14, 2014 [11 favorites]
City Park in New Orleans was host to a few golf courses pre-Katrina. Before I get off on the wrong foot I'd like to clarify that the majority of City Park is now far better than it was before the storm - today we have a dog park, a new walking path around 'Big Lake', a 24-hour beignet and coffee shop, new tennis courts, a new dedicated festival space, etc. Considerable improvements have been made and it's one of the best parts of New Orleans, period.
... but still, a lot of those golf courses have gone untended aside from an occasional bush hogging. A few example shots for you.
posted by komara at 2:02 PM on March 14, 2014 [5 favorites]
... but still, a lot of those golf courses have gone untended aside from an occasional bush hogging. A few example shots for you.
posted by komara at 2:02 PM on March 14, 2014 [5 favorites]
Good grief...I started involuntarily slapping at mosquitoes when I saw the pictures at the bottom of the page. I can't even imagine.
posted by jquinby at 2:03 PM on March 14, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by jquinby at 2:03 PM on March 14, 2014 [3 favorites]
Overgrown golf courses, abandoned houses, and half muck-filled swimming pools. There's a Ballard story waiting to be written.
posted by octobersurprise at 2:04 PM on March 14, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by octobersurprise at 2:04 PM on March 14, 2014 [4 favorites]
This reminds me that I remain surprised that there are not roving bands of militant anti-golf ecoterrorists.
posted by uberchet at 2:20 PM on March 14, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by uberchet at 2:20 PM on March 14, 2014 [2 favorites]
I'd say needs more pictures, but I'm not sure if we'd be able to tell anything from more pictures or not. (ie semi-reclaimed jungle is semi-reclaimed jungle, whether it started as a golf course or farm or pasture or whatever..)
posted by k5.user at 2:22 PM on March 14, 2014
posted by k5.user at 2:22 PM on March 14, 2014
FTA - A not-yet-installed microwave sat on a kitchen counter.
For realsies? That's a safe abandoned place. I'd like to live there. Fix up the derelict John Deere Accumaster 1800, make ponchos out of deck umbrellas, and plant a three sisters garden.
Overgrown golf courses, abandoned houses, and half muck-filled swimming pools. There's a Ballard story waiting to be written.
Boy that guy was fixated on abandoned pools.
posted by codswallop at 2:24 PM on March 14, 2014 [2 favorites]
For realsies? That's a safe abandoned place. I'd like to live there. Fix up the derelict John Deere Accumaster 1800, make ponchos out of deck umbrellas, and plant a three sisters garden.
Overgrown golf courses, abandoned houses, and half muck-filled swimming pools. There's a Ballard story waiting to be written.
Boy that guy was fixated on abandoned pools.
posted by codswallop at 2:24 PM on March 14, 2014 [2 favorites]
Abandoned golf courses are a sign that humanity has a future.
posted by sonascope at 2:40 PM on March 14, 2014 [13 favorites]
posted by sonascope at 2:40 PM on March 14, 2014 [13 favorites]
You know, there were some large developments in the Atlanta area that were getting started just as the bottom dropped out of the real estate market. Some of the homes had already sold, so here were folks moving into these colossal subdivisions and only a very small number of houses had actually been built.
One of the main complaints was that the pool and clubhouse had been built, but without an HOA to fund the upkeep, the pool was full of rainwater and the frogs had taken over. These were not cheap homes, by the way.
It didn't sound entirely unappealing to me, except that (as I said) the houses were expensive and they were expensive, in part, because of the amenities that came along with them but were left uncompleted for a long time. It was quiet for sure, and you were guaranteed to be surrounded by pretty much nothing until the builder could afford to finish things out, whenever that was.
I imagine by now the market's picked back up and maybe they've finished building the places out, but for a long while, there were folks living in there and beating back the re-encroaching landscape without a whole hell of a lot of recourse. Who were you going to sue, after all? The builder? They were under. And good luck selling the place without taking a complete hosing.
posted by jquinby at 3:33 PM on March 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
One of the main complaints was that the pool and clubhouse had been built, but without an HOA to fund the upkeep, the pool was full of rainwater and the frogs had taken over. These were not cheap homes, by the way.
It didn't sound entirely unappealing to me, except that (as I said) the houses were expensive and they were expensive, in part, because of the amenities that came along with them but were left uncompleted for a long time. It was quiet for sure, and you were guaranteed to be surrounded by pretty much nothing until the builder could afford to finish things out, whenever that was.
I imagine by now the market's picked back up and maybe they've finished building the places out, but for a long while, there were folks living in there and beating back the re-encroaching landscape without a whole hell of a lot of recourse. Who were you going to sue, after all? The builder? They were under. And good luck selling the place without taking a complete hosing.
posted by jquinby at 3:33 PM on March 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
Boy that guy was fixated on abandoned pools
Where are the Z-Boys?
posted by TedW at 3:58 PM on March 14, 2014 [2 favorites]
Where are the Z-Boys?
posted by TedW at 3:58 PM on March 14, 2014 [2 favorites]
City Park in New Orleans was host to a few golf courses pre-Katrina
the "for" pictture loos like a place I'd like to live.
posted by Dr. Twist at 4:18 PM on March 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
the "for" pictture loos like a place I'd like to live.
posted by Dr. Twist at 4:18 PM on March 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
There was an abandoned golf course in Eagan Minnesota, surrounded by apartment complexes and McMansions. It was indeed surreal to walk that course. The wildlife had found it and you could easily scare up deer on a short walk, or even foxes. Far too many Canadian geese of course but we just needed a mountain lion or two to even things out.
posted by Ber at 4:36 PM on March 14, 2014
posted by Ber at 4:36 PM on March 14, 2014
I got to be an extra in a zombie movie my friends filmed at an abandoned mini-golf course just outside of East Lansing back when I was in college. It was spooky as hell, and awesome. Also full of broken glass.
posted by Tesseractive at 5:52 PM on March 14, 2014
posted by Tesseractive at 5:52 PM on March 14, 2014
Looks like location shots from last week's Walking Dead episode.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:43 PM on March 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:43 PM on March 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
Driving through Myrtle Beach is like driving through a hallucination. The minigolf courses have engaged in a sort of phantasmagorical arms race and their most absurd and gigantic holes are generally right by the road. One that stands out in my mind includes what appeared to be a DC3, props spinning slowly in its never-ending flight.
posted by mwhybark at 8:19 PM on March 14, 2014
posted by mwhybark at 8:19 PM on March 14, 2014
Years ago we were in Panama City FL with friends staying at their parents time share. We were recent college grads with no money, but wanted to play golf. We couldn't afford the greens fees in town, but saw an ad in the paper for $18 for 18 holes - cart included. It was about 45 minutes north of the beach, a failed retirement community with maybe 10% of the lots sold. But the golf course was still functioning. I'm sure it all shut down not too long after and the place looks like the courses in this article today. But I appreciated the cheap round of golf at the time.
posted by COD at 8:36 PM on March 14, 2014
posted by COD at 8:36 PM on March 14, 2014
I live at what I like to think of as the high water mark of Atlanta real estate. I'm out 85 towards Greenville, below the lake, past the Mall of Georgia. There are whole developments out here with no residents. Roads, streetlights, a club house, roads, sidewalks, fire hydrants, but no houses other than a decaying model home maybe with a delict pool glowing emerald green in the grey winter landscape. I used to drive past one subdivision that had one remaining functioning streetlight. One night underneath it I saw a herd of deer, led by a large 6 to 8 point buck pass under the light look about and then move on and then moments later, a bedraggled coyote or two followed. In the abandoned neighborhood I walk my dog in, we hear pileated woodpeckers drumming and calling. At night, in the darkness below the ridge I live on, I hear packs of the new breed of coyotes who gained the ability to move in herds and survive once again in the occupied East Coast yipping and howling, living it up in our lost, reclaimed land. I like living here, but I suppose you have to be the sort of person who enjoys finding strange jetsam washed up in cul-de-sacs: beat power wheels kiddie toys, washed out child car seats, burned-out piles of pallets, used shell casings along with the nature that occupied this land well before two-legged primates ever set foot on it.
Prior to here, I lived on a 7 acre parcel of the last undeveloped Carolina wetland in an otherwise commercial strip, at the intersection of a US Interstate and a four-lane US highway near a rapidly growing metropolitan area. My house was built by my grandfather in 1940 and he surrounded it with the imported species he propagated for his livelihood after returning from an unpleasant tour of Europe and the Philippines on Uncle Sam's dime. I left that house four years ago, and it has sat unoccupied since. The junk I left behind is still on the counters and tables in rooms where the floor creaks welcome when I enter. The plants have taken over the house, the yard and near all the dry property. Sunlight barely penetrated windows covered with dust and ivy. Herons looks at me askance when I dare to wander near the ponds. Kingfishers flit away when I walk the old driveways. I have no fear that given time, the Carolina wetlands will reclaim what's theirs, once man treads no more upon them. Honestly, at this point it's probably the only hope I have for the whole of the Grand Strand north of Georgetown. It's more a matter of who will get to wander those lands and be peered at by egrets and hear the plop of slickback turtles easing into the slow, sluggish creeks.
I have no fear of the overtaking nature, I can clearly see the scars from the mechanized war we fought to claim the land in the first place, and merely admire the ability to adapt and persevere in the space we left behind.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 1:03 PM on March 15, 2014 [8 favorites]
Prior to here, I lived on a 7 acre parcel of the last undeveloped Carolina wetland in an otherwise commercial strip, at the intersection of a US Interstate and a four-lane US highway near a rapidly growing metropolitan area. My house was built by my grandfather in 1940 and he surrounded it with the imported species he propagated for his livelihood after returning from an unpleasant tour of Europe and the Philippines on Uncle Sam's dime. I left that house four years ago, and it has sat unoccupied since. The junk I left behind is still on the counters and tables in rooms where the floor creaks welcome when I enter. The plants have taken over the house, the yard and near all the dry property. Sunlight barely penetrated windows covered with dust and ivy. Herons looks at me askance when I dare to wander near the ponds. Kingfishers flit away when I walk the old driveways. I have no fear that given time, the Carolina wetlands will reclaim what's theirs, once man treads no more upon them. Honestly, at this point it's probably the only hope I have for the whole of the Grand Strand north of Georgetown. It's more a matter of who will get to wander those lands and be peered at by egrets and hear the plop of slickback turtles easing into the slow, sluggish creeks.
I have no fear of the overtaking nature, I can clearly see the scars from the mechanized war we fought to claim the land in the first place, and merely admire the ability to adapt and persevere in the space we left behind.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 1:03 PM on March 15, 2014 [8 favorites]
I recently visited a friend who lives in a far out concept of a condo complex near Boston. It's comprised of two rows of freestanding homes and between those two rows, there's nothing.
That is, just walkways connecting all the homes.
You know how much it costs to maintain nothing?
posted by ocschwar at 7:03 PM on March 15, 2014
That is, just walkways connecting all the homes.
You know how much it costs to maintain nothing?
posted by ocschwar at 7:03 PM on March 15, 2014
Overgrown golf courses, abandoned houses, and half muck-filled swimming pools. There's a Ballard story waiting to be written.
Speaking of Ballard: ‘The JG Ballard Book’ celebrates the ‘Seer of Shepperton’
posted by homunculus at 1:33 PM on March 22, 2014
Speaking of Ballard: ‘The JG Ballard Book’ celebrates the ‘Seer of Shepperton’
posted by homunculus at 1:33 PM on March 22, 2014
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posted by Mental Wimp at 1:45 PM on March 14, 2014