
The "Mamma Mia" church, one of many set locations that keeps calling me to Greece. Credt: Son of Groucho.
By Valerie Moloney
The summer that “Dirty Dancing” came out (1987, if you’re feeling nostalgic) my next-door neighbor and I spent the next nine months recreating the routines in our backyard and memorizing every word to “Be My Baby,” a painstaking process that involved stopping and starting my boombox until the cassette ribbon nearly snapped from being rewound so many times.
We thought we were Baby. We wore her jean shorts. We owned the same pair of Keds. And more than anything, we longed to be her swaying in Patrick Swayze’s beefy arms at the Kellerman’s Resort.
Twenty-four years later, it continues to be the film that I most associate with summer vacation. It must have been the time of my life (heyo!) for it symbolized my tween angst, my perennial girlhood crushes, my desire to escape – even if the getaway was a road trip with my family to upstate New York. (more…)