Dutchess County, NY is a charming little place known for its scenic location on the Hudson River, Woodstock, and its picturesque foliage every fall. It is a fairly affluent community, yet there are farms and cities in addition to the beautiful villages that dot the landscape. However, there is a little well kept secret that has become less secret in the past few years. Dover Plains, NY is a tiny little town about 10 miles from where I live, and up until a YouTube video posted a few years ago, this village harbored a dangerous secret, known only to people in the surrounding communities. Oniontown Road in Dover Plains, known only as Oniontown is much more than a simple country road. It deviates from the main road onto what Oniontown’s residents have decided is private property. Oniontown is an incredibly poverty stricken community where chickens walk around in the roads, broken down cars are more common than the occasional working car, and there are trailer parks galore.
Oniontown is more than just some ramshackle little village on the side of the road. It’s a scary place. Its residents are completely secluded from the public; most of them do not have jobs or go to the local schools. You don’t leave this ghetto, either. Even though the population hovers around 100 people typically, inbreeding has become a fairly common practice ensuring that the inhabitants don’t ever leave and outsiders NEVER gain access. A few years ago, some affluent young teenagers drove up from Westchester County, and made a YouTube video of them driving through Oniontown chuckling at the poverty and the desolation. The film gained notoriety among on the Internet, and all the real trouble started when the residents of Oniontown discovered it. Copycat teenagers began to trickle into the destitute neighborhood with different intentions, some making YouTube videos, others just wanting to be able to say “I went to Oniontown and lived.” That’s when the violence started. Unrecognized cars in Oniontown became the target of rock throwers and tire slashers. One resident stipulates that around 30 cars have been horribly vandalized since the original YouTube video, which has since been taken off the Internet. The little community gained nationwide notice two years ago when two kids were put in the hospital for serious injury, delivered to them by a completely unsympathetic resident. Authorities, instead of raiding the village and arresting all the parties involved, told the media – “There’s not that much we can do about the situation. These people are dangerous. If you’re not a resident, stay the (fug) out of Oniontown.”
Sociologically, this is one of the best examples of deviant subculture one can hope to find in the homogenous area of the mid-Hudson Valley, NY. A few hundred years ago, a village that was self-contained and was unknown to many people living only a few miles away might have been the norm, but in the 21st century, this group of isolated retreatists and rebels define what deviance is. Their practices of isolation, hostility towards outsiders, and lack of desire to improve their situation all run against the normative grains of society.
The first time I ever heard a real reference to Oniontown was over this past Christmas break while driving with friends. We were listening to Abba, and my friend joked that we should go to Oniontown and open all the windows and blast the same CD, and “it would be like a survival game. How long can we last?” I was intrigued, unable to believe that some place like this existed in 2009, so I investigated and found that sure enough, a deviant subculture has been sitting right under my nose for a long time.
So who’s to blame for the Oniontown mindset? Is it the work of social reproduction? I noticed that the psyche of the residents of O-town is startlingly similar to that of the Hallway Hangers in Jay Macleod’s book Ain’t No Makin’ It. The children from the village don’t seem to think that there is any point in trying to attain a better life, or even have any dreams or goals, because their parents have been denied any slack in society. And I think that there is a common mindset that exists in any ghetto – if everyone else around you has the same terrible living conditions as you, there is not much reason to better your situation. If everyone around you is comfortable with their squalid circumstances, it is easier to be comfortable with yours as well.
I think the most interesting part of the whole Oniontown fiasco is the reaction of the authorities, and I am very critical of it. This is a completely illegal thing occurring here; it’s a huge form of discrimination which has culminated in multiple violent attacks, some that even lead to hospitalization. Shouldn’t the police and the NY State Government pay more attention to this matter? I guess when your statewide economy is tanking, you have more important things on your mind, as a government official, than some small deviant community that keeps attacking non-residents….
Additional links:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/07/04/2008-07-04_teens_attacked_in_oniontown_ny_.html?comments=1
http://hubpages.com/hub/Oniontown-Has-Had-It
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