Pop culture pilgrimages are common enough these days (the Onion’s A.V. Club has a whole video series devoted to the idea), though we mostly experience them from the perspective of “that friend who posted a bunch of pictures from the Real World Seattle house on Facebook.” Today, John Jeremiah Sullivan writes about actually owning one of the homes in question — in this case, the Wilmington, North Carolina home that stood in for Peyton’s house on One Tree Hill — in a charming, lengthy essay for GQ. His piece also goes into amusing detail about what it’s like to have the WB take over your home — they borrow dishes, apparently, and install wallpaper in odd arrangements along your stairwell — and the whole thing is worth a read. But he does highlight a strange and surprising fact about the tourist business in Wilmington: Many, many people take time out of their day to visit the One Tree Hill house. Like, eight or nine people a day. Some from Belgium. Don’t they know that Pacey Witter lived in Wilmington, too? [GQ]
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