This post was originally published on this site

WASHINGTON, Conn. — In 1999, a television writer named Amy Sherman-Palladino vacationed at the Mayflower Grace, a five-star inn built high on a hill here. In true Hollywood fashion, Ms. Sherman-Palladino returned to her hometown, Los Angeles, and from her brief visit spun Stars Hollow — a charming New England small town with its own resident troubadour. Stars Hollow would become the setting for “Gilmore Girls,” her cultishly popular mother-daughter dramedy that ran for seven seasons on the WB (and later the CW).

Last weekend, more than 1,300 fans, most of them women, many of them mothers and daughters, descended on this rural town in western Connecticut (population: 3,500) for the first Gilmore Girls Fan Fest. They had come from Oklahoma and Minnesota and as far away as Brazil — and paid as much as $250 per ticket — to see the “real” Stars Hollow and meet some of the actors who play its residents. In a way, they wanted to do the impossible: to experience in waking life a dream town built on a studio backlot.

In Stars Hollow, for instance, it would not have been chilly and pouring rain, and the community green would not have become a mud field. There would have been a gazebo in the center of town, something Washington Depot, one of the villages within the town, conspicuously lacks. But faced with these and other realities, the attendees cheerily persevered.

They stood holding umbrellas in a line that stretched clear out the door of the Hickory Stick Bookshop to get signed copies of the cookbook “Eat Like a Gilmore” by Kristi Carlson.

They cued up in droves on the plaza to get a selfie with the beanie-wearing character Jackson (Jackson Douglas).

They gathered in front of the stately town hall building, where three Gilmore cast members made an impromptu appearance on the steps to sing an acoustic rendition of “Where You Lead,” the show’s theme song.

Brittany White, 31, a schoolteacher, drove two hours from Rhode Island with her mother, Nancy. She was carrying a coffee mug she made that read “Luke’s,” a reference to the greasy spoon diner run by the show’s resident heartthrob, Luke Danes. Both women were on a high from having just met Kirk, another Stars Hollow resident.

“This is Stars Hollow for us,” Brittany White said. “I keep saying that little food market is like Doose’s Market. Even the hardware store” — the Washington Supply Company — “is amazing.”

Sean Gunn, who played Kirk, was one of 20 or so actors and crew members to fly in for the fan fest (he hosted a cat adoption at 9 a.m. on Saturday). He believes the lasting popularity of “Gilmore Girls,” which went off the air nine years ago but will return next month with new episodes on Netflix, is due in part to the community togetherness it presents. Stars Hollow, Mr. Gunn said, is “an idealized version of the way a small town could function.”

The town of Lorelai Gilmore, a single mom, and her daughter, Rory, has a walkable main street lined with family-owned businesses, a manicured village square, an old-fashioned soda shop, a cozy inn, a decent public high school, a “Churchogogue” for both Christian and Jewish worshipers, and a citizenry of quirky, literate, engaged residents who participate in local government. It is a civic formula that has proved elusive for fans who have sought a real-life version to move to.

Amy Do, a videographer and graphic designer who lives in the Bay Area, spent a week two years ago house-hunting around Connecticut, including in Washington Depot, a quest she chronicled on her blog, Finding Stars Hollow. “I went during Christmastime because I thought it would give me a good magical feel with the towns blanketed in snow,” Ms. Do said, adding that each place she visited lacked some crucial element.

“I noticed these main streets had a couple of boutiques here and there, but there wasn’t a diner where you could get a burger,” she said. “Or there weren’t people walking around. In Stars Hollow, you always see people walking around.” (Indeed, they’re called extras.)

Vanessa Marano, another former cast member who was at the fan fest, is aware of the illusory quality of Stars Hollow whenever she auditions on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Calif., where the set remains more or less intact. “It does look like a small town,” Ms. Marano said, “but you know you’re on a set because there’s equipment everywhere.”

Washington Depot does not have a strollable main street or a diner either, but since it is where Ms. Sherman-Palladino stayed, it was the natural setting for a gathering of the Gilmores. The festival was dreamed up by Jennie Whitaker and her husband, Marcus, fans of the series who run a public relations firm based in Austin, Tex. As frequently happens in Connecticut, they were stuck in traffic near Hartford during a road trip this past summer and got to wondering about Washington Depot and why it had never honored its claim to pop-culture fame.

Back home, Ms. Whitaker contacted the town’s board of selectmen and soon found herself sitting in Washington Depot’s town hall and meeting with its community leaders, many of whom were men over 65 who had never watched the show.

“There are many cults to which I have been drawn, but this was not one,” said Dan Sherr, 75, a resident who met with the Whitakers and supported their idea.

While the head selectman, Mark Lyon, eventually gave the Whitakers approval for the festival, he and the others were doubtful that anyone would show up. There were also some residents opposed to the festival altogether. But “we sold out the event in 10½ hours,” Ms. Whitaker said. “People have wanted something like this for so long.”

As if aware they were suddenly extras in a large production, many of the town’s residents, particularly its savvier business owners, threw themselves into the festival.

Jim Kelly turned over his law firm office to serve as a media hub and cast green room, while Liz Page offered free homemade chili and cornbread outside her gift shop, Newbury Place. Thanks to his squint-and-you-can-see-it resemblance to Luke, Ms. Page’s brawny husband, Alan, found himself wildly popular as he manned the slow cooker.

Jay Combs, an owner of the Washington Supply Company, set up a Formica table with place settings and transformed a corner of the hardware store into Luke’s Diner. All day, the white-haired shop owner greeted would-be Lorelais and Rorys, borrowing their smartphones and trudging outside in the rain to snap souvenir pictures of them through the plate-glass window.

“The fans are nuts, but not in a crazy way,” Mr. Combs said.

He added that “because I’m under siege, so to speak,” he and his wife, like many town residents, have been watching “Gilmore Girls” and are on Season 3 (the year Rory graduates from high school).

Throughout the day, Mr. Combs did hear rumblings from some fans who were disappointed that Washington Depot did not look more like Stars Hollow. A theory circulated that Ms. Sherman-Palladino had taken aspects of several nearby towns (the gazebo in New Milford, the main street of Kent) and Frankensteined the mythic community.

It’s a likely truth that Ms. Do, who did not attend the festival, had already discovered during her road trip. As in a wholesome TV show, though, in the end she learned a lesson.

“It told me the only way to visit Stars Hollow,” Ms. Do said, “is to play an episode of ‘Gilmore Girls.’”