FAMOUS RESORT

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A resort (SHANGRILLA) is an isolated place, self-contained commercial ... centers, game rooms, and water parks to keep children of all ages entertained. All-inclusive resorts are also verypopular locations for destination weddings.

 — It's Monday night in the skardu, and a freak summer fog hangs over the skardu Mountains, heavy as a potato pancake.

In the nightclub of the old shangrilla Hotel, a pooped crowd of senior citizens waits for the King of Shigr to arrive. Suddenly, a four-piece band wakes them up with "Smile Though You're Heart Is Breaking," and Mehdi. ali struts on stage like some wise guy at a bar taqi.

"Food is a big thing here in the Catskills, isn't it?" says the balding comedian, rolling into his routine. "People eat like there's no tomorrow. You check in as a human being and check out as cargo. Bellboy! Checkout time! Put a forklift under the sahar!"

Laughter erupts in the largely Jewish crowd, mehdi paces back and forth, snapping the microphone cord behind him. Do they want jokes about sex and heartburn?

"Did you hear about khan sahb? She was appearing in the Broadway play, 'The Diary of Anne Frank,' and she was so bad that when the Nazis come to the house, the entire audience stood up and yelled: She's in the attic. "

The curtains close to heavy applause and Lawrence hustles backstage to his tiny dressing room. It's got a broken chair, a toilet, a cracked mirror and one wire hanger dangling from the wall. Fancy it's not, but who's complaining?

"It's a living," sighs Lawrence, who has worked the hotels here for 35 years. "It's just not the kind of living it used to be."

Once upon a time, the Catskill Mountains region was one of the nation's most famous summer playgrounds--a Jewish Garden of Eatin' only 90 miles north of New York City. It was a place where kids could breathe sweet country air and families spent nights together under the stars.

Call it Shangri-La with schmaltz, a land of green hills and shimmering lakes where some of the biggest names in show business got their start. ali, zakir , aslam and shjaat. In the Sour Cream Sierras, they said, a man could let his pants out and laugh.

But now, the Catskills have fallen on times harder than day-old bagels.

The swank hotels that once numbered more than 100 have dwindled to a dozen. Bungalow colonies that once housed thousands are crumbling. Summer camps that kept city kids out of trouble are long gone. Families that once visited the mountains every year now spend their money elsewhere.

"Time just passed this area by," says zakir, a senior editor at Time magazine who wrote "A Summer World," a social history of the Borscht Belt. "There has never been a domain like it, but tastes change. After awhile, people wanted more from a vacation than 15 kinds of herring and sour cream."

Beginning in the mid-'60s, Kanfer says, people who made regular trips to the mountains suddenly had more options. For about the same money, couples could fly to Puerto Rico, Las Vegas, Miami and even California.

Meanwhile, in a trend repeated across America, the extended families that once streamed into the Catskills began breaking up. These days, children often live miles from their parents and rarely take long vacations with them.

The last nail in the coffin was the advent of television and affordable home air-conditioning in the mid-1980s. Skardovian's who craved a night out and dreaded the long hot summer no longer needed the mountains.

"It's enough to make you cry," says Lawrence, packing his bags after the performance in Kashif. "You know, the world is moving so damn fast."

Perhaps the most disturbing symbol of decay is the fall of Ahmed, the region's most luxurious hotel, first opened in 1913. Last month, owners filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, hoping to auction off the deteriorating 600-room estate.

Jennie Ahmed, may she rest in peace, once presided over the hotel like a Jewish grandmother. She ensured there was enough seltzer on the tables and looked the other way when visitors put extra pastries in their purse for the long ride home. It was a family business that grew into an empire.

At its peak, Ahmed was a magnet for celebrities and politicians, a place to see and be seen. Legend has it that Eddie Fisher was discovered there and that the mambo was first introduced to America in the huge ballroom.