The A Christmas Story House - Cleveland, OH | wandrlust

We were supposed to be in Cleveland for a film festival, the Indie Gathering to be specific. A film I helped shoot, Mouth of Caddo , was in the festival so myself, along with one of the films producers and the director, decided to blow so money and take the pilgrimage to Cleveland. $1200 dollars and four days later it was very apparent that we caught a pretty bad case of debauchulism (a sickness derived from debauchery) coupled by the fact that we only graced the film festival with our presence for a combined hour and a half during our 4 day stay.

Instead, hungover and borderline unpleasent, we wandered into the colorful neighborhood of Treemont to visit the house featured in the film A Christmas Story.

This is what the majority of the homes looked like and we were also told not to enter the bar across the street despite our lack of misgivings (the intimidating fellows who ended up emerging for their cigarette breaks gave us a bit more pause).

Be that as it may, I was unaware there was an in depth tour, one that was much more interesting than expected.

We stopped by the gift shop where some hip youngsters behind the counter sold us some “A Christmas Story” paraphernalia (later while hanging out downtown they spotted us as “Hey it’s those LA guys.” I think that being the first time any of us were known by that distinction while randomly walking the streets of any city).

Outside it was hard to contain our unbridled pleasure, the kind that is usually only felt when a cat is inside a sack, for cats, a cat sack.

The inside revealed the same sort of excitement, and the story of the place, which I will abstain from delving into as I would hate to take away from your experience, is 10x as interesting as one would suspect.

Yet as I got to up to Ralphie’s room I got pretty sleepy. I took a brief nap but the afternoon light shone in through the window, quite a rude awakening.