Some of my favorite things at last weekend’s World Horror Convention had absolutely nothing to do with the World Horror Convention. There was my Man v. Food triathlon. There was the illicit cultural outing to a performance of “I’ve Never Been So Happy” by the Rude Mechanicals, about which more later. And there was the trip to the Cathedral of Junk.

While in Austin, I’d planned to visit the Museum of Natural and Artificial Ephemerata. I’d been there before, but had liked it so much I’d hoped to drag some of my friends along while I checked out any new exhibits. When this came up while talking to a friendly flight attendant—who also had some great BBQ suggestions—she said I sounded like the kind of person who might want to visit the Cathedral of Junk, a bizarre construct a guy built in his backyard out of tons of … let’s not call it junk. Let’s call it treasure.

Once I did some research, I decided I had to see this for myself before the county shut it down, which it seems to be constantly threatening to do. So I put out the call for volunteers. Only Liz Gorinsky was brave enough to rise to the challenge.

Here I am in Vince Hannemann’s suburban backyard, showing as much of the “junk” as can be fit into one picture.

You can find more photos of the Cathedral of Junk over on my Flickr stream starting here.

But photos don’t tell the whole story, so here’s a video of me walking through Vince’s marvelous folly. It only shows the ground level, though, not the second level or the third level crow’s nest/gangplank, a little bit of which you can see in those pics.

Once you watch this, if you’re anything like me, you’ll be ready for a road trip.