{"id":2753,"date":"2011-05-04T23:02:20","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T03:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=2753"},"modified":"2011-05-04T23:02:20","modified_gmt":"2011-05-05T03:02:20","slug":"worshipping-at-the-cathedral-of-junk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2011\/05\/04\/worshipping-at-the-cathedral-of-junk\/","title":{"rendered":"Worshipping at the Cathedral of Junk"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/em><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

While in Austin, I’d planned to visit the Museum of Natural and Artificial Ephemerata<\/a>. 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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> was brave enough to rise to the challenge.<\/p>\n

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

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You can find more photos of the Cathedral of Junk over on my Flickr stream starting here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Once you watch this, if you’re anything like me, you’ll be ready for a road trip.<\/p>\n