You'll Shoot Your Eye out

Brian Jones didn't even know where Cleveland was when he purchased the Christmas Story House on eBay last year. "I had to look on MapQuest," says the 30-year-old Californian. Jones was making a pretty good living manufacturing and selling leg lamps — like the one featured in the 1983 movie A Christmas Story — when he learned that the 111-year-old Tremont house where the film was shot was up for auction. He bought the house for $150,000.

Jones — who claims to have seen the movie "easily more than a hundred times" — has since sunk an additional $200,000 into the dwelling. Today, the house opens as a memento-stuffed museum that pays tribute to Jones' all-time favorite movie. "If you would have passed it on the street, you wouldn't have recognized it," he says. "It needed a lot of work." The renovation project includes everything from new wood siding to a 1940s-style porch. "I didn't want this to be lost," says Jones.
Wednesdays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sundays, 12-5 p.m., 2006