It’s a dark and rainy Monday night in December, and as you slowly drive northwest up a slanted street, a festive mustard-yellow house at the corner gradually comes into view. Cheerful holiday lights line the porch roof, while a warm, yellow-orange glow illuminates the upper floors. As you get closer, the real star of the house becomes visible in the green-trimmed front window: a shapely leg lamp. A major award. Electric sex gleaming in the window.
This scene doesn’t take place on good old Cleveland Street in the years preceding World War II — but on West 11th Street in modern-day Tremont, a historic neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. In a case of life imitating art, the house with the fishnet-clad leg lamp is the very same residence bespectacled Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley) and his family occupy in the 1983 film A Christmas Story . The beloved holiday season staple follows Ralphie as he dodges bullies, bad grades, cranky elves, and a whiny little brother on the way to getting his Christmas wish: a Red Ryder BB gun.