Came across this on Zillow today and couldn’t believe it. It looks like the Christmas Castle is on sale, and has been for the better part of the year. A steal at 2.2 million.
I plan to swing by later this week and see if the lights are up. Though I for one enjoyed last year’s bizarre spectacle of lights, I suspect that Jamaica Plainers just might be getting a little more sleep this Christmas.
Imagine a three-story tall castle-shaped Lite Brite flanked by a small army of seven-foot inflatable Weeble-Wobble-like iconic Christmas sentries… and you may just barely be able to grasp what it is like to stand before Dominic Luberto’s “Castle of Christmas” in Jamaica Plain on the outskirts of Boston.
The “Castle” was pretty impressive last year, when the lights alone appear to have cost about $10,000 dollars. But this year its over the top. Literally. Atop Luberto’s $2 million dollar domicile this year sits a ten-foot high 650 pound illuminated gold crown.
Apparently back in November the city was after Luberto, stating that the crown is a permit-requiring structure. Luberto claimed it to be just a “temporary Christmas decoration.” He must have won; the crown was still up when we went to see it last night.
Even more bizarre than the display itself is the fact that Luberto seems to be using it to advertise his own version of Where’s Waldo.
An illuminated sign out front, finddominicdecorating.com, points to a self-published book available from AuthorHouse.com.
The “Free Preview” paragraph on AuthorHouse proudly declares:
Hi kids! This is your friend Dominic. I’ll decorate my Castle for Christmas. Can you guess which decorations I will use? Dominic will love to paste some of the book pictures but this program doesn’t let us do that.
Woah.
So with marketing collateral like that, what else could I do? I ordered a book from my friend Dominic. Hopefully the program will let him send it to me.