Let's browse one of the world's most impressive collections of shitty VHS tapes

If you’re a fan of The A.V. Club, you’re at least familiar with Found Footage Festival founders Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, who’ve spent the last 14 years traveling the country with a curated presentation of the weirdest and wildest VHS tapes to ever hit shelves. Their live shows are raucous and cathartic, with audiences losing their shit over clips from bygone exercise videos, training clips, and cable access shows—videos that “weren’t meant to be shown in public,” Prueher explains—not to mention the VHS covers themselves, which are often more insane than what’s actually on the tape.

Now, a new video from Atlas Obscura takes us beyond the stage and into the actual curation process of Pickett and Prueher. Above, take a glimpse at their towering, terrifying, and well-organized shelves of tapes—sections include “clowns,” “magic,” and one devoted to “scarf-tying”—as well as a trip to a dusty thrift store in search of new material.

“It’s a needle in a haystack to find something that’s good in the right way,” Pickett says. It’s a tough job, but, as Prueher adds, “We just don’t know how to do anything else.”