Ikea is Everyday People
The Times’ “Critical Shopper” columnist has concluded that it’s time to “make lemonade” when it comes to how Ikea’s presence in Red Hook is viewed: Sure, it furthers Red Hook’s transformation into the Paramus Park shopping mall in New Jersey. Yes, it may bring traffic and inauthenticity to the area. But walking through the maze…
The Times’ “Critical Shopper” columnist has concluded that it’s time to “make lemonade” when it comes to how Ikea’s presence in Red Hook is viewed:
Sure, it furthers Red Hook’s transformation into the Paramus Park shopping mall in New Jersey. Yes, it may bring traffic and inauthenticity to the area. But walking through the maze of home furnishings, I saw what I love about Brooklyn: everyone. A middle-aged woman was buying bathroom slippers; a gay couple was deciding on a kitchen countertop; two Muslim women in beautifully printed silk head-scarves were inspecting the sliding walls of a bedroom closet; a Latino family was deciding on bunk beds for their excited daughters. This store is for everyday Brooklynites needing something cheap and relatively well designed, even if the stuff is of dicey quality and doesn’t last forever. When you see Ikea furniture on curbs around town, at least you’ll know that these everyday Brooklynites can still afford to live in Brooklyn.
How does the columnist know the gay couple, Muslim duo and Latino family are all Brooklynites? Eh, let’s not sour the lemonade—think he’s got a decent point?
A Diverse Brooklyn, With Meatballs [NY Times]
Photo by madaes
I second the complaint about the old oversized buses that spew diesel fumes in residential neighborhoods. How very environmentally friendly of Ikea.
“I thought he was sort of ,well… financially elitist”
-bxgrl
Bxgrl doesn’t like people who have jobs, support themselves and don’t rely on handouts from their landlords to survive in this city.
bxgrl = poor white trash
All I know is that I shopped in the as-in department and made a killing. I finally have a round bed! Cue the funky bass line.
3.02 – it’s an idiotic line. All newspaper items are, by nature, vicarious.
“Slumming by proxy for the Summering-in-Amagansett readership.”
this line is priceless! thanks for the chuckle.
11:52 waxes eloquently for me:
“ikea is fine. it’s us that we need to worry about. we’re losing our capacity for everything, except tolerance of inexpensive goods, many of which we don’t need.”
Those 99 cent dish brushes? Made in China with plastic and more plastic, churned out by the gazillions by underpaid ex-peasants in some rats-ass Dungguan factory, then shipped 10,000 miles through garbage-choked Pacific waters via petroleum-belching container cargo ships so that YOU, dear Brooklyn-ite, can buy two of them for 99 cents.
First of all, this can’t last. It all depends on cheap plastic, cheap oil, cheap transport, cheap labor, and our ability to continue to hock ourselves to the People’s Republic.
Give Ikea five years, and like their crappy furniture, they’re gonna be out at the curb, too. Because they, and the lifestyle they represent, is unsustainable.
I loved the snrfkorp coffee table, the blmpgturp lamp, and the smleedpluurk cabinets.
And those paraplegic lesbian muslims of color are nice, too.
hey where is the black couple???lol. Thats the problem with liberalism, all you see are colors and you put them in a category. If they are a minority they get special treatment, wheres the equality the liberal institutions pump into your heads?!?
Well i do like the Ikea, i think its a great addition to a rather morose part of brooklyn.
carol gardens- I didn’t take issue with what he said about diversity. After all, it’s one of the things I love about Brooklyn too. for myself, I thought he was sort of ,well… financially elitist, for lack of a better term. The overall impression was that everyday Brooklyn is so poor and ordinary that is has to shop at Ikea, just as he had to years ago when he was poor and having unpleasantness with ramen noodles. It just struck me as a little incongruous to extol the cultural and social diversity he saw while putting down the fact they went to Ikea to shop. I realize he meant it to be humorous and it may have been, but it seemed more mean-spirited than humorous to me.