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
“Am off to weasel a sandwich out of my landlord. I know when she eats lunch!”
– bxgrl
I hope your landlord is around, bxgrl. Otherwise you woudl have to get off your ass and feed yourself. You lazy piece of white liberal crap.
I’ve struggled in the past with IKEA opening in Red Hook, but before they opened I realized that the most important thing about it is that it created jobs for people who live in the area- people with little or no income that were not going to get jobs at any of the local boutiques.
Carol Gardens;
I like your statement: “It is such a cliché to call the NYT Times “elitist”, but in this case, it does not apply.”
Do you realize that your statement contradicts itself?
It seems odd to me that a person writes an article in which he claims that he “loves” the everyday folks of Brooklyn, yet writes precious little about them, and doesn’t provide a SINGLE quote from them. Especially since this point is the conclusion of his article, that is, the “lemonade”. Perhaps you can tell me, since you understand this writer: What exactly does he “love” about these folks, other than the fact that he can fit them satisfactorily into the NYT’s “diversity” categories?
As someone aptly put it above, his description of these folks is akin to taking a double-decker bus to tour the poor in their communities.
Benson
“I did find the attitude of the article to be a bit on the obnoxious side ….”
Someone besting you at being obnoxious, bxgrl? I hope we hear more from them.
This is like shooting fish in a barrel!
Isn’t it lunch time, bxgrl? Don’t you go mooch off your landlord for a free meal now?
🙂
– bxgrl
12.52, nice of you to say that white folks are entitled.
Better than the opposite: those self-entitled folks of other races.
Yeesh! I just read the article and it is hardly snotty. As if he had room in this short article to include detailed background on all the shoppers he observed. And he clearly has owned plenty of Ikea furniture himself. It is such a cliché to call the NYT Times “elitist”, but in this case, it does not apply.
And btw, Mike Albo does not “write about shopping for a living.” The Underminer is a pretty funny book. And he happens to live in Brooklyn.
I think it is a mistake to turn the waterfront into a big box mall…but..love the free water taxi..get a bottle of chilled wine, some bread and cheese and hop on for the free 1/2 hour ride! I do think Ikeas needs to get the bus situation in control. They are empty and over-sized tour buses and speed down residential streets. One accident already, I hope that nobody needs to die (as usual in this neck of the woods) before they fix those buses. How about they co-opt those under-utilized trolleys from Borough Hall!
12:45- I’m still rotflmao. As a liberal white person I have no problem loving Ikea- and it has nothing to do with socialism. I can’t believe you even wrote that, it’s so moronic. And I’ll warrant a guess that Ikea is quite well patronized by liberals and conservatives both because of pricing and design. Obviously you would never go there because Ikea is from Scandinavia and socialist? Or are you simply admitting – realistically- that socialism does work.
It’s not so much elitism as bad writing. Delivering the examples of people cited in the article is Journalism 101. The Times has way too much of this: you pretty much know what the article will say before you read it. Too often the Times’ “human interest” stories come across as entitled (white) folks observing the “poors in their natural habitat”, like the bus tours they used to run thru Harlem or tours of psuedo-real opium dens in Chinatown at the turn of the 20th Century. Slumming by proxy for the Summering-in-Amagansett readership.