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’d like to know the economics of the water taxi; a loss leader? A government shakedown? It wsa pretty empty last Sunday…
if this keeps the peasants out of my local DWR, then I’m all for this Ikea location.
Great post Montrose.
Ikea presents a difficult choice for liberal white people: should they love it because it is European (Scandanavian even, which to a liberal white person represents proof that socialism isn’t a complete failure), or should they hate it because it is a big corporation that sells cheap consumer goods? It’s like a McDonalds owned by a deaf/mute couple that fled persecution in Uganda. A liberal white person could spend days sorting through the moral impliicaions of buying one of their burgers.
benson, i wasn’t talking about you (mostly), but since you offered: actually, no, that’s not elitism. as much as you might want this world to be complex, it’s still pretty easy to visually identify middle-aged women, latinos with daughters, muslims with headscarves and gay couples looking at kitchen countertops and to know that they’re different from the author. if that’s not *enough* diversity for you, fine, but that doesn’t make a different definition elitist.
Montrose;
Good post. On this one, I’m in full agreement with you.
Benson
ABC Carpet and Home is my favorite home furnishings store in NYC. I can’t afford to buy much of anything in there. I can’t afford $24 wash cloths, $1200 duvet covers, or $3000 chandeliers, forget about the furniture. I would prefer to shop in quirky home furnishings shops, with cool stuff that not everyone else has, preferably in Brooklyn, but the fact that remains is that small shops with quality goods have to be more expensive in order to survive, and people do not patronize them with the regularity that would enable them to stay in business by selling for less than top price. I am in this industry, so I know better than some what things cost.
Everyone now wants made in America, everyone wants a pot hand thrown by an artisan they can see in the back room, or draperies sewn as they speak from fabric they just picked out, but when it comes down to it, as evidenced on this blog or the forum everyday, no one wants to pay for the privilege. You can’t have it both ways. Good craftwork costs good money.
Ikea is a work of genius. Sell tons of merchandise cheap, and make up in volume what you don’t charge in price. Sell flat packed case goods, to cut down on production costs. Knock off popular home furnishings trends, and use lower grade woods, third tier leathers, laminates and veneers, foam paddings, and plastics and make it look great, and make it affordable to everyone, especially lower income folks, whose choices are pretty limited. They are also providing the community with jobs, and that’s a good thing too. Pretty good marketing strategy for tough economic times.
Idiot soft news NYT reporters, who write for their bemused audiences they think must only live on the Upper East and West Sides of Manhattan, are usually annoying and condescending, true. But the people here who act as if Ikea is the Great Satan are worse. If you don’t like the quality or the merch, shop elsewhere. Please. Shop in the small boutiques in SoHo, or DUMBO. Order custom furniture from an artisan in a workshop in the Navy Yard. Hire a Brooklyn sewer to make pillows and duvet covers and curtains. Buy from a potter in Park Slope. We would all be very happy, and you would be helping local people make a living.
– Montrose Morris
i need ikea and walmart in my life so i can continue to pay $11 per drink at the clover club and $20 steak at tabac (local businesses)
It’s xenophobic to complain that Ikea is taking money out of the country. A large part of our nation’s wealth is accumulated through 200 years of foreign trades. Like it or not, as an US citizen we have been living and breathing the benefits. So stop complaining when the table is turned.
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.
loss of the graving dock outrage? hardly.
(and those could have been good/great jobs).
overloaded transportation infrastructure outrage? i don’t think so. (too bad about the deferred non-existent repairs on the smith/9th stop!)
100,000 gallons of raw sewage pouring into the canal after every rainstorm general outcry and apoplexy? i don’t see it. (and that won’t be fixed for any time soon, either?)
we’re all living beyond our means here. brooklyn risks sinking into it’s own garbage. it’s not ikea’s fault. it’s ours.
but maybe that’s the kind of city we want. more Rio style, with the swells sequesterd in DUMBO, while the rest of use sort through the “as is” pile at Ikea.