Today, after a brief sojourn at the Valentino Pier in Red Hook (which is apparently right next to not only Steve's Key Lime Pies but also the domicile of the new Real World Brooklyn cast, though I spied nothing), I decided to muster up my strength, brave the masses and check out the new IKEA. In the six minutes before the Ambien kicks in fully (I say fully because I am feeling the effects right now), I will attempt to tell you about it. But don't be alarmed if I drop off mid-sentence.
So. You head up Van Brunt Street from the Fairway, wondering which direction... and then you spy it. Gleaming, towering above all else, all blue and yellow block like it's been constructed with fresh-out-of-the-box children's toys. It just seem so odd to have something so sprawling and shiny here, in industrial Red Hook, where projects housing compete with starving artists and metalyards and shipworkers. IKEA! In Brooklyn! I mean, the IKEA itself is directly across from a large community garden. It's either the end of something or the beginning of something. And knowing that IKEA arrives the same summer that the Real World descends upon it, I would it's guess the end.
I was hoping the store would not be as busy on a Labor Day Monday, and either I was wrong, or it's unbearable on the other days. Still, I tried to stay zen. I had a purpose: A filing cabinet. And if I saw anything else, I might look and note things down, but not touch. No straying from the purpose!
Ambien makes it hard to type. One of these paragraphs I'm just going to leave all the typos uncorrected, and we'll see what kind of new language it forms.
So there I was, facing the endless showrooms, that look so nice and neat when you're a kid, but now they're a little bit pathetic. Like, if you actually decorated your bedroom like that, wouldn't everyone walk in and point and say "IKEA!" ... or assume you were a college student? But I'd forgotten, anyway, how just many of these sad showrooms you had to walk through -- fake bathrooms and fake bedrooms and fake kitchens -- before you could finally work your way down to the dungeons of the self-service area. At least there are a lot of places to sit down.
At the self-service area, an unforeseen dilemma. I'd come to the store with the intent of buying a cheapass green filing cabinet known as Erik, then changed my mind in the showroom to the much more well-constructed (and expensive) Galant. But when finally I found it on the shelf, it was....waaay too heavy for me to lift. Couldn't budge the thing to save my life. So humiliating. I had a moment of paralysis, in that I couldn't move it but I didn't want to ask for help, because I would still have to get it to the car, and then to my apartment, and wasn't the whole point of this thing to be easy? So I settled for the cute but inferior Erik, and resolved that I would be OK with it. Who knew shopping at IKEA was so much like life?
I snagged two seat cushions and then reasoned that this'd be it for me. Cash register line wasn't too bad. I was stalled for a moment when enticed by the frozen Swedish meatballs they sell by the register. And then I paid ("That's all??" she said) and walked outside, and while everyone else was waiting for a bus (to take them to the water taxi, I guess), I caught a cab, and he took me home for ten dollars.
All in all, a trying experience but hardly one that broke my spirit -- and it was worth it, to shave $69 off the delivery fee. So next time I'm going to make out a detailed list of things I would like to buy in IKEA, stuff I could carry myself, and breeze through there with efficiency, and purpose, and verve. And I WILL have me some of those Swedish meatballs, I can tell you that.