Only 13 Minutes to IKEA

~ Laura

Only forty-five minutes from Broadway,
Think of the changes it brings;
For the short time it takes,
What a diff’rence it makes
In the ways of the people and things.
Oh! What a fine bunch of rubens,
Oh! what a jay atmosphere;
They have whiskers like hay,
And imagine Broadway
Only forty-five minutes from here.
– George M. Cohan, 45 Minutes From Broadway

Yes, I am 45 minutes from Broadway. Too bad that I haven’t made it into the city in the past two weeks. We’ve been too busy with home improvements and birthday celebrations. I’m feeling a bit cut off though, and am anxious to plan a shopping trip downtown. Maybe next weekend.

I am also 13 minutes from IKEA. 13 minutes from a shiny, happy place where one buses one’s own tray in the cafeteria, and inexpensive tables and chairs are made in third world countries for pennies. Oh, don’t go there, Laura. Happy, environmentally conscious IKEA with colorful napkins and useful storage containers. I picked up some pegs for the Billy bookcases that were lost in the move and a few other odds and ends.

I am 17 minutes from Paramus, NJ and vicinity which is home to 4 shopping malls, Crate and Barrel, Hold Everything, Staples, you name it. Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X, once drew a map of the United States set sometime in the future. Paramus, NJ was identified on the map as “The Walled City of Consumption.”

I am 5 minute from K-Mart that is limping along with Martha in house arrest. How much did I want to jump up on a shelf and draw an electric monitor bracelet on the poster of Martha smiling above her linens? Still, she makes a good soap dish. Bought a couple of those.

I am 4 minutes from Demarest Farms that sells baked goods and fresh corn. We’re so gleeful to have access to fresh corn that we’ve been living on the stuff.

With all this local shopping, I might not not have any casheroo left for city shopping.

Not to get all sentimental about the benefits of outsourcing, but it sure is nice to spend $5 on a set of green cereal bowls that pretend to be socially conscious and $3 for a tasteful, elegant soap dish.

Published by Laura

5 thoughts on “Only 13 Minutes to IKEA”

  1. We still have (looking around house and counting…) three large items of furniture from IKEA. Plus (Melissa is helping me now) curtains in Caitlyn’s room, some bowls and cutlery, and numerous storage boxes. Back in Virginia we would shop there regularly. I could never get an entirely clear ideological grasp of the place though. I mean, is it a fundamentally populist enterprise, delivering attractive yet disposable furniture to the masses? But is that enterprise undermined by the degree to which it contributes to the exploitive global marketplace? But then again, does the primarily European character of its corporate and labor structure make it a counterweight to the actual process of globalization, which is really Americanization?
    Who knows. But I do know that I always felt better about the place when I pronounced its name the way we always heard it in Europe. Eee-kay-ah. Pretentious, I know, but pretention (properly applied) covers a lot of consumer guilt.

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  3. Not to mention the illustration of semi-disposable Swedish furniture in Coupland’s Generation X (pretty sure Stewart Copeland is the drummer for the Police).

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  4. Thanks for catching my error. All the random factoids in my head sometimes collide.
    Yeah, I think that there is some hypocracy in IKEA world. I mean it certainly isn’t Swedish workers with a free health care system who are fashioning my Billy bookshelves. But, I really do like my new green cereal bowls.

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  5. I actually live in the town that was the subject of that song – New Rochelle, NY, and we don’t have a Target, Walmart, or KMart. Basically we have nothing other than a Home Depot and a Costco. Typical story of older city falling to ruins and Main St going to the dogs when everyone moved further into the suburbs.

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