Things I Do Not Understand: IKEA

[queerbychoice]

Today, the first ever IKEA store to be built in the Sacramento area (specifically, in West Sacramento) celebrated its grand opening. Apparently, some people were very excited about it. Which, well, fine - people do kind of need furniture, and most furniture is excessively expensive, so it's understandable that having a place that sells cheap furniture can be pretty important to people.

But camping out in front of the store for weeks before it opened??? We're not talking about something where, if you end up too far from the front of the line, the world's only copies of what you want will be permanently taken away by the people ahead of you. We're talking about mass-produced cheap furniture - the kind where, if somebody ahead of you in line takes the store's last current copy, the store will just reorder it and have exactly identical copies for sale the very next week.

But maybe I only see it that way because I have never seen an IKEA store, and therefore I have never inhaled whatever powerful psychotropic drugs they apparently pump into the air on the sites where their stores are built.

Also: "The mayor of West Sacramento said IKEA will be the single biggest contributor to the city's tax base." Um, will they soon be renaming the entire city of West Sacramento to IKEA Town? What sort of humongous monstrosity is this that's just arrived here?

Comments

[chisparoja.livejournal.com]

Swedish, i believe. ;)

[comeoneileen.livejournal.com]

Oy gestalt.

I so do not get the whole Ikea thing.

[disi.livejournal.com]

i should preface this by saying that i have never seen or even been anywhere an ikea, but i did hear once that they gave stuff away and have contests etc. at one opening and it caused a riot. i think. anyway, that's the only logical answer i can come up with.

[dis-senter.livejournal.com]

What? Are you saying that the chance to be a mindless consumer isn't so exciting that it isn't worth sleeping in front of the store just to be there at that blissful moment when the automatic doors hiss open for the first time?

[saxifrage.livejournal.com]

well, people get weird about Ikea. Some of my good friends went to an Ikea not because they wanted furniture, but just because they wanted to *be* there. It's strange.

Then again, I've also heard that they give away swedish meatballs, all the time, in Ikea stores. Perhaps they put something addictive in the meatballs?

[frankepi.livejournal.com]

at least you can be comforted by Ikea's having to abide by Sweden's stringent labor and supply laws...

Get this...

[afro76.livejournal.com]

When they opened a second IKEA store in the UK (in Croydon, near London, to be precise) there was literally a riot because people were fighting over the goods. A number of people were trampled and the store had to be closed for a couple of weeks for repairs.

And they say that the British are civilized...

[dzuunmod.livejournal.com]

I kind of like IKEA - I mean I like that they have such varieties of affordable furniture, and I do think it can be awfully fun to look through the catalogue.

But, I hate that the store flips the finger to public-transit- and bicycle-dependent people like me (like Wal-Mart, in that regard at least) by generally selecting locations in suburbia, and specifically near giant highway interchanges.

[frankepi.livejournal.com]

the Ikea in Elizabeth New Jersey has a free shuttle from New York's Port Authority...