I don’t always buy furniture (my room is tiny), but when I do, I lament the fact I don’t have a proper vehicle to transport anything big. The tiny backseats of a BMW M2 may fold down, but the trunk aperture is so narrow that I can’t even fit a typical office task chair through the opening. I get why SUVs and trucks are so popular: you may only need the carrying capacity maybe once or twice a year, but damn if it isn’t handy when you do need to ferry something huge.
So instead going to grab the new couch from IKEA directly, I paid for shipping like a rich person who can’t be bothered to waste time like that. Admittedly it sucks to pay for any shipping at all when I am so used to free shipping on even the bulkiest items from Amazon (100 pound television set is just fine and free). But I wouldn’t buy staple furniture pieces on Amazon: no way I’m plopping down thousands of dollars on an item I’m presumably keeping for decades without first laying eyes and butt on it.
Speaking of IKEA, it is opening up a store in San Francisco soon. The problem is, the location is on Market St. downtown right near the twitter headquarters. Also known as drug-dealing central to us locals. The Whole Foods nearby just announced it’s shutting down (after grand opening less than one year) due to the deteriorating conditions in the surrounding area, and the rampant theft that occurs daily. Unless San Francisco starts actually enforcing those type of quality-of-life laws, there’s no way an IKEA store will last very long there.
There’s also the issue of parking downtown. I guess that particular IKEA store won’t be selling too many bulky items. From the outside there doesn’t seem to be any space at all for the typical monolithic parking structure. How are people going to load their Billy bookcases? It’ll be interesting to see. I for one will continue to go to the store in East Palo Alto. That is, when I’m not buying something too large.
What do you kids know about this?