Ikea
A new one opened up a few weeks ago in my hometown. We've been there thrice now, most recently yesterday. The population density seemed to have quadrupled since the previous visit. The place feels exotically social -- people get into conversations while testing the beds, luxuriating in the bouncy Poang chairs. There's a festive, holiday atmosphere, as though shopping is like a trip to the zoo or a interactive art gallery. I mean, even I feel good there, and I hate shopping for furniture.
At some point in early childhood, my brain absorbed the meme "contemporary decor" and associated it with pine (preferably unpolished) and Scandinavia. Obviously, this happened to a lot of other people.
Although IKEAs have not been welcomed everywhere they've touched down (they generate traffic snarls), enthusiasm around College Park has been almost over-the-top, as though this one store is capable of transforming the entire local economy. Also, it gives the area some badly-needed prestige points. Other counties have the malls, the schools, and the hot property values, but PG's got the modular, retro-modernist furniture. Byahh.
I described the IKEA to my sister, who's never been inside one. She told me it sounds like an imaginary utopian store described in Jose Saramago's The Cave. The (fictional) store is designed to meet every human need. It has places to sleep and eat, even special rooms where you can experience the seasons -- a snow room, a rain room, etc. IKEA has yet to reach this ideal of customer satisfaction, though it comes scarily close. They could attach a hotel, and people would stay there. I'm sure of it. They'd drive up from IKEA-deprived states in their fuel-inefficient vans, see the sites of the nation's capital, and return with a load of quirkily named furnishings.
It's a fascinating behaviorist laboratory -- clearly something about the store goes to work on our receptors, but what? The appeal to frugality, combined with the promise of convenience? The vast quantites? All that, yes, but first and foremost it's the colors. We're wired to respond. Soon as we catch sight of those day-glo chairs at the entrance, we're hooked.
3:08:54 PM 
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