{"id":1435,"date":"2005-09-11T15:31:34","date_gmt":"2005-09-11T15:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2005\/09\/11\/boulevard_of_br\/"},"modified":"2024-11-27T21:17:59","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T02:17:59","slug":"boulevard_of_br","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2005\/09\/11\/boulevard_of_br\/","title":{"rendered":"Boulevard of Broken Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, Ikea<\/a><\/strong> \u2014 how many visions of domestic bliss have been nurtured along your twisty pathways lined with plastic, particle board, laminates, and veneers? And how many more have been mourned later on, when all those things are nothing but reminders of the stuff left behind when those visions have faded?<\/p>\n

Yes, I know that\u2019s a bit melodramatic. It\u2019s what we gays do. Seriously, though, I\u2019ve been to Ikea more times than I care to recall during the last few weeks, and it\u2019s always a little bittersweet. I don\u2019t have much choice, though, since our Swedish Overlords are the most brutally efficient way to fully stock a brand new apartment when all you really own is clothes, comic books, and art supplies. (I own some bookcases, too, but they\u2019re mostly hand-me-downs that originally came from Ikea in the first place, so they\u2019re about to fall to pieces if I so much as look at them the wrong way.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been wandering around the new apartment thinking things like, \u201cGee, I know I used to own some sheets,\u201d or \u201cWhat\u2019s the best way to stock an entire kitchen all at once?\u201d I\u2019ve been running on nothing but stress, fumes, and sugar for the past few weeks, so I\u2019ve tried to address those issues with as much one-stop shopping as humanly possible. Moving on Labor Day weekend didn\u2019t make things much easier. I managed to survive a trip to Ikea on the Saturday morning of the long weekend, but I finally lost my cool at the Target in Downtown Brooklyn later that day. I had to abandon my very full cart in the ladies sportswear department and get out before I cracked. If I hadn\u2019t had someone urging me to just walk away from the chaos I\u2019m not sure how far I would have let it go.<\/p>\n

But I think I\u2019m done with the emergency purchases for now, and soon I’ll finish the unpacking and organizing of the books and art supplies. (The comic books were sorted out right away, naturally.) I\u2019m settling into life on the Bed-Stuy\/Crown Heights border (I\u2019ve christened the my newly renovated loft building \u201cThe Cracker Factory.\u201d), and getting back to mundane concerns like teaching, working, end even dating.<\/p>\n

So things seem OK, at least until all the Ikea stuff starts to fall apart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh, Ikea \u2014 how many visions of domestic bliss have been nurtured along your twisty pathways lined with plastic, particle board, laminates, and veneers? And how many more have been mourned later on, when all those things are nothing but reminders of the stuff left behind when those visions have faded? Yes, I know that\u2019s … Continue reading “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultrapersonal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1435"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71443,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions\/71443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}