One of the problems with living by the Hudson in Jersey City is dealing with the seemingly endless summer fesitvals. Almost every other weekend it’s either a holiday, some ethnic pride day (I swear we have Peurto Rican day at least twice a summer), or just “let’s make a mess on the riverfront” day. These festivals invariably start with a “parade” down Montgomery, a street with the only exit for no less then 5 20+ story apartment buildings. The “parade” is usually made up of a few cars blasting music (flags draped over the hood optional), a few of lost looking groups of people waving towards where the crowds of observers would be if there were any, possibly a band, and a flotilla of motorcycle cops (often numbering more then the other participants) leading the way.

I don’t know why it is, but it seems when you put a cop on a motorcycle they become assholes. I say this because I was trying to exit my garage right before the parade, and turn right on Warren (half a block). Now the police and motorcycles were in front on me in the intersection of Warren and Mongomery, but everything else was a block and a helf behind me. There was no one except for one cop who had just gotten off his bike between me and Warren, and nothing was happening on Warren. Instead on letting me go the 30 yards to the corner and turn, like I indicated I wanted to, the police in thier wisdom decided it would be a better move to have me make a U turn across 3 lanes and head back up Montgomery into the path of the people attempting to walk down it. Real smart eh? When I tried to indicate this might not be te best idea, they just continued to point to the left. Not only that, one of Jersey City’s finest decides to stand a foot in front of my car and insist in stronger and stronger tones that I turn left. As much as I was tempted to just turn, I thought it best to warn him that he was standing in the path my automobile would take since, tempting as it was, I bet running down a cop, even when they are literally asking for it, probably isn’t a good idea.

I’ve done it before and swore I never would again, but I did. I went to the IKEA store. Every few years I forget the previous painful trip to the hell which is the IKEA store, I forget the promise I made to myself the last time I escaped, I forget and I go. I’m not down on IKEA stuff, it’s not bad for what it is. The physical stores however have to be carefully designed traps to suck not only the cash but also the life out of you… either that or they were designed by drunken monkeys.

So what happened? Well in preparation for our upcoming move, we needed a stand for the TV we will be getting Tylor (his days of leaching off my plasma are finished). Sue had found a decent one on the IKEA website, but we wanted to check it out in person before we bought it. We arrive in the vicinity of the store around noon, I say vicinity as the parking lot is disney land huge. It’s always half full as well. Since it is half full, none of the open spots are that far away, but for some reason everyone has to block traffic, cut each other off, and/or slam it in reverse with no warning to get one of the prime spots, 50 yards closer to the door. We park and funnel through the narrow door way to end up in the tiny lobby. The frontage of the building is large, but the entrance is only at one narrow, congested, miserable spot. Once inside we are pressed into the mass of people milling about, pushing through each other, and generally being assholes trying to get from the door to the elevator or stairs that lead into the store proper. I’m still not sure as to the purpose of this holding pen area.

So we go upstairs to the showroom. Push through the line of people waiting to leave thier kids in the playroom, a line which wisely extends right across the elevator/stairs exit. Since we know what we want to look at we decide not to follow the arrows which define a winding route from bedrooms, through kitckens and baths, to living rooms and head straight to childrens. We find the item we want, decide we like it decide to purchase it, or at least try to. You can’t just buy items at IKEA, you have to follow the code which is conviently marked on the tag. If there are numbers marked in red on the tag you can pick up the item for yourself in the self-service section of the store (back downstairs, after living rooms), if there is a yellow tag you ask a salesperson, who then prints you out a piece of paper which you take to the register, pay for and then wait to pickup at the window. If there is nothing on the tag, then the item can be picked up from one of the shelves, most likely in the same section you are in.

“Yellow.”
“So we need an associate.”
“Hmm, none to be found.”
“Allright let’s keep going, we will find one eventually.”
“Ok, now we are in self-service. Last chance”
“Ahh an information desk! Victory!”

Or so we thought. It turns out that even though we had the name, model number, picture and description of the item in question, he couldn’t help us. Only the people in the proper section would be able to. So I watched Ty, while Sue fought against traffic to get our piece of paper which would let us buy the furniture we wanted.

And finally we left… 6 hours after we arrived.

The nerfing of our society continues.

I’m ready to give up. Oh no! Our children are fat! We must water down our fictional character to help them! I don’t recall snarfing down a plate of cookies after watching CM as a child. Here’s a novel idea, maybe we shouldn’t rely on TV to raise our kids. That idea probably won’t fly too well though, it has shades of personal responsibility.