1128

On Saturday morning Mike called to say that he and a friend were heading over to IKEA. He was in town from Nashville, and since I haven’t yet been to the new Atlanta IKEA, I rolled out of bed and headed into the city. After getting stuck in a bit of traffic on 85 South I managed to make it into the store with relative ease.

I met up with Mike and Rebecca and we began our stroll through the maze, a blur of sofas, chairs, and cabinetry passing by before I started actually thinking about what I was seeing. I’d come for two reasons: one, visit with Mike, and two, see if this IKEA craze was really all that amazing. By the time we’d reached the checkout I’d picked up two table lamps, some light bulbs, and a huge (25″ x 40″ or so) framed mirror — for $51. (!!!)

We made our way out, past some strange signage and to our cars where we parted ways. We’d been in the store between two and three hours, and yet as soon as I loaded my acquisitions into the Jeep I turned around and went right back into the store.

Having only eaten a glass of water for breakfast, I was pretty hungry, and I’d heard good things about the Swedish Meatballs from Glenn (@ work). So my first stop was the Café for a “small” order of 10 meatballs, which came with two little potatoes and a serving of what Chap says are Lingonberries (a.k.a. Cowberries — much less glamorous). Everything (except the Pepsi product) was delicious. As I sat with a view of the huge IKEA sign and Midtown beyond it, I considered that the IKEA Café might not be a bad place to come have lunch from time to time.

While my first trip through the store had been leisurely and a lot of fun, the store now felt much more crowded as I tried to avoid families and squads of high school/college kids. Before I was just browsing, but this time I was on a mission: CD and DVD storage solutions. I’d chatted with the cashier a bit on my first pass — she said the crowd was more like that of a weekday, and we theorized that the dire traffic predictions had kept people off the road. If that was the case before, word must have been getting out that IKEA was next to empty, because it took quite a bit longer to walk the maze to get what I needed this time, although that may have been because I took a few of the “shortcuts,” only to realize that the shortcut was a lot more significant of a shortcut than I had anticipated.

The store really is huge, incredibly so, but the wonder of it is that it doesn’t really feel huge. The maze keeps your attention focused within smallish areas that never feel larger than a chic Midtown boutique. The 4, 5+ story warehouse (self-serve furniture area) is a different matter altogether, but it’s still manageable.

I emerged some four hours after I had first gone in, having spent another $70 or so on ten 37-CD cases and a DVD shelving unit, and promptly called my parents to tell them about the fabulous shopping experience I’d just had. I don’t know if they’ll ever make the trek from Jasper to experience IKEA, or if Jasper will ever get its own IKEA, but… here’s hoping.

Posted: Sunday, August 21st, 2005 at 1:41 am; Category: 1128; Comments feed: RSS 2.0.
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