Ikea (Figuras # 6)

Published in BCNWEEK
Issue # 12
September 1 - 7, 2006

Which Figuras is this? Number six, I think. It seems like ages since I met that charming young Pakistani man selling beer, followed him around, slightly annoyed him, and so birthed the first column. Forever ago and yesterday. But what is a figura? To this guiri, a figura is a unique soul. An original character. A distinct presence. But those three definitions cover quite a broad range. And here we reach our predicament. Paris Hilton is a distinct presence, like a splitting headache behind your eyes, but I’ve yet to see her walking down Las Ramblas with a one-euro Estrella in her bone-thin fingers. Aside from bitchy and selfish supa-socialites, however, where do we draw the line? I ask you, dear reader. Read the rest of this. Is this week’s Figura legitimate? Let me know if you, like some of our editors, think what follows is a hack job. And if you do, I look forward to angry emails and well-articulated insults. Don’t leave me hanging. But before you respond, try to stop drinking Coca-Cola cold turkey and then tell me it isn’t a distinct and one-and-only presence in your life.
With that out of the way, I ask you to look around your apartment, if you’re in it, or the coffee shop your sippin’ in. Wherever. This is the figura on your bed. The figura in your private bathroom, lavatory, loo. Your kitchen. It might very well be the figura under your cafe con leche right now! Can you guess it? Its real home is a small country far, far away full of many blond people downing snus and bilar. Soon, its massive blue and yellow buildings will be counted among the man-made objects visible from space. Se llama IKEA, mis amigos. Interviewing this monster is a touch difficult, but it was nothing compared to trying to find the way out once in the damn building.
There are 12 in Spain, two in Catalunya. In 2005, there were 221 stores worldwide. 453,791,000 people shopped at IKEA that same year. It’s impossible to know exactly how many shopped at which store, but if you divide the number of shoppers by the number of stores, you can estimate that 2,053,353 people shopped at each store. Since there are two IKEAs in the Barcelona area alone, that means that 4,106,706 people shopped there while in BCN. With Barcelona’s estimated population at 1,582,738 and including the smaller but significant populations of L’Hospitalet and Badalona, it seems that every motherf#@$er up in this b&%ch shopped there. Now try and tell me it doesn’t figura into your life.
It’s the figura you love to hate. Or is it the figura you hate to love? Sure, it obviously sucks that everybody, everywhere has the same stuff. But hey, with 12,405 products available this year, you might be able to find something that only 331 other people have! Yes, going there is an exercise in patience and self-control. You may reach ecstatic highs and homicidal lows. One customer held up a kitchen knife encased in plastic packaging with a gleam in his eye. “They shouldn’t sell knives here. They really shouldn’t. Don’t let me hold this knife.” Put it down, buddy. But whatever your experience is, at the end, when you finally find one of the eight people working in a warehouse the size of Outer Mongolia, and have all your things paid for, including your 6 varieties of egg beaters, there’ll always be that sweet, sweet bilar waiting for you in the food section.