Inflatable Furniture & Strategic Randomness

08.09.2002

This supersclick, ultracool Mecca of young adult consumerism is the car crash that I cannot look away from. It is the dark alley of the city shopping experience; there’s something quick, cheap and easy about it. I think it was the inflatable furniture in dorm rooms that slammed the door on any removed affection I may have nurtured towards this retail establishment. The space age chairs were in every dorm room, always chartreuse, always uncomfortable. But it goes beyond that.

The thing is, Urban Outfitters has co-opted the land of the ingeniously ironic. The perfect gem once found in salvation armies is now mass-produced in Taiwan and distributed to every incoming freshman. It is strategic randomness and ready-made wit.

What happened to the thrill of the hunt? At Urban Outfitters, you can buy “vintage” wine glasses cleverly etched with fake high school prom insignia. Get together with a few new friends and you'll discover you all went to the same high school. The rack of identical Hello Kitty back packs could never be as wonderful as the original you unearthed in your parents’ attic with I love Joey scrawled in purple marker on the front.

It used to be a badge of honor to find perfectly random, ironic things, flawlessly juxtaposed. It was a challenge I accepted with enthusiasm.

I have this little t-shirt from when I was 12 that features a big picture of a hotdog bun. You can unzip the bun, and inside is the hotdog, complete with mustard and relish. I used to wear it in college, when I had the body to be wearing shirts that fit me when I was 12. I loved this shirt, but it would be rendered embarrassingly prefabricated had I run into someone else also wearing it.

Inappropriately placed signage warms my heart: Fragile, Live Animals on the refrigerator door; a Keep off Grass sign swiped from the Commons and hung in the living room; a triangular Caution Trolley sign nabbed at the site of a collision on Comm Ave. A medical biohazard bin filled with ice and frosty beverages. An atrociously ugly kitsch lamp covered with pastel shells (sorry, Mom). Books from the 50’s on How to be a Proper Lady, like buried treasure from the bins of a garage sale; Christian literature on How to Please your Husband. Candles from Brazilian dollar stores shaped like garish dancing girls. Best friends Forever necklaces rediscovered in your grade school jewelry box and worn on hardware-store chain link. Poorly-translated food packaging from the Japanese grocery. A set of coasters from London, each with a picture of a landmark there, supertackytourist style. An ad from the Village Voice: Think Globally, Masturbate Locally. A framed collection of polaroids from the Boston Phoenix in 1994, providing coverage of rock club toilets under the headline In the Can, which hangs in my bathroom. A planter made out of a mannequin's head, stuffed with cacti.

Priceless clothing discoveries allow you to showcase your finds to the world. I had a boyfriend in college whose quest for the unbearably original led him to the mall where he scoured make-your-own photo t-shirt carts in search of rejects. My favorite was an airbrushed photograph of an infant in fatigues declaring him Daddy’s Little Wolverine. My own favorite t-shirt is from a hardware store in New Haven with a drawing of a big fat guy wearing a tool belt that says, I Got It at Goody’s! Former food service jobs can provide a wellspring of fantastic fashion; a polo shirt from a past waitress job demands that you Come Get Your Pork Pulled at Austin Kitchen.

We search for these items, cherishing them like treasure. Urban Outfitters has made these rare finds cheap, uniform, and mass-produced, negating the origin of their charm.

The first to arrive on the scene was strategically random t-shirts in bad fonts with fake logos on them; an auto shop or a non-existent bar. Then the faux sports team jerseys akin to those we wore at 13 on the little league, iron-on letters already pre-peeled for our enjoyment. It progressed to gas station attendant jackets; school planners made out of license plates; and 100 plastic wallets on the shelf, all orange, all with the same obscure Hawaiian hotel logo on them.

The books followed. Reruns of the originals: How to Kiss and The Joy of Sex, arranged on every steamer trunk in Shelton Hall; bought under the guise of a joke, squealed over during late night confessionals, and examined when alone. These are the books that would have looked fantastic in their first edition lying singly on a coffee table. But Urban Outfitters wrapped them in their shiny new -- yet suspiciously vintage -- covers, and stacked them up three dozen high.

In rebellion tomorrow morning I'm running to McIntyre and Moore's and swiping up every trashy 50's romance novel I can find so I can burn them in protest at the front steps of the Harvard Sq. store. Feel free to meet me there at 7.