real good story

Our real good chair pursuit story…

It began a couple of days before the real good chair experiment was to begin. I, Squirrel, having lots of free time to spare as recently laid off architect and a lover of good modern design, was intrigued with the email I received from Blu Dot that announced the ‘real good chair experiment’. The minute I read ‘free chairs,’ I was all over the idea; Blu Dot was going to randomly drop 25 real good chairs all throughout NYC, free for the take for anyone who found them. Upon further reading that some would be gps tagged and others tracked with tweet-posts on twitter (another social networking site completely foreign to me), I knew my partner-in-crime, Woodchuck, being an adventurer at heart, would be down for doing this crazy chair hunt with me. Alas, although he agreed as well that it sounded like a fun adventure, he had his doubts. Neither of us was technologically equipped for such a search; neither my old school little bar phone nor his slim, pre-paid phone was going to cut it (needless to say, I really want an iphone after this!). And neither of us are owners of gps gadgets…how were we going to find these chairs without internet enabled anything?? Adding more difficulty to the odds, we are not NYC dwellers; we reside in crab-loving Maryland.

As I brainstormed my ideas to Woodchuck as to how to go about looking for these chairs, which included taking his small netbook and using my cell phone that only puts out one-liners from the web (I soon learned how to access to internet), the first day of the experiment came and went. Meanwhile I had been staring at the google map with the numbered balloons, the tantalizing flickr images, and twitter all day, looking at frustrating tweets that read, “Still at Confucius Square...will someone ever take me?”. By this time I felt as if I was a part of this adventure. The idea of finding one of these beautiful, candy-colored, origami-like chairs on the streets of NYC was too much for me, I wanted to do this.

I researched a little more. I pulled up the specs on the Blu Dot website and emailed the video of how to assemble a real good chair (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vflKxF3ROcI) to Woodchuck to entice him more. It occurred to me that if we found one these chairs we could dissemble it and stick the pieces in a big bag to come home with us if we were going to take the bus. (how to take a real good chair home was another issue; we were either going to take the bus from Washington, DC or pay the tolls, spend the gas and mileage, and drive sleep deprived to NY). I managed to convince Woodchuck. If anything this would be a fun day trip to NYC, and if we happen to find a chair, well that would be the icing on the cake. We agreed to forsake our sleep and drive up there. I was to be at his house at 5 am.

Luckily I hadn’t silenced my phone and woke up to a text from Woodchuck in the wee hours of the morning saying that he had found a good deal with a reputable bus line. We were to going to get on the 5:15 am bus leaving from downtown DC. On our way there Woodchuck realized that he had inadvertently forgotten the charging gps that he borrowed from his cousin at home. ‘That’s OK’, I told him, ‘it’ll add to the adventure’.

To my delight we got to ride in a brand-spanking new, double-decker bus. Having used terrible-serviced Chinatown buses on previous trips, it was nice that we were able to fully charge our devices that were going to help us in the hunt for these chairs. Meanwhile, we both tried to rest in preparation for our unknown but exciting adventure ahead of us. Unfortunately, upon checking twitter on the netbook several times during the bus ride (another delight, the bus had wi-fi), we found out that Blu Dot wanted to put a little twist to this experiment, “I'm no longer disclosing my intersections!”. Now what?!? Unwavered by this ‘small’ setback and with high spirits, we arrived in the Big Apple a little after 9 am. We were determined to do this.

Having been dropped off @ 7th and 28th streets, we decided to head southbound. We trekked our way on foot (because Woodchuck was set on not using the subway) through Chelsea, then through the West Village, alongside Greenwich, and finally down to SoHo. From the previous days tweets I figured that it was best to stay in those areas where chairs had been dropped off and located, it seemed like a trend to me, and then in the afternoon, stay in the area of the Blu Dot store, ”They have to drop one off close by there again right?” As we walked past cool new buildings where I could indulge in my whim of taking quick architectural pictures, and walked past alluring, cute little shops & boutiques where I made a mental note to one day come back to without Woodchuck (because he has no patience for shopping), I would check my dinky cell phone, having now memorized the buttons and keys that would navigate me to the twitter page as quickly as possible, every five, ten, fifteen minutes. Despite the posted tweets that had vague information like, “Hello NoHo!!”, we were always on the move.

At one point we came upon Wooster Street, home to the Blu Dot store. New strategy: to go inside the store and on the sly, see if we could fish any information from the peeps inside. Funny enough as we approached the store we saw that a white real good chair was laying in a heap of pieces in front of the store (in retrospect we should have taken it and rebuilt it somehow because although Woodchuck is not patient, he is quite handy!). Inside, after putzing around and looking, alright, admiring, all the furniture (which btw, the real good chair is much heavier than I thought), we finally sparked up a conversation with the lone salesgirl that was there. We alluded that we had ‘heard’ about the experiment, and how we thought it sounded so crazy yet fun, and the girl gave a little more detail about the whole thing, but nothing in the way of giving us a clue as to where we could find one of the chairs. We left the store with nothing more than a Blu Dot catalog and still, an unwavering spirit.

But we were fast becoming tired. Before leaving Wooster we stopped to sit down for a moment to eat a couple of delicious Calexico burritos. Despite having filled our bellies our feet started speaking to us. We circled around SoHo once more and then headed northbound. Walking, tweeting, walking, tweeting. New York was becoming familiar to us. The afternoon sped on, and it was getting darker, and colder. We stopped at a McDonald’s on 6th avenue that had wi-fi to refuel once more. Now online using the netbook, a promising tweet, “LaGuardia Place!”…“Weren’t we just around there?” Woodchuck speedily set off while I was to stay inside McDonald’s and keep him updated on any new tweets.

As the minutes rolled on more detailed tweets got posted, “I'm going shoe-shopping in NoHo!!" (even came with a flickr photo) and, “Approaching the East Village. Near a sign that says: "Liquors." Woodchuck to squirrel, woodchuck to squirrel!! Woodchuck called about 20 times in a time period of about an hour. Sometimes excited, sometimes frustrated, and almost always out of breath. I tried to keep him motivated and encouraged. Meanwhile I myself was feeling a bit nauseous after having had a too-strong caffeinated café-con-leche earlier. More time passed by. Finally with a tweet of, “In motion!!”, I called Woodchuck to tell him to come back. It was already dark and we had a bus to catch. Dejected and disappointed, Woodchuck came back to find me on a second floor booth corner, netbook dead and my phone dying. Woodchuck with glistening perspiration on his face, and I, Squirrel, feeling sick with a stomach ache, and both of us exhausted, we both knew it was time to give up…real damn chair!!!

The long walk back to the bus was almost quite as entertaining as the day as Woodchuck recounted his tail of his sprints throughout the many blocks of Greenwich Village, asking directions from tourists and New Yorkers alike who were also lost themselves. To say that we now know the streets of lower Manhattan a little bit more is to say the least. And to say that our trip to NYC on November 5th stunk because we didn’t find a chair would be a lie. We now have a real good story to tell YOU :)