Over the next couple of weeks Gothamist staffers will give you some suggestions on what you could get us (OR your loved ones) this holiday season. These are from the heart! Our warm, materialistic hearts. We really do like this stuff. This week's wishes come from executive editor Jen Chung.
While I admire my colleague Jake's commitment to not owning much and taking a Buddhist approach to consumerism (as in, it's unzen and therefore bad), I come from a land where consumption is king: New Jersey. Most of my formative memories involve the mall—riding the carousel (R.I.P.), learning about sales tax at the B.Dalton bookstore when I bought a $2.50 Baby-sitters Club book and, the most critical of all life events, driving to the mall by myself.
Of course, now I live in New York, where there isn't that much room for stuff—and I love things! Yet I don't love to put them away, so most of the things I really want are about extending the illusion that I'm organized or that will kick my ass into spending some quality time with a paper shredder to destroy bank statements from 2005.
CB 2
Which is why I covet CB2's Peekaboo clear console ($379). A clear desk with no drawers is wildly impractical because there is no place for my 2009 admission ticket to the Vatican (I might need it for a scavenger hunt in Italy). Still, this acrylic console taunts me with the dream that I'll stop blogging from the dining room table.
Pros: It doesn't take up any visual space and it's got all the function one needs—it's a surface where you can rest your laptop! Cons: What will happen is this will simply collect old newspapers and class notices from my daughter's school—and there won't be any place to stick taxi receipts from 2011.
TEAC tape-to-digital recorder
Another item that is actually useful would be Teac LP And Cassette To CD/Digital Converter, $399 from Hammacher Schlemmer. Out of supreme love and sacrifice, my husband culled down his beloved collection of vinyl records from over 800 to about 600 records. Right now, they are taking up valuable real estate in our daughter's closet, and I think he'd be all right bringing it to 500 essential albums IF he had this bad boy to makes dubs. RIAA, don't worry—he doesn't know how to upload music to bit torrent sites, so it's just for his personal listening pleasure!
A NYC-focused sampling of the bootlegs (Jen Chung/Gothamist)
The convertor would also come in handy for the dozens of bootleg cassettes we have in a living room drawer. See, if we digitized the bootlegs, then my husband could listen to them at his leisure on the subway and I could reclaim the drawer for clothes that I buy for our cats and my brother's dog. Win-win!
