Rich People Have Too Much Time on Their Hands

Fact: Chicago does NOT have a lottery for rich people furniture.

After we finished eating our giant sandwiches, B walked me past the giant building she used to work in. Then she pointed across the river at this shimmering oasis, with promises of luxury bathroom fixtures and kitchens designed by NASA. She told me that's where people go to buy furniture when they win the lottery. Somehow, I misunderstood that statement and believed (all the way until we left Chicago) that Chicago had a magnificent lottery for furniture. Like scratch cards that awarded chandeliers and cashmere cushions.

The first floor of LuxeHome is the Merchandise Mart, which they stress as "Open to the Public."

1. LuxeHome makes no sense at all. Is it supposed to be an abbreviation for luxury homes? Or deluxe homes? Either way, it fails. Instead of triggering my imagination to conjure up magical home furnishings, all I can picture are scenes from when I studied abroad and Asian stores tried to appeal to Western pockets by combining random English words. Here are a couple of examples:

2. "Open to the Public." That's a really fantastic marketing strategy. "Our merchandise is so expensive, you probably can't afford it, but it's ok to come look." Ikea has an "open to the public" strategy as well. They also name their merchandise fancy foreign names. Like Svetlana. If it wasn't for the fact that one of your kitchen designs costs more than Sweden's worth, I would say Ikea wins this round.

This is like some amazing dream kitchen of mine from Iron Chef America + Top Chef + Food Network + $1 million. It's basically all stainless steel and makes me want to challenge someone to a food battle, secret ingredient: water!



As we continued walking around, browsing and peering through the windows (I left face prints on a few display windows, as I shed tears of regret that I didn't earn my M.R.S. degree and marry rich when I was a young, naive, undergrad), I came to the realization that rich people have WAY too much time and money on their hands.

How does something like this even come to exist? A billboard sized image of a young naked girl. In one of the rooms, this was all there was. Just this giant picture on the wall. She's not even dressed up as a flower or a bee or anything. Some people collect antiques. Some people collect books. Some people collect naked pictures of small children. Creep.y.

B then leads me to this special case and tells me to look at the mosaic. I think she's referring to these bad boys. I take the obligatory picture, kind of feign excitement over the multi-colored tiles. If this is what she wants to spend her scratch ticket winnings on, I'm not one to question her (awful) life choice. If you look closer, you can see the multitude of rainbow tiles in the back. I like the brown one in the lower right hand corner. When I'm in my bathroom, I want nothing more than to be surrounded by that color brown.

Then, as I turn to leave, I catch something out of the corner of my eye. Oh. My. God. This is what B was actually referring to.

If you can't tell, that is a naked woman's behind. Probably Dara Torres.