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| Greenwich P.O./ RH under construction |
Many of us have fond memories of villages and towns with
maple and oak-lined central shopping streets. Among those shops would have been
at least one and probably two hardware stores.
It is no secret that nearly all of those shops were replaced by warehouse-sized stores which often form the base of shopping malls located on busy devoid-of-character thoroughfares.
In the place where I work, the last
surviving hardware store is now an Oyster Bar. The bartender reaches for a slice of thick California Cab, for those who must, from a shelf near where I used to reach for a new screwdriver or hammer in Feinsod's Hardware.
Where I live, the Prada-Hermes set can still shop at the
last remaining hardware store, where prices reflect the fact that locals are
used to having their cake and spending it too. Into that environment the
upscale purveyor for the home, Restoration Hardware – AKA RH – has built itself
a new home in a building that was once Ye Old Post Office.
That would be the same Postal Service that loses about $8
Billion a year and has to sell buildings all over the country just to try to
pay its healthcare and pension costs. That is one fat check that will never be
in the mail.
As RH was preparing for the grand opening of its new emporium,
they gave the same Postal Service – was this in the contract? – a huge piece of
business in the form of promotional mailings to residents of the coveted
Greenwich zip codes. Residents, such as your author, received a hulking set of RH catalogues at their
doorsteps the likes of which had not been seen since the heyday of the printed
Yellow Pages, which have gone the way of those hardware stores. Caputski.
My wife the DG and I were aghast that anyone would be so
oblivious to the environment, not to mention good taste, that they would waste
all that paper, forcing residents who never asked for it to recycle it with
barely a glance inside. Who, after all, would want to do business with people
like that?
Apparently, quite a few, since this week another one of those
behemoths arrived at residences around town, including our own, double-wrapped
in plastic with its eight sections bound in an acrylic ribbon.
Hole Couch Potato! Take that you lefty-pinko environmental
crums of Greenwich CT 06830!
Do we need RH stuff enough to participate in this particular
kind of stupidity and arrogance? Do we
need: $3495 Parisian leather sofas, $15-each cabinet knobs, or $12,295 wool
rugs?
Well, okay, I like nice stuff around the house as much as
anyone (I must admit that the leather sofa is pretty cool and the catalogues are
well-produced). And, both the DG and my daughter are interior designers with
clients who want and/or need some of these things. I am mindful as well that
others who cannot afford to buy them do make them, wherever they may be around
the world, and that they need those precious jobs.
That said, there must be another way to market RH products
to those willing and able to buy them without sending out these 11.4 lb. (true!) books,
even if they are made from recycled/recyclable paper. After all, I looked up
those items listed above on their website. Why not simply send out a nice
Hello!
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