Gracie Does Brooklyn

Image via west elm

Imagine my how my interest was piqued when I received an email from all-of-a-sudden-ubiquitous west elm [sic: they like it lower case, because, ya know] proudly announcing the furniture emporium’s “iconic NYC makeover – bringing Brooklyn to Gracie Mansion!” My goodness, I wondered, what could west elm [sic] possibly know about Brooklyn? So I did some digging around.

I had taken west elm [sic] to be some latter day Pottery Barn (remember when their stores were everywhere, their catalogues stuffed your mailbox 3 times a week, and Phoebe Buffay [hippie] hated it, while Ross and Rachel [yuppies] loved it?). PB, as I’ve affectionately never called it, had disappeared from my sight lines in recent years, but shame on me, I should’ve known better, because west elm [sic], like Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma, and the rest, is just another holding in 98-year-old Chuck Williams’s portfolio of tasteful, vaguely urban, mid-upscale home furnishings purveyors.

Apparently, though, west elm’s [sic] first location opened in DUMBO, in 2003, back when the neighborhood was just a tangle of gritty warehouses and shadowy alleyways lurking beneath the looming Manhattan Bridge in full gentrification mode.

So who better to bring a Brooklyn sensibility to Gracie Mansion for its new tenants, Brooklyn’s unofficial, and NYC’s official, first family, the de Blasios. I mean, look at this place! It screams BROOKLYN! It shouts Brooklyn from Gracie Mansion’s Federal Style rooftop and wraparound porch! It reminds me exactly of the kind of living room I’ve never seen in Brooklyn, and exactly of the kind of living room I’ve seen in every west elm [sic] catalog.

It looks nice, sure. I’m not saying Bill and Chirlane should’ve brought the aluminum siding from the front of their Park Slope rowhouse and propped it against the brick wall. But, ya know, I’m guessing there’s a couple of decent independent interior decorators somewhere in all of Brooklyn who could bring a little of that ineffable BK spirit to the Upper East Side.

Then again…maybe because of this massive product placement and free advertising bonanza, west elm [sic] is outfitting the families’ quarters gratis. And as a taxpayer, I say, fuck yeah. And fuck Phoebe Buffay.  (Just kidding, Phoebs! Love you!)