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Come to Bed
The Village Voice
April 27th, 2004 10:45 AM
by Jennifer Snow
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0417/snow.php
Shelter Special
by Jennifer Snow
Come to Bed
April 27th, 2004 10:45 AM
Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8 (1960)
photo: Photofest
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 hen we look for New York living spaces, the one constant in advertising lingo is the "BR." Whether preceded by the number 1 or 3 or 6 or even the ubiquitous word "no," thefocus is on the BR, the most essential component of all living spaces. And why not? We will sleep in our BR, we will eat in our BR, we will work in our BR and make messes in our BR, we will love and lose and live in our BR—for where else do we spend our time when we're at our most vulnerable, night after night, or day after day, during the hours in which we dream? And, just as we must pay for the BR spaces, we must pay to fill these spaces too. And an actual bed is just the beginning . . .
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EVENING WOOD
Plain, plain, plain, plain, plain, plain Jane. She wants an innocuous piece of unfinished wood furniture. So she waits and waits and waits and waits, and oh, well, there's no need for her to wait really. She could easily run to any of the 10 locations of Gothic Cabinet Craft in Manhattan, the eight stores in Brooklyn, the four in the Bronx, the seven in Queens, or the one on Staten Island and snatch up a nifty Galaxy Platform Bed (full size, $209), or even a Galaxy with underbed drawers on metal glides (full size, $248) if she's feeling like going all out! Truth be told, there's absolutely nothing wrong with such poetic simplicity, especially at such a good price. (888.801.3100, gothiccabinetcraft.com)
ODE TO MY BEDSIDE CARAFE
(FIRST A HAIKU, THEN A TANKA)
Oh my, my carafe,
which I set near my bedside.
So sleek, I sip, sigh.
Oh, Crate & Barrel,
you've done the unthinkable—
what pristine design.
This is one for the ages!
The pages of Arch. Digest!
(Bedside Carafe, $14.95, includes 23 oz. carafe, 6 oz. glass, Crate & Barrel, see above)
BEDTIME STORIES
Take two—no, not Ambien, silly—and call me from your dreams.
Childrens' classics: You can't go wrong with a classic or two. Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are is still both scary and sweet—for adults too, and Shel Silverstein's poems and drawing in A Light in the Attic have just been released in a special 20th-anniversary edition, with a CD of selections read by the author.
Two Hot: Nerve's Guide to Sex Etiquette for Ladies and Gentlemen by Em and Lo (nerve.com columnists Emma Taylor and Lorelei Sharkey) is a delightfully precocious guide to bed etiquette written in language that manages to be quite elegant, effusive, and up-to-date. Up All Night: Adventures in Lesbian Sex (edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel and Stacy M. Bias) is a hot new collection of real stories by real women (including Voice contributor Tristan Taormino) that is, perhaps, best read in bed.
Two Photo: Elinor Carucci's portraits in Closer, her first monograph, chronicle intimacy in a way that is at once unintentionally glamorous and ripe. (A photo from the book appears in this section's opening spread.) If your bed was your coffee table, then The Devil's Playground, a collection of Nan Goldin's recent work, would be its perfect mate. And while we usually look to Goldin for her telling portraits of the people she is closest to, it's the spaces she captures in the chapter "Empty Rooms" and "57 Days in Roosevelt Hospital" that are the most telling.
FURNISH A FUTURE
TheNew York City Department of Homeless Services recently released the results of HOPE 2004, the second annual Homeless Outreach Population Estimate. Volunteers counted the homeless population on the streets of the city on this past February 23. They estimate that there were 2,694 people living on the streets and in the subways of Manhattan, Staten Island, and Brooklyn. The Partnership for the Homeless is committed to helping the homeless population through initiatives such as the Furnish a Future program. You can help too. Rather than navigate the city's rules and regulations for throwing your old mattresses and furniture out with the trash, you can donate your no-longer-needed belongings to the program's warehouse, which serves as a free furniture bank for formerly homeless families as they begin to settle in new homes. Furnish a Future is also always looking for volunteers to staff the warehouse, to fix up donations, and even to set up and design displays of the furniture. (476 Jefferson Street, Brooklyn, 718.875.5353, partnershipforthehomeless.org)
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