Or how furniture shopping is like traveling.
My husband and I are renovating our whole new house and buying furniture on a shoestring dental-floss budget. I’m going for mid-century elegant with a touch of global zen.
So far we have a couch.
couch-photo by the Dude
Not just any couch, but a Kroehler “Avant” series mid-century piece with beautiful lines, original blue fabric, bought for the price of a Tar-jay bookshelf.
The moment I saw the couch’s picture on craigslist I was smitten. One e-mail and two phone calls later, my husband and I were walking up the abstract gravel, sand path to a flat-roofed modern house near Hugh McRae park. The doorbell broken, I knocked timidly on the door.
And then it happened. The “Dude” appeared. THE dude, from the Big Lebowski.
At least his younger version. This guy wasn’t so much a doppelgänger, but a kindred spirit. I could almost hear Bob Dylan singing “The Man in Me”.
Hair mussed, dressed in a white wife beater and jeans, the Dude greeted us with “He-heey. Come on in…” before taking a sip of his White Russian. I shit you not.
And just like the Dude, this guy was down on his luck, selling off furniture, and hanging out in his house between catching waves. (Wilmington sub-in for the bowling alley?)
(photo from Polygram Filmed Entertainment movie poster)
The house was an homage to mid-century modern. I spotted Saarinen chairs in the foyer, a Herman Miller knock-off recliner, and other pieces I wouldn’t deem to know anything about.
He led us to the couch, explaining his girlfriend was making him sell it for cash since he had collected too much furniture already. Someone else had inquired about it via craigslist, but he didn’t deem them good enough owners.
He seemed to love my mid-century enthusiasm and my husband’s own interpretation of devil-may-care attitude (i.e. bed hair, grizzly beard, CNN t-shirt, and basketball shorts).
It was a karmic match. We were deemed cool enough to take the couch and we were stoked to get it. He did us a solid and knocked twenty bucks off without us even asking. We even refused another ten off since the Dude seemed so sad to part with his couch.
As we left in our Home Depot rented-by-the-hour truck, the Dude asked if we would mind sending pictures of the house in its new home in Virginia. We promised. When we got home I found he had sent me an e-mail with the research he had done on the couch and his seal of approval of us as a ‘cool couple, man’.
Somewhere out there the Dude is out a couch but at least it was on the Dude’s terms and not peed on it. Maybe he can swindle one out of the real Lebowski.
