Comment by mattlondon
1 day ago
How is this shelving any better than what you can buy from say IKEA?
I've got wooden IKEA shelves in my shed and they take serious abuse of big heavy tools, lawn mowers, car batteries, paint cans etc being non-carefully put/clattered away and they're holding up 100% after years. I can't imagine any normal shelves needing to be "well made" to support a few magazines and a toy model Porsche?
Or is this just a "because I am rich and want you to know how rich I am" type thing?
I have a study furnished solely with IKEA furniture. Billy bookshelves, Galant tables, a wall shelf, etc.
Tables are really well made. So are the bookshelves. They are sturdy, high quality and withstand to abuse.
There are high quality items, and there are fine and high quality items. What he uses the latter.
Take an example. He uses fountain pens (so do I). Montblanc inks, a Lamy 2000. They are not expensive for what they are, yet they are fine instruments. They are made with care. I have tons of inks, yet Montblanc and a couple of brands really stand out in reliability, writing comfort and color quality. Same for L2000. It’s a very understated but a completely handmade thing, with great attention to detail. It’s even too much pen for that money.
The furniture he uses are the same. Understated, yet fine. It’s not there to make a statement, but to be enjoyed by their owner. I share the same sentiment. I do not buy anything to impress anyone, but to enjoy.
Nobody, sans my wife sees my most prized possessions. I got them to use and enjoy, that’s all.
I couldn't resist reading this in Patrick Bateman's voice!
Impressive. Very nice. Let's see Paul Allen's book-case.
I'm pretty sure a $700 desk lamp is a statement.
Statement for you, self indulgence for the guy over there, normal for somebody else.
All valid, and that's the point.
I mean if it has no moving parts, that's 100% true. Having spent too much time around the wealthy with "taste" I can't believe how much money people drop on dumb subpar shit when i.e. with the desk you could have spent a hundred or two for a high quality wood slab (or God forbid glued and planed your own), and afternoon with some good varnish and/or stain, and ordered or scavenged some nice commercial or educational table legs and both had something that looks better than basically anything else and can be actually customized to what you need.
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I cannot tell if this is sarcasm or real. It reads like an article from "McSweeney’s Internet Tendency". It gets even better if you read it with a syrupy deep (American) southern accent, similar to Fred Brooks (author of "The Mythical Man-Month"). The only thing missing from this reply is telling us about your "understated, yet fine" wrist watch (no doubt: Swiss), obscure Porsche car model, and high-fidelity surround sound system (with obligatory record player).
For anyone else curious, I Googled about the LAMY 2000 Fountain Pen. It has a retail price over 250 USD. You can buy excellent Japanese single-use pens for less than 1 USD.
And yet, you needed to come to the Internet and tell us all about them.
LAMY 2000 and Platinum Preppy/Pilot V-pen are not the same kind of product. To be honest, the disposables are not excellent at all.
However, the difference in writing feel, line quality, &c between a lamy 2k and the new Chinese producers like Majohn or PenBBS is not so big. They do require a bit more maintenance, and the looks and feels are subpar. Whether that's worth the $230 price difference is questionable.
I own the lamy, and love it dearly. I bought it 10 years ago, when I felt easier with spending money. I wouldn't have bought one now.
You probably have multiple hobbies or beliefs that could be readily mocked by someone who doesn't share them. There's no need to dunk on strangers who have different tastes than you.
Have you ever done some extended handwriting? What you do it with actually matters, that's literally what you hold in your hands and press onto the paper every single time; it's what determines your writing experience, especially with fountain pens. Lamy is not really a fancy brand; they just make good and sturdy fountain pens. Go for Lamy Safari, it's less than 10% of 2000's price
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or real. If former, thanks for the laugh, but if latter, let me tell you something straight.
Yes, I all the things you have listed up there, sans the Porsche, and while I enjoy them immensely, let me tell you that they are not "needs" for me, and I don't become someone better "just because I have them".
See, I have the audacity to listen to the music intently, make mine and even record it with an audio interface. Oh the horrors, oh the horrors!
I got some of these items with luck, bought some of them with my money, but more importantly, these are not excuses to look down on people just because I have, use and enjoy them.
Maybe it's kinda rude to look down on people just because they have different choices than you. Or maybe it's a prejudice that you think someone is a snob just because they happen to have a record player or a fancy watch and you assume that they don't enjoy a Casio F-91W or a simple YouTube bootleg record over a Bluetooth speaker the same.
...and yes, iammjm's reply is correct. Fountain pens are comfortable for long writing sessions, and you can get a Lamy Safari and be done with it. It's such an excellent pen.
1 reply →
This is a philosophical question that goes back millennia. It just comes down to what sparks joy for you, and how much do you value that.
I have an Eames lounger. It was absurdly expensive and doesn’t even have a recline lever. But, it sparks joy. I like how it looks, I find it comfortable.
When I was a student I went to a furniture store with a friend and I sat in this chair, not knowing who Eames was or the price tag, and I loved immediately. It felt like sitting in a cloud. When I saw the price tag I said if I ever make it I’m buying this chair.
I worked a long time to buy it and it represents a non tangible journey to me.
But I also feel like an ass, because it was absurdly expensive and a total luxury and people are going hungry every day. My mom would slap my head if she knew what I paid.
Oh my goodness! Who could ever pay that much for something they use every day!
Anyway, back to my folding chair, Vision Pro, and Mac Studio 512GB. ;)
> Mac Studio 512GB
RAM or disk?
I mean, you can say that about any luxury good right? It just looks nice and makes you feel good.
IKEA doesn't actually make any modular wall shelves like that anymore, after discontinuing the SVALNÄS. For a wall mounted shelf on a budget you could go for the Elfa system or the Fasttrack one.
Well precisely - shelves feels especially like a solved problem where basically the cheapest tat you can buy (IKEA) is totally fine and solid and long lasting. Need something more hardcore? Then you're probably not in the "shelves on my living room" context, but probably need something more suited for an industrial setting.
It was a genuine question about what makes these any better (...or not). Like do they have some amazing non-obvious feature? Something that no other shelf has? Something that IKEA shelves fail to do?
Of course it could be a performative thing (as I was suggesting) in the same way that someone pays $150 for a t-shirt because it has a logo on it and they want people to know. There is a sucker born every minute as they say.
A big downside of IKEA’s modular shelving is that they periodically release a new range and discontinue the old one. This happened to me with their ALGOT shelving system about 10 years ago. I bought mine not long before it was discontinued and replaced by BOAXEL which is not compatible.
That’s fine if you buy exactly what you want and need and know your needs will never change, but if you later want to expand, you’re out of luck. At best, you might get lucky and find parts of Facebook Marketplace or Gumtree, but you’re usually just stuck. (I’d kill for some more 200cm wall rails but I doubt I’ll ever find any.)
The 606 Vitsoe system is heinously overpriced but has the advantage of having been around for 50+ years and is so established you’ll likely always be able to buy more parts if you want to expand it.
But those don't even look good. Like, I thought it was some IKEA series that I didn't knew, just raw aluminum profiles + some uninteresting shelving
Yeah it looks different.