ATC, this PM (on The Sharper Image)
I have another commentary airing on All Things Considered today (Tuesday, 11/25), during the first half hour, about a particularly painful casualty of the economic downturn. As is my wont, I shall post a transcript after it’s aired.
Transcript:
Everybody thinks that if the Big Three, American car companies go under, it’ll mean the end of the American way of life. But it’s too late. The American Way of Life is already dead and gone, singing in the choir celestial. It died last February, when The Sharper Image filed for Bankruptcy. They said they would keep stores open, but they’re all gone, and their website is nothing but an empty promise of quote, “something big coming.”
I mean, if GM and Chrysler vanish, we’ll still have cars from Asia and Europe. But since The Sharper Image went under, we’ve been completely without a reliable supplier of expensive computerized massage chairs and laser tag games for grown ups and combination CD/MP3 Player/blood pressure monitor/ shaving mirrors. I’m even going to get into the suits of armor and the ray guns, because then I’ll start weeping again.
When I was a kid, I would go hunting for my dad’s Sharper Image catalog the way other kids would look for their father’s playboys, and that’s NOT just because my father didn’t have any Playboys. To me, the Sharper Image was mailed from a mall located someplace in the future, where everything was glossy and smooth and battery powered, and the photographs were airbrushed and softly lit, and the people From The Future who used these remarkable instruments, these digital watches with eight buttons and foot massagers and abdominal excercisers, were tall and sleek and slender and so clearly happy to be living in the future, where your watch could also tell you the temperature, and de-ionize the air. Someday, I said to myself, I will live in that future.
Well, now I do, and it is a sad place, and I am not airbrushed, and I am not tall and slender, and not only is there no professional grown-up laser tag leagues, there is no Sharper Image. I am told by the business press that the company couldn’t survive the general retail downturn. As times got tougher, people began to ask themselves whether they really needed a musical instrument you play by waving your hands through laser beams, and, like Tinkerbell, doubt was fatal to The Sharper Image. But with that company went something more than a tenant for the retail space next to the Lane Bryant down the mall. With it went a certain, purely American idea: that no matter what happened, we’d always enough extra money to spend on useless nonsense, as long as it had an LCD display. I don’t know what my kids will look at, to inspire their dreams of being a future consumer. Does Wall Mart have a catalog?
November 25th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
NOT THE SHARPER IMAAAAGE *wheezegasp
November 25th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Ah yes, the loss of that air-ionizing-or-is-it-deionizing?-tower thing… I’m so glad someone finally had the courage to talk about it on npr.
November 25th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I think one product ionizes and another deionizes…
Interesting thoughts, Peter. Now the only useless things I can afford to buy are bad Christmas gifts for my family (and not many of those).
November 25th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
While I am saddened at the loss of Sharper Image, I do have to say that there are better stores out there for the same gadgety gear. My favorite is www.ThinkGeek.com
Where else can you find a shirt with a working drum kit printed on it? http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/ac0b/
November 25th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I listened to this today, and many things raced through my mind. I, too, remember finding Dad’s Sharper Image catalogs and being taken away to an exotic future - but I’d also seen the seamy underbelly, the William Gibson to the Doc Smith, in the ads in Omni (and yes, later, the catalogs) for DAK with his ostensibly semi-useful high-tech gadgets. (First place I’d ever heard of a “bread machine”. Freaky concept to me at the time.) The combination of those two was a heady thing to a young kinda-futuristy kid.
And I was there, too, to watch the beginnings of The Sharper Image’s decline - 1988 or something like that - when they first started carrying lingerie and “sensual massage” videos. I could tell, then, that this was space that could be used for something that went “beep” - I mean, how was lingerie supposed to be used with gadgets?
(Yeah, the spouse schooled me on that one years later.)
But those were the beginning of the end for me - it took a while, but moving focus from “cutting-edge consumer-level high-tech” (they sold frickin’ ROBOTS at one point, for heaven’s sake) to simply being “expensive tchochkes” took them away from me.
True, too, the finding of these gadgets and what they embody isn’t dead - only decentralized. Between bOINGbOING, Cool Tools, Make:Blog and even Engadget (a little TOO hyped on it, IMHO), you’re still transported to that world where EVERYTHING CAN BE SOLVED, IF YOU ONLY HAD THE RIGHT DEVICE TO DO IT. (Preferably with said device being in a flat matte grey plastic with just a TOUCH of chrome.)
That world isn’t gone - it’s just that it’s no longer in one store, it’s a multi-faceted bazaar.
Plus - dude, seriously. Have ya SEEN SkyMall? TickyTackyTech ain’t dead, not by a long shot.
(Thank you for the wonderful piece. Loved the heck out of it.)
November 25th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
I heard you commentary on ALC tonight.. All I could think of was all that nose hair being untrimmed. I got my first nose hair trimmer for the SI… Now Hammacher Schlemmer is there to take excess to a new level. (If they can survive)
November 25th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
whoopps… ATC not ALC.
November 26th, 2008 at 7:47 am
I second Bardic Baughb’s endorsement of Think Geek. Not quite as opulent as The Sharper Image, and their gadgets tend to be marginally more practical, but they’ve got adult Laser Tag!
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/warfare/a1f7/
November 26th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Looks like WIRED is taking up some of the slack, their big store in Manhattan opened last week…meanwhile we have 2, count ‘em 2 big ionizers in the house, both of which are replacements for ones that broke, and for which we plunked down a bunch for service contracts, etc. We don’t live anywhere near a mall, so it’s been mostly online shopping, which seems to continue unabated.
While I’m here, may I say how fantastic WAIT WAIT is, my wife and I and our collegiate son are dedicated listeners and fans. Thanks and have a great Thanksgiving.
November 26th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Think Geek also sells an electronic bubble wrap key chain.
It gives me hope that the American principle of buying happiness will stay alive long enough for me to invent the Pet Rock 2.0.
December 1st, 2008 at 6:07 am
Maybe this could be considered benevolent fallout from the banking collapse. With less discretionary cash sloshing around the system, there is now hope that at least some of the overhyped/overpriced CRAP will bow out of the marketplace. Personally, I’d like to see BOSE audio go under. Personally, I think you get more bang for your buck out of a $75 golf-themed barbecue utensil set from Sharper Image or Brookstone than you do from a $400 Bose “wave radio.” The sound flows through the little habitrail thingie and it’s now the London Symphony at Royal Albert Hall? Riiiiight.
December 1st, 2008 at 6:08 am
Did I say “personally” too many times? Personally, Peter, I think you need to build in an “Edit” button for your bloggers who are sloppy proofreaders…
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:16 pm
the loss of sharper image is no loss, there are similar places for gadgets like www.brookstone.com , check it out.
December 7th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
anyone know how I can get my ionic breeze with a “lifetime” warranty serviced now? broke the day after they closed down the sharper image in my mall. talk about timing!
June 29th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Hey Peter, you’ve got a typo: http://emend.appspot.com/sites/petersagal.com/edits/0