How to buy a dream couch
Take no prisoners, harbor no regrets.
It’s not easy bidding farewell to island life. To turn your back on an endless summer and beaches as cleansing and invigorating as they are salty.
But the dreamy days in the tropics had to come to an end eventually. So we sold off the belongings we’d accumulated during our pandemic escape, packed up our two suitcases, and bid farewell to our house on the hill.
Our next chapter sees us in the City of Brotherly Love: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
You don’t need me to tell you moving isn’t fun. The excitement of new experiences always gets dragged down by the stress, a chorus of expenses, achy backs, and knee-capped tempers.
To get excited about the move, my wife and I like to talk about all the things we’ll do to turn our new house into a home. The nooks we’ll create, the simple pleasures we’ll indulge in. All those nuances that make life fun.
At the top of the list of simple pleasures, at least in my book, is a good couch. A couch that you can melt into and forces one to expel an audible, blissful sigh of relief. This is especially true when living in the north east, where the brittle winter days and dark nights are often spent inside, snuggled up or lounged out in front of a TV or a good book.
I’ll be the first to admit that the couches we’ve had to date have only been ok. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We bought what we could afford. The first purchase was a two-seater from Ikea which looked trendy but numbed the butt if you overstayed your welcome.
When we moved to Williamsburg and my pregnant wife was 4 weeks away from popping, we decided to splurge on a sectional from West Elm--a brand offering primo furniture. That couch was decent; definitely a step up from Ikea but still a touch too sturdy.
This was the couch we’d be returning to after a year away in the islands, and the thought of it only brought a ho-hum level of excitement. Yes, it was ‘fancy’ but it wasn’t a couch you could sink into—a key indicator for couch comfort. But at least it was ours—familiar and fine.
We certainly didn’t need a new couch, nor had we contemplated buying one. That all changed when we popped into Dobbin Street Coop, a local favorite vintage furniture store in Brooklyn, during our 3-week stopover in New York.
Not a moment after stepping through the raised doorway, I caught a glimpse of a dream couch in my peripheral vision and was drawn to it like a magnet. Somewhere a record needle scratched and the music stopped as my immediate world was consumed by this couch sent from the gods.
The West Elm couch I once fawned over was now discarded out of my mind like a broken toilet scrubber. The dream couch, which consumed me like a young love, was pure art.
A velvet, six-piece sectional from the 1970s in red rust with an unending number of ways to sprawl one’s limbs across it.
It was a Frank Sinatra song manifested in furniture.
I’ve seen similar pieces at Dobbin Street over the years, and have always wanted to buy one. But they’ve always been out of reach, either by way of availability—usually sold and awaiting pickup—or a bank account too depleted.
But in this moment of change and transition from the islands, when my budgeting mind was less scrupulous and far more forgiving, it felt right to explore the idea that the dream couch could be ours.
I pondered the thought of long nights in the cold Philly winter, splayed out on this heavenly piece like a split hog, with a whiskey cocktail in hand and the crackling fireplace simmering its hazy comfort throughout the room around us.
I shared these angelic visions with my wife, who was equally enthusiastic but far more rational.
“Let’s go home and think about it,” she said.
Yeah. Probably a good idea. After all, even if we did buy it, how would we get it to Philly? The store could only hold it for 5 days and besides, we already had our train tickets booked for the trip south.
It felt like a mission too ambitious. Too many logistics to organize. Too many disruptions and pivots. Would I need to rent a van? Are vans available? What about a truck? How much would that cost?
As all this was transpiring, a backpacked woman waltzed into the store with an inquisitive look on her face. I eyed her off and didn’t think anything of her until she sat on our darling couch and pressed both palms to her side to do the standard plush test.
“We’d need to rent a U-Haul to get it down to Philly,” I said and quickly pulled out my phone to do some due diligence. No vans were available but there were trucks. Not the small trucks, which were all booked up, but the medium trucks—trucks almost too big to drive. Is this overkill?
The woman, in her white t-shirt, distressed jeans and beaten-up Converse, kept lingering. She walked in circles around the couch, sizing it up and presumably playing mental Tetris to envision how it would look and fit in her apartment.
It’s fine, I thought. She’s doing what we all do at Dobbin St—we stroll in, we sit on a few couches, we glance at the ottomans and vintage dining tables, pick up a few ornamental pieces and mutter words like ‘oooh wouldn’t this be nice?!’ before moving on with our lives.
She’d be gone soon.
But she never left the couch’s orbit. She never once considered another piece in the store. She was there for the dream couch. And now she was texting someone—an accomplice.
My heart beat a little faster and I started thinking more feverishly about the logistics of getting this couch from NYC to Philly. How could it be done? The U-Haul site showed limited availability. A few trucks available to rent from Park Slope, a good 40-minute commute from here.
Meanwhile, the woman was inspecting every nook and crevice on the couch while texting like she was planning a bank heist.
“Let’s just leave it for today and come back tomorrow,” my wife said again. “We can go home and figure out a plan.”
I knew there was no time for plans. We needed to act. Act swiftly and decisively.
At that moment the woman stood up and circled the couch like it was prey. Her eyes were glued to her phone as she kept texting while one hand glided along the upholstery.
I could feel my heart beating through my throat. This is the part of the movie when the camera darts between the two antagonists in a rolling crescendo of energy.
My wife was saying something but her words—and her rationality—were muffled and muted by the tension that suffocated the air out of the store.
In moments like these, you learn a little about yourself. Do you act and take what’s yours? Or do you hesitate, and reassure yourself later with a limp statement like ‘If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.’
No sir, not today. Not like this.
With the intensity of a Texan gunfighter I drew my wallet from my jeans and took five lunging steps toward the checkout desk, where the hipster store clerk sat staring at her phone, wearing a wool hat and a disinterested look on her face.
Through the sides of my eyes I felt my nemesis’ gaze turn toward me. Her searing eyes made my legs feel heavy like beer kegs. Even so, every step felt like a leap toward freedom.
“I’ll take that red velvet sectional, please,” I said.
“Noooo!” I heard the woman cry behind me. “I’ve been looking everywhere for a couch like this!”
I wasn’t sure who she was speaking to. I didn’t care to look.
The clerk didn’t react to her, either. Instead, she responded to me: “The red one? It’s such a beautiful color. Just gorgeous.”
“Yeah, it is, right?” I said, passing over my credit card through hands shaking with adrenaline. “I think it’ll go really well in our new place.”
With the transaction complete, I turned around and my eyes locked with the woman’s. I sensed her expectation for a polite apology or an acknowledgement of her plight and despair. I gave her neither.
Instead, I walked back to my wife, put my arm around her shoulders and walked out with the coolness of James Dean.
When you come at the king, you best not miss.
Because if you do, he’ll probably write about it…
... And where do you think he’s sitting as he writes?
Loved this piece Allan , both the story and the couch. We had an identical in the 70’s. Same colour too. It moved with us from Bomaderry to Canberra and ended up in West Wyalong where it has re appeared twice on Buy Swap and Sell.