Monday, June 15, 2009

Trash for cash

Coffee tables made from barrels. Lamps crafted from brooms. Chairs swathed in burlap and sackcloth. Look at some of the newest furniture on the market, and the recession appears to have really hit home. But irony alert: This new brand of shabby chic doesn't come cheap.

At the Dan Marty showroom in the Pacific Design Center, the heart of West Hollywood's design scene and the place where top decorators shop for their wealthy clients, light fixtures made from old French apple baskets carry $1,600 price tags and canopy chairs upholstered in burlap sell for $3,600 a pair.
Gentle readership, we all need to put down whatever we are doing and think about how we can extract money from the Rich while they still have some. As the LA Times reports, there are still some very stupid people with very large amounts of cash. Catch them before they squander it all.

3 comments:

Peter in Dundee said...

The Scots were there long before this Paul, when the production of whisky was ramping up and the supply of barrels to mature it in was insufficient. Some distilleries have arrangements with Sherry Bodegas whereby they get first dibs on the barrels after they have become empty of sherry. Glenfiddich (iirc) owns an oak forest in the Ozarks they rent the barrels made from it to the Bourbon producers then when they are empty they break them down and ship them over the Atlantic*.

People like me will pay more for a malt matured in a different sort of cask. Sometimes its worth it.

*The Americans have a law that Bourbon can only be matured in new oak casks. It was passed to protect the jobs of coopers. Scotch malt whisky distillers heartily approved, they were not so fastidious. To borrow an expression from south of the border: where there's muck there's brass.

Giovanni Tiso said...

Looking around my house, I come to a sudden realisation: I'm rich!

GZ said...

And they don't want to pay taxes, so California is going bankrupt.