The Stolen Stroller, an Urban Bourgeois Problem? ⇒
11 July 2011, evening time
Is the idea of a $400 stroller so outlandish that, on some level, those who have so lost sight of their own privilege as to leave one unattended almost deserve to be robbed?
This article is great. Shima and I have thus far managed to avoid buying all the stupid shit people try to sell you when you have a baby—except we do own a Maclaren stroller. It was $200 bucks, and Mezan had to carry it on his back from New York to Toronto. I don’t know how where that puts us on the petit-bourgeois totem pole. Oh wait, we flew with Mythilli to Montreal for the weekend: god damn it.
This is a post from my link log: If you click the title of this post you will be taken the web page I am discussing.
You're full of awesome comedy today man… lol
by shawn on July 11 2011, 10:33 pm #
I don’t understand the high end stroller thing. A cheap stroller works the same, and the risk of theft is low.
I know many people who ditched the stroller before their child was 3. It’s not the end of the world…and while people think it saves time (for them) in the long run it’s better for their child to walk.
But, don’t listen to me, I slept in a drawer for the first year of my life. So I’m told…I don’t resent not having a Maclem’s crib..LOL
by radmila on July 11 2011, 11:58 pm #
I really wanted to get a cheap stroller. (I think we still might at some point. The one advantage for those umbrella strollers—other than price—is that they are very light and small.) We ended up getting the Maclaren because it’s what one of our friends had, and she loved the shit out of it.
One reason we went with that one was because we could use it from when Mythilli was a baby till she was an old ass child. You can’t put newborns in strollers, we’d have needed some sort of pram. Otherwise it’s a fancier version of your typical umbrella stroller.
The reason people buy fancy strollers is probably for the same reason people buy fancy anythings: they are usually much nicer. The one we have is very sturdy; it’s pretty light; it’s easy to open and close one handed (while holding a baby); you can push it through grass and gravel and shitty pot holed Montreal streets without any problems; etc. I imagine as you go up in price there are diminishing returns on these sorts of things, but then there are probably other crazier features we don’t enjoy. Ultimately it’s just a thing for carting around a baby in, but if you are going to be doing that a lot, it might be worth splurging on, the same way people splurge on fancy chairs.
Is there any caché in owning a fancy stroller? I mean, do people who don’t have babies know what’s fancy and what’s not? They don’t seem like they’d be like purses or other luxury goods.
by ramanan on July 12 2011, 8:16 am #