'Lucky' and 'New York' Remind You to Spend Your Money
At a New York magazine's first Best Bets shopping event yesterday, shoppers lined up to buy discounted products brought to you by New York editors' recommendation (or maybe secretly by advertisers). Gotham Hall, where WWD reports the event was held (though the Best Bets event site says the Altman Building, so we don't know nor care enough to resolve the issue), is also the venue for next month's Lucky Shops, a similar event sponsored by Lucky, the magazine most responsible for young women's crippling credit card debt. So Lucky sent a street team, clad in white Lucky sweatshirts, to hand out fliers to shoppers coming in and out of the Best Bets bonanza. New York wasn't having any of that — particularly not coming from individuals so misguided as to be wearing white sweatshirts — and so the flier-mongers were asked to leave. They repositioned themselves across the street, however, and continued to litter the streets with their capitalist propaganda. Bitches.
This story is the lead item in today's Memo Pad, which has us thinking: magazine-sponsored shopping events really don't excite us. You wait in line, you're spoon-fed some glossy bullshit, and then you and your fellow cattle are herded into a chaotic shopping corral. So maybe you'll save $6 on that Mario Badescu cleansing gel — but would you have even bought it in the first place if it weren't available in some advertising event disguised as a discount bonanza? Sample sales strike us more straightforward: no shilling, no fliers. Just you, the product, and a hundred other bitches fighting for the best items. It's pure, like conspicuous consumption should be.
