Blue's Clues

Maybe I’ve been watching too much too much HGTV because this weekend I decided to get into the open house game. Just what sort of stuff is selling in my neighborhood, anyway?

Apparently, scary stuff. I now know that $1.6 mil will get you a stuccoed townhouse with security cameras, next to a junk yard on a dead end warehouse-centric street that dead-ends at the Gowanus canal. There might also be a scary pit bull in the paved-over backyard, a one-armed realtor, carpeted floor-to-ceiling columns, Jacuzzi tub, metallic flower vase sculpted to look like two guns and lots of vitamins and protein powder on the counters of the most overwhelmingly glossy blue kitchen you could ever imagine.

I’ve lamented for years about the lack of color in American kitchens (and the abuse of travertine and granite). Even though you wouldn’t know if from my current mishmash apartment décor, I’m obsessed with everything green (despite having little interest in the Upper East Side or Italian food, I’m smitten with the color scheme at new restaurant, Alloro, and might have to pay a visit just to see the unbelievable greenness in person) and fantasize about the day I can apply the emerald hue in a serious way.

So, I have to admire the homeowners’ dedication to a single color (and I know the brand must’ve cost a pretty penny) but this abomination makes me question my own taste a bit. However, this blue kitchen renews my faith some.

And the pseudo-serious house hunt continues.