Why we?re obsessed with stairways to nowhere I?m tall. In the most literal sense, I often look down on people. But in the past few years, my giraffe?s-eye view of the world has increasingly come not when I?m standing, but when I?m sitting on structures you might call ?stairs,? were it not for their leading directly into a wall.
These stairways to nowhere are known as stadium or bleacher seating, after the plank-like wood or metal seating in old-school stadiums. Stadium seating has become increasingly common around the globe?in a certain type of interior space. You won?t find stadium seating at a small-town library, say, or at an office with a business-professional dress code, or at a greasy spoon with more regulars than Yelp reviews. You?ll find it at, for instance, upscale coworking space NeueHouse, Brooklyn ?design space? A/D/O, and WeWork locations from Bellevue to Bangalore. It?s at the Los Angeles office of a subscription-underwear startup and the London office of an advertising agency whose ethos is ?being unreasonable.? The new San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has it, as does a wine bar inside Chelsea Market. There?s stadium seating at a coffee shop on the ?coolest block in America? and also, an ocean away, at a Bratislava bookstore-cum-cafe whose press images show a young woman in oversized, cuffed, light-wash jeans sitting by a coffee-table tome of fashion photography. A coffee shop in Edgewater, New Jersey, population 12,044, has jumped on the trend?proof ...