Concrete Playground

A Facebook event page has been set up encouraging Melburnians to play a massive game of hide and seek at the Richmond branch of Swedish budget flat-pack furniture giant Ikea this Sunday, August 29^th at 12.30pm. With approximately 4000 attendees at time of writing, it could be the biggest thing to hit Ikea since the limited edition BILLY JADER bookcase.

Police have been informed, while Ikea Australia spokesperson Jude Leon has said attempts have been made to contact the creators of the page, who have specified players should wear a red ribbon with which to identify themselves (the whole point of hide and seek being that one should clearly identify oneself, natch) and that whoever can conceal themselves in the children's ball room will receive an as yet unidentified prize.

“We [won't] go so far as to ban them but anything that's going to put our customers at risk or even have a negative impact on their experience in the store ... we take pretty seriously," she said. “For something of this scale we would discourage.”

As anyone who has ever created an event on Facebook will know, Ikea need not be too worried about the number of “attendees”. The correlation between levels of internet usage and instances of piking is surely a thesis-worthy topic. Or, people just like to be seen to be attending awesome things without actually having to get off the net to go.

I'm putting my money on BESTÅ and FLORÖ as the two best ranges to hide behind/under/in. Avoid anything EXPEDIT, though – that one's a rubbish hiding place.

Details here.