Quickly, let’s run down the rest of the Mattress Factory without turning this into a 62196492374 word odyssey.

The second building had the coolest Raggedy Ann-themed display going on called Deep, Deep Woods. It was 100% my jam. Things were really continuing to look up.

Some of the sketches on the wall were Greer Lankton pieces – I didn’t know it for sure at first but thought to myself that it looked like her style and then felt SO SMUG when we were about to leave this floor and I read the description on the wall. There is a permanent Greer Lankton installation in the main building and it remains one of my favorite parts of the Mattress Factory to this day. Chooch and I were there several years when there was a much larger collection of her work on display – lots of pencil sketches of anatomy so Chooch was probably thinking, “This is awesome that my mother actually paid for me to see this.” Hey art is important!

THIS ROOM! INTERIOR DESIGN INSPO.

That tall red is where I work lol.

The top floor was whatever, TBH. We were kind of like, “What is this?” and I feel bad because, much like most art, it has a very strong message that went over my head until later when I read about it. And the other two rooms up there are permanent installations that we have all seen numerous times so we decided to leave and head to the main building while THE COUPLES were pretending like they understood the top floor.

I was determined to go to the floor with the Kusama infinity room first so we could take idiotic pictures of ourselves before THE COUPLES caught up. We had some elevator issues which lost of us some time but we finally made it to the correct floor and there were only two other people there but they were messing around with another installation.

Chooch and Corey got distracted by these skeletal arcade games first and I had to drag them away. WE WERE RUNNING OUT OF TIME. I’ll tell you something I just realized about myself. When I was VERY YOUNG and lived on SYLVANIA DR in South Park, I used to play with these older kids across the street – Ben and Adele. They were kind of “bad” I guess but that’s neither here nor there. One of the made up games we would play was called THE VILLAGERS and we would run around their backyard usually at dusk pretending to be chased by these invisible people called, you know, THE VILLAGERS, obviously. It was so fucking scary to me back then, hiding behind their above-ground pool, literally thinking that someone was after me with a pitchfork, I don’t even know. Anyway, I truly believe that this is why to this day I am always in a hurry, it’s always a race, I’m forever trying to outrun the Villagers.

And that’s what was happening on this day at the Mattress Factory.

But Corey and Chooch grew up playing regular games I guess and don’t speedwalk through life throwing furtive glances over their shoulders. Heart racing. Underarms sweating. Etc.

We made it though! FIRST.

We did “Blair Witch” poses here too. No one has ever done this before We are trailblazers. Tremendous work.

Visiting Trudy’s family.

On the way out of this area, THE COUPLES were putting the booties over their shoes (you have to either do that or take your shoes off before going in).

“Be glad you didn’t walk in on us being creepy in THAT room,” I stage-whispered to the girl couples and they were like, “OMG” and laughed.

I could NOT get that thing to play

The basement is always hit or miss. It was a miss for me this time.

I think that was pretty much all of the highlights from this visit. Not all of the installations grabbed me this time and sadly one of the rooms was closed while a new installation was being constructed so that was sad. Of course I read somewhere afterward that the MF will often give free tickets to come back when the new installation opens but this was not offered to us and truthfully I was NOT a fan of the girl working at the front desk that day.

Spent some time in the gift shop. No one bought anything but Chooch was happy to collect a free sticker for taking an online survey. Also, Chooch said that his favorite part was the darkroom / attic in the first building. I agree with that. It was also the area we spent the most time in.

Comments are off for this post