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To: sandintoes who wrote (23884)	6/19/2002 1:09:23 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 62558

They're dead serious about this ghoulish new trend in furniture. In case you die before you wake, your family can have a wake for you next morning. ewwww Won't find it at Ikea, though. sfgate.com MULTITASK CASKETS Furniture designers are dead serious about coffins for the living -- they make nice tables and let the grave-deprived rest in peace Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer Wednesday, June 19, 2002 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's being called coffin chic. In these days of downsizings and wallet crimpings, some folks with an eye on the bottom line are joining a hot (or perhaps cold) new trend: buying coffins and using them as furniture. That is, using them as furniture before the time comes to actually be laid inside the boxes for the big sleep. Over the past few years, the trend has spawned hundreds of independent casket stores that are giving mortuaries -- long the source of coffins, as part of expensive funerals -- a run for their money. The idea is to save people cash when they buy in advance -- with the added kick that, along the way, fun use can be made of the coffin. Or so say those who do the using. Take Jason Wiener of Fremont. Nighttime is the right time for Wiener to get close and comfy with his casket: the six walls hugging his sides, puffy satin lightly brushing his skin, the lid pulled low to pinch off all light except for a shaft leaking through the air-vent near his left eyeball. The quiet box lulls Wiener right off to a sound snore. Every time. Even in heat waves, when the thick coffin walls fend off the sun burning through the bedroom window. It isn't at all about death in this box -- not yet, that is. Only silence and rest, the noneternal kind. And . . . "ah, heck," Wiener, 27, said with a big grin as he sat in the thing one evening in his upscale Fremont apartment before lights-out, "I may as well just say it -- it's cool to sleep in. "Might be some sort of a returning to the womb thing, or just because I don't like wide open spaces on a bed, I don't know. I just like it." At the other end of the Bay Area, near Santa Rosa, fiftysomething Kate Broderson knows just what he means. She gets personal with her coffin every day, too -- it's her living room coffee table, stuffed with blankets and pillows. "Wonderful conversation piece," she beamed. Admittedly, this all sounds a bit weird. But you've got to hand it to these two -- and to the untold numbers of them in places like Truckee, Los Altos, Petaluma, San Francisco and elsewhere who are starting to use coffins as furniture, decorations or chit-chat curiosities.