For the hipster with too much storage space, OhMyThatsAwesome.com is a site that will suck you in – along with your bank account, if you are swayed by the not at all objective product descriptions.

The site, created by two Chicago denizens, is primarily a shopping blog compiling all that’s unnecessary, fashionable and just plain cute. On the right side of the homepage is an aggregator of all product categories, with font size denoting popularity. This includes clothing for men and women, accessories, home items, makeup, libations and one, which is even dubbed ‘stuff.’

While the products featured on the site are actually, what’s the word, really awesome, what makes the site such a time suck is the writing. The two founders – Sarah and Wendy – can make descriptions of flower vases read like a Nick Hornby novel or a Kimya Dawson song.

If you’re not in the mood to shop – or just don’t feel the urge to buy a Slanket (a blanket with sleeves) – you will be perfectly content to scroll through each item and learn a little about the lives and mishaps of the site’s founders. Each item featured is something they would want, what they’ve seen on the subway or just something that should really be owned by everyone because they’re just that awesome.

One entry for a purse reads as follows:

‘So the other night I was on a crowded subway – every seat taken and the aisle packed with people in their winter coats, clutching handbags and leftovers from their Saturday evening dinners. I was lucky enough to snag a seat, but had to deal with someone’s crotch resting on my knee and another person’s elbow shoved in my neck. Through it all there was a flash of something beautiful. Hanging precariously from a dainty shoulder of a fellow passenger was the one thing I could safely rest my weary eyes upon without risking the ultimate faux pas of catching someone’s gaze. I kept my eye on this beautiful handbag for seven stops, and just as its owner stepped off the subway, I caught a glint of a tag and read the word, ‘Tano.’ Tano, I whispered to myself in the quiet of the Brooklyn night as I made my way to a friend’s party, the word holding the promise of a life worth living.’

Thank God for people with too much time on their hands, because without these two women, there would have been no one to look up the Tano brand, find the purse on a discount Web site and tell us all about it.

My favorite product listings on the site include onion cutting, tear-prevention goggles, typewriter key necklaces, keychain flask and typeface entitled ‘Hand Job.’

And bonus, if you’re looking for what all the indie-kids are watching and listening to, click on the movies or music links for some of the wittiest reviews you’ll ever read.

If you have not been swayed to visit this site yet (which means you’re not so awesome), I leave you with one product you simply can’t live without, and which you will find on OhMyThatsSoAwesome: the Juno hamburger phone.

Published on January 22, 2008 at 12:00 pm