Get Your Kirk On

Thomas Vinciguerra in the NYT: "So what, beyond pushing buttons, do these men — as all Kirk chair owners appear to be — do with the most conspicuous piece of furniture in the room?

Some watch TV in theirs, or simply loll, and some seem to find the chair an empowering place from which to deal with others. “When we have a little family powwow — I have four children — I sit in it to lay down the law,” said Mr. Boyd, the auto parts manager.

And most, of course, indulge their fantasies, imagining doing battle with Klingons and otherwise cruising the cosmos. “Sitting in it,” said Mr. Bradshaw, the graphic designer, “I find myself striking an action pose quite unconsciously.”

To his regret, he must strike those poses in his home office. “My wife is not big on it,” he said. “I’ve actually been threatened with divorce if it comes into the living room.”

Mr. Sturgeon’s wife is more understanding. Though her husband’s chair measures, like most of its counterparts, an obtrusive 40 inches wide, 44 inches tall, and 38 inches deep — with extra room needed to swivel — she permits it in the living room.

“Every once in a while I’ll play a ‘Star Trek’ video game in front of the chair and pretend I’m in command of the fleet,” Mr. Sturgeon said. “But by this time I’m so used to it that it’s just like any other chair. Maybe I feel like I’m in command of the house.”

“You sit in the chair,” Mike Paugh said, “and you’re watching an episode and pushing buttons and you find yourself saying, Fire photon torpedoes or whatever, and you’re making the sounds yourself because I don’t have the sound effects yet.”

“Personally,” said his wife, Barbara, “I think my husband is a nerd.”'

I'm not saying I'm going to buy one of these chairs. But I understand why someone would.