Here’s how out of touch I am. I did a Google search for “the world’s most expensive yoga mat” suspecting I might have recently bought it. I paid $250 plus tax and shipping. Let me explain before you brand me some sort of pretentious jerk.
The mat in question is a work of art if you’re capable of stretching the term “work of art” to its outer limits. I spotted the mat in the New York Times T Magazine online. It was created by R. Crumb, the underground cartoonist in tribute to his wife, fellow cartoonist and frequent collaborator Aline Kominsky-Crumb. She died of pancreatic cancer in 2022.
I first discovered the work of Robert Crumb in the senior room at my high school in 1971. I don’t remember which of his comics it was but it was unlike the Superman, Green Lantern and Flash comics I grew up with. The stories, of which I’ll spare you the offensive details, featuring unseemly characters such as Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat were disgusting, shocking and profane. They were also very funny, epically politically incorrect, stuffed with astute social commentary and extremely well drawn.
Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes described Crumb as “the Breughel of the last half of the 20th Century.” To which I’d only add, why was Hughes playing it safe? Why not also include the first half of that century?
I set about laying my hands on everything I could find by Crumb. His comic books, as soon as a new one was published. His sketchbooks. R. Crumb chocolate bars. Trading cards. A lascivious tin of Devil Girl hot cinnamon candies.
But I wasn’t a fanatic. I’d love to own an original work of art. But when I saw their estimates on the auction block at Sotheby’s I realized I could probably buy an old master drawing – perhaps even one by Peter Brueghel – for not much more and possibly even less.
So when I spotted the yoga mat on the Times website I didn’t have to debate long before clicking on the link to the seller’s website. The design is based on a flyer Crumb drew for his wife to advertise the yoga classes she was teaching in California during the early 1980’s.
Under the bold-faced admonition to “Shape Up!” it features the buxom Ms. Kominsky-Crumb in a yoga pose with the times and days of her 1982 exercise class and a phone number to call for further information.
I’m proud to own the mat, though I have no idea whether I’ll ever use it. I’m perfectly happy with the heavy duty mat I bought for a few bucks at T.J. Maxx. By the way, I don’t practice yoga. However, after I experienced back spasms a doctor prescribed physical therapy. Since then I’ve been doing a half hour of stretching exercises every morning, while listening to this radio station, without a recurrence of symptoms.
The approximate cause was working in bed for years. At some point I was cranking out five columns a week and found it was more productive to score a cup of coffee, shut the bedroom door, go back to bed and write than to waste time showering, dressing and getting on the subway to the office.
The price was chronic but bearable arthritis. By the way, I no longer work in bed or not often; instead sitting in a comfortable chair with a wedge seat cushion said to improve posture.
But back to my spending hubris: when I did an Internet search for the world’s most expensive mat, assuming I’d bought it, I realized I’d gotten a bargain. There’s one from a company called Chakracarma and I’m quoting from Tatler Asia here: it’s “made from the finest vegetable-tanned leather and adorned with ethically sourced precious stones.”
The mats start at $15,000 and rise to more than $100,000 “depending on the choice of carats, engravings and dedications.” The description goes on, “Designed to give your chakras a powerful boost, each of the gemstones (diamond, ruby, emerald, sapphire, amber, opal and carnelian) whatever that is “carry healing properties to facilitate a deeper state of connection to yourself and the universe in your daily yoga practice.”
Does this mean that I enjoy a more shallow state of connection to myself and the Universe because I bought my yoga mat at T.J. Maxx? On a more positive or potentially more alarming note, what would happen to my chakras if I substituted the randy Aline Kominsky-Crumb mat for the one I’m currently using?
I’d like to think that what I might sacrifice in terms of the subliminal abundance affirmations and the wealth and prosperity messages that working out on a diamond studded mat might offer me – let’s assume the stones are well embedded so as not to cause scratches – I might experience a jolt of artistic creativity channeling the spirit of Aline Kominsky-Crumb.
If so, two hundred fifty smackers is a deal.
Ralph Gardner, Jr. is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found be found on Substack.
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