by You don’t have to time travel back to the ’90s to make a Kramer-style entrance through Jerry’s door, or step inside the purple walls of Monica and Rachel’s apartment. You don’t even have to go to soundstages where Seinfeld AND Friends they were filmed.
A couple recreated both famous residences, complete with Easter eggs for hardcore fans, in a condo in Cincinnati, which is now offering bookings on Airbnb. The About Nothing Suite, of course, is homage to Jerry and his friends, complete with a bicycle on the wall, cereal on the kitchen shelves, and Superman details everywhere. The Purple Suite is, natch, a copy of the Friends location, complete with that retro fridge, turquoise cabinets and a wooden table. They are delightfully similar.
It took “a lot of looking at the show and then screenshots and trying to either buy the exact thing or get really close,” Brenda Baum, who, along with her husband Otto, is behind the suites, tells Yahoo Entertainment. “You shop a lot on Facebook Marketplace to find furniture and go all over the country to find the right pieces. A lot of thrift stores, because it’s, you know, 80s, 90s stuff. That was fun.”
For example, a friend, Katy Dika, with Katy Dika Designs, has provided custom curtains that artfully reference character names and custom posters with references to Cincinnati.
While his wife worked on the furniture, Otto Baum, owner of a small real estate company, renovated and converted a building into a building with four separate apartments. He said the idea to make them, the Sitcom Suites as they call them, came during the COVID pandemic.
“There were fewer sports on TV, and sports are what I would watch when I get home from work,” she says. “Whether it’s basketball or football, whatever season it is. And that point stopped, and we ended up watching a lot of old TV shows… and that led to liking the idea of, ‘These they’re fun to watch, but what if you actually attended one of these shows? What if you could build a set and somehow become part of the show?'”
The TVs to emulate were easy to choose; like all of us, they saw the goods for Friends AND Seinfeld everywhere. The Baums are also working on a couple more apartments in the same building based on two other fan-favorites: The Golden Girls AND Schitt’s Creek.
Fans can reserve the Seinfeld AND Friends suite now, with stays starting April 1st. Recreations of Dorothy, Rose, Sophia and Blanche’s Miami Bungalow (The Golden Suite) and the Roses’ humble accommodations at the Rosebud Motel (The Creek Suite) will also be available on April 1; bookings for them will open early next month. The listed price is $175 per night.
Already, however, the first offers are a success.
“April is already sold out for Friendssays Brenda. ‘And the weekends are booking up fast, too.’
The true measure of their success, they say, is that friends and family members who previewed the suites were amazed.
“That’s what we’re trying to do,” Otto says, “is transport you, take you to another place in another time. I think that’s why [the suites] they resonate, and why, when people first see them and come in, it’s kind of a shocking thing, where you’re like, ‘Whoa, I’m in this.’ And that’s what we were looking for.”
