It's hard to describe Happy Place, the new pop-up installation in Boston. It's a warehouse on Boylston Street filled with fabricated photo-shoot sets just aching, even begging, for iPhones and Instagram opportunities. Yet, I have to admit, we enjoyed it.
This was a press preview and our goal was to head right to that flower room because it just looked so good in the previous pics we saw online. It seemed still in the setup stage as last-minute shows will do and was missing the big spotlight standing in for glorious rays of sun but we made do.
We juggled balls on a tub, laughed a lot at the foolishness of it all and melted away from all the crap going on in this world today.
The next day we found ourselves caught in a faux controversy and defending our delight. It was slammed by a certain writer at a certain paper who seems to have missed the point that it's just a grownup version of Chuck E. Cheese, a mindless escape for the camera-ready. Elvis and this new rock music will destroy society and all that. Also, there is candy. And cookies. And blueberry coffee. And it's a cheaper ticket than Disneyworld. Right here in Boston. Cynics be damned.
This is the millenial equivalent of an amusement park. Mobile technology is here to stay and the full documentation of every cute outfit, arugula leaf with carefully arranged drops of aged balsamic, rippling six packs and the purple light of summer sunsets in our neighborhoods or the snow in our backyards is never going to go away no matter how often we see it or lament the mediocrity of each carefully framed cliche. We live in an age where everyone labors under the illusion that each is a celebrity and his or her opinion is quite brilliant, poignant even when misspelled, and actually matters to everyone.
Happy Place
500 Boylston Street
Boston
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