Lost in Boston

...
Drinking rum and chocolate
A hundred thousand blinking lights
Making me exhausted

This past Labor Day weekend I was fortunate enough to visit my cousin and her boyfriend in Boston, MA. Previously, my only visit to Boston has been a weekend after my senior year of high school in which I was forced by my overzealous father to walk the entire Freedom Trail, reading almost every plaque along the way. There is nothing worse than struggling through a humid August afternoon listening to your father point out every minor piece of American history while your sister complains that she's hot and tired and your brother complains that he hates family vacations and while his mother yells at him that he should not say such things about his family.

Fortunately, hanging out with differently family members in Boston the second time around turned out to be much more fun! After an extremely impressive performance by Battles Friday night, I awoke with a spring in my step[more so than normal!] early Saturday morning to board the 8am Greyhound bus to Boston, MA. It had been a long while since I had seen my cousin, and when she picked me up at South Station 4.5 hours later I was still in high spirits. I could go on about every little thing that I did while in Boston on the last weekend of summer, but instead I will limit it to just the highlights/disappointments[dum dum dum!].



My cousin lives just a few blocks away from Fenway Park, but we still got a chance to walk through the lovely Beacon Hill district of Boston, famed for housing many famous people, John Kerry, David Lee Roth and Robert Frost [in no particular order] to name a few. Walking through this quiet and serene part of the city I started to get a sense of the easy-going way of life that differs so much from the stress of my daily grind in New York.



Shortly after Beacon Hill we took a lunch break along the beautiful Charles River. Looking out across the water one could see Harvard and MIT in the distance, with a throng of sailboats playfully darting back-and-forth in the lazy summer afternoon, a crisp breeze keeping their sails taut with excitement.



Since I was with my cousin and girlfriend, I did not want this trip to be solely about architecture, but the one building that we had to go and see was the new structure by the always controversial, sometimes successful duo, Diller + Scofidio. Their ICA building in Boston received lots of attention in the media after it was opened, so I figured that I should check it out and try to form my own opinion about it. Sadly, as you can see from above, the building did little from the outset to inspire one to achieve greatness, as you approach the ass-end of the building across a broken-up piece of asphalt parking lot, trying to zig-zag your way through a myriad of chain-link fences and parked cars. Upon turning the corner though, one really sees what the building is about.




A giant, cantilevered platform extends out from the ass-end of the building and into the harbor, and it is clearly apparent that D+S had one thing in mind when they were designing the ICA: what the building would see/be seen in the harbor.



Upon entering the building, you are whisked up 4 stories via a large, glass elevator, a view of the harbor always visible between floors as you ascend. When you reach the top you are briefly lead through several small art galleries before fed into the room-with-a-view, the moneyshot of ICA, an uninterrupted viewing space of the harbor that you have been glimpsing throughout out your visit. It's a tried and true technique, one that seemed to be much more impressive at the deYoung, yet it seems as though something was forgotten here. Perhaps is is the miniscule amount of art the one sees beforehand, and the instant gratification of the view, or perhaps it's due to the fact that looking out over a blank canvas of water is not as visually stimulating as looking out over a hilly urban city, but I felt quite let down as I turned around to walk back to the stairwell that led me down and out, and a quick scam of $12. Sure, the Louis Bourgeois spider was pretty cool, but I still can't help feeling cheated by the lack of substance behind the ICA. A project similar in scope, the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art seems to be much more successful, largely due to the fact that they don't just rely on the view to sell the building.

Anyways, I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant on the ICA, but so it did. I had a great time in Boston, spending quality time with my cousin and co, and would recommend that everyone take a trip there, if not so you can see this famous piece of brutalist architecture, the Boston City Hall:



[oh yeah, the rest of Boston is pretty cool too!]