Chip

"It’s hard to find a bench in Copley Place."

I’m feeling really cranky. I went to the protest yesterday, thinking it would cheer me up, but it didn’t. Which shouldn’t matter. The point of the protest was to show up and protest, which I did. I brought a sign, I joined the crowd. It’s important to be counted even when you’re cranky.

Then I took a walk and ended up at Copley Place. My initial plan on my walk was to duck into a hotel bar and write a Substack post on my phone while I drank a cocktail. I was too cranky, though. All I wanted to write about was my anger and confusion over the breakup, and I’m tired of writing about that here. There was also a lot of specific stuff I wanted to write about, things that I didn’t think should be public. So I sat on a bench in Copley Place and wrote an email to my ex-boyfriend about my anger and confusion.

It’s hard to find a bench in Copley Place. I had to go all the way up to the third floor, where the offices are. There used to be this very Eighties stone water feature in the middle of the mall. There was a waterfall, and a winding river pool it emptied into with high edges for sitting. I used to skip pennies on the surface of the water. The pool was wide enough to do that. The bottom glinted with other people’s pennies.

It had been built as a high-end mall, so it was all shiny and fancy. The anchor store was Neiman Marcus. My Dad lived around the corner when it was being built and we’d walk over to watch the construction. Later, we’d go to the Au Bon Pain and drink Orangina with our sandwiches, like fancy French people.

The outside of Copley Place was built with pre-fab wall sections that hung from a grid. It was a new technology at the time, and I remember my Dad being really impressed as he told us about it. It looks a bit ugly to me now, but I remember how cool it was to watch the sections being hung. Thanks to my Dad, I saw the process as a harbinger of an exciting future.

At least a decade ago, the waterfall and pool were ripped out of the middle of the mall and replaced with a big, white, empty space. There must have been a lot of upkeep involved in maintaining all that plumbing, otherwise they might have put in another water feature. The seating likely disappeared for the same reason we’ve lost seating in train and bus stations and other public indoor spaces, to discourage the unhoused from settling in.

It’s weird, though, because the mall connected to Copley Place, in the Prudential, has lots of places to sit. All Copley Place did was make their space seem sad and sterile, something you just pass through.

The Neiman Marcus is closing, adding to the depressing ambiance. There are signs at the entrance announcing that all the fixtures are for sale. As a teenager, I’d walk around the Neiman Marcus pretending to myself that I was a rich person. Now it’s two steps away from becoming a Spirit Halloween.

The sign I brought to the march, which I was still carrying, said “Not a chip in a Billionaires’ Casino,” a reference to the administration leaking classified info to people who then use it to bet on who we’re going to bomb and when. I had been amused at the idea of bringing that sign into Copley Place and carrying it in front of the Rolex store and Cartier. But seeing Neiman Marcus like that reminded me that the billionaires are killing them, too. Our country is being hollowed out like middle of the mall. We’re being sold off for parts. All we’ll be left with is hefty debts to pay.

Which is what I had been at the protest to protest. So, it’s good that I went, despite being cranky, even for just a little while.