{"id":11123,"date":"2019-04-04T11:43:14","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T15:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=11123"},"modified":"2019-06-08T10:21:42","modified_gmt":"2019-06-08T14:21:42","slug":"happy-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/04\/04\/happy-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Visiting The \u2018Happy Place\u2019 Selfie Playground With A Skeleton, A Rock Band And An Improbable Poet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy Place<\/a>\u2014the Instagram selfie playground\u2014is coming to Boston after pop-ups in Los Angeles, Chicago and Toronto.<\/p>\n

If you want to understand what it means to be alive in America at this exact moment, here you will find your answers. It offers 12 curious, wacky rooms in which to take your photo at 500 Boylston St. from Friday, April 5, to June 2, 2019. It\u2019s dazzling and bizarre and vacuous and silly and vaguely sad and also fun.<\/p>\n

\"Blake<\/a>
Blake \u201cBrother Bones\u201d Girndt from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How fun it is depends greatly on whom you go with\u2014and I went with a bunch of amazing folks. I invited the rock band Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys<\/a>, who have been described as \u201ca Dada-esque circus carnival run amuck.\u201d Half the band joined me\u2014Walter Sickert, Edrie, their 4-year-old daughter Wednesday, JoJo Lazar and Blake \u201cBrother Bones\u201d Girndt. They play at Oberon<\/a> in Cambridge on Friday, April 12, and the Sinclair in Cambridge on May 2.<\/p>\n

Also along for the adventure was poet Colleen Michaels<\/a>, who hosts the nomadic Improbable Places Poetry Tour<\/a>. The next reading is Saturday, April 13, from 4 to 6 p.m., at Paper Asylum comic book shop in Beverly. Folks will be reading poems on the theme of comics and superheroes.<\/p>\n

\"Poet<\/a>
Poet Colleen Michaels, host of the Improbable Places Poetry Tour, at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cHappy Place was inspired by my mission to provide a beacon of positivity and encourage people to come together and embrace happiness,\u201d according to founder Jared Paul, \u201ca veteran talent manager and producer who manages New Kids on the Block and spearheaded the \u2018Boston Strong\u2019 benefit concert following the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.\u201d<\/p>\n

Happy Place offers the \u201cSuper Bloom room filled with 40,000 handmade gold flowers for the perfect photogenic floral backdrop, an Upside Down room that defies gravity and bends reality, six-foot tall X\u2019s and O\u2019s covered in thousands of mirrored squares and surrounded by red lips, the World\u2019s Largest Indoor Confetti Dome, a Giant Rainbow complete with a Pot of Happiness to jump into, the signature Rubber Ducky Bathtub of Fun, the new and wildly popular Cookie Room, which is like stepping inside of your favorite chocolate chip cookie complete with the aroma of fresh baked cookies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Happy<\/a>
Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Walter<\/a>
Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys (from left: JoJo Lazar, Edrie, Walter Sickert, Wednesday and Blake \u201cBrother Bones\u201d Girndt) at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Walter<\/a>
Walter Sickert from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Poet<\/a>
Poet Colleen Michaels, host of the Improbable Places Poetry Tour, at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Walter<\/a>
Walter Sickert from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Happy<\/a>
Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Edrie,<\/a>
Edrie, Walter Sickert and Wednesday from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Blake<\/a>
Blake \u201cBrother Bones\u201d Girndt from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Poet<\/a>
Poet Colleen Michaels, host of the Improbable Places Poetry Tour, at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Wednesday<\/a>
Wednesday from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Blake<\/a>
Blake \u201cBrother Bones\u201d Girndt and JoJo Lazar from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Blake<\/a>
Blake \u201cBrother Bones\u201d Girndt from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Poet<\/a>
Poet Colleen Michaels, host of the Improbable Places Poetry Tour, at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Eddie<\/a>
Eddie from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Walter<\/a>
Walter Sickert, Wednesday and Blake \u201cBrother Bones\u201d Girndt from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Walter<\/a>
Walter Sickert and Wednesday from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Blake<\/a>
Blake \u201cBrother Bones\u201d Girndt from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Poet<\/a>
Poet Colleen Michaels, host of the Improbable Places Poetry Tour, at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Blake<\/a>
Blake \u201cBrother Bones\u201d Girndt from Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at Happy Place in Boston, April 3, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy Place\u2014the Instagram selfie playground\u2014is coming to Boston after pop-ups in Los Angeles, Chicago and Toronto. If you want to understand what it means to be alive in America at this exact moment, here you will find your answers. It offers 12 curious, wacky rooms in which to take your photo at 500 Boylston St. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11102,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,582],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11123"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11131,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11123\/revisions\/11131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}