Repost - Boston's Jan Brady Complex

SoHa: Boston’s Jan Brady Complex

6/13/06

There's a new housing complex which can be seen from the southeast expressway. It's called the SoHa lofts. Hmmm...SoHa and lofts. What does that remind me of? Oh, right. New York City.

But wait, I thought I was in Boston, not New York.

We are not New York. We don't need to try to be New York in order to be great. We are great on our own. We are a commodity that New York could never be. New York is something because it's everything. Boston is something because it is Boston and not anywhere else. THIS is what makes us better. We need to get rid of the Jan Brady complex and love our freckles and blonde hair and stop trying to wear a riduculous curly brown wig.

"SoHa" I assume stands for "South Harbor." It's as if calling it almost Soho will make it instantly feel as though it is Soho. You know what? Soho is the seventies.

Why not be innovative and create something through originality and not mimicry? When has earnest mimicry for commercial purposes ever been successful? Never.

This is the result of inorganic bohemian replication in the form of zillion dollar loft apartments.

The real mini-Soho is probably somewhere like Dorchester or Somerville, where the poor artist can actually afford to live - until the gentrification is complete, at least.