Note: This article was published in the Back Bay Courant, August 27, 1996.

Plastic cows graze under a neon cactus. An orange dinosaur, teeth bared, peers intently at passing cars. On a hill sits a Chinese pagoda. An 18th century village, including a general store, beckons passersby.

These are the sights of Route 1, a uniquely concentrated display of bad taste. A few weekends ago, Boston did its best to emulate that roadway to the north when it closed off Copley Square and built a mock replica of the Public Garden, replete with bridge, lagoons and plastic swans, for a private party benefiting conventioneers.

The event was the annual meeting of the American Society of Association Executives. The members of this group are the people who decide where to hold meetings and conventions. Every city in America tries to put on a good show, hoping to persuade ASAE members to consider their city as a venue.

Cities like Boston believe conventions to be good business. Freespending conventioneers pump up the hotel and restaurant business. Presumably charmed by the city where they ate, drank, danced and occasionally attended convention sessions, they later return as tourists with spouse and kids in tow where they again eat, drink, dance and occasionally walk the Freedom Trail.

Thrilled to be chosen as the site for the ASAE’s annual fest, Boston vowed to do all it could to attract future convention business. The city has a lot of advantages: close-in airport, historic sites, reputable museums, attractive streetscapes, good weather (well, maybe not that good). It has one big problem however: no convention center. The best efforts of the Mayor and the Boston Redevelopment Authority notwithstanding, conventions of any reasonable size have no place to go. The Hynes Convention Center suits small events, but multi-floored spaces are not well liked by convention planners. Boston lags behind almost every other major US city in the facilities available for conventions.

Perhaps in an effort to dance around this problem, the City went to enormous lengths to ingratiate itself with the ASAE conventioneers. ASAE banners were hung throughout the city. Dartmouth Street received a name change, becoming “ASAE Way.” And, in the most obsequious act of all, Copley Square was closed and remade into an ersatz Public Garden.

At both the Clarendon and Dartmouth Street entrances to the remade park were archways through which conventioneers entered. “Boston Public Garden” they proclaimed. A replica of the Public Garden’s footbridge stretched across a pretend lagoon that looked like a child’s wading pool straight from the end-of-summer sale at Toys ‘R Us. The bridge itself had working lights (thereby improving upon the real thing) which shone down on a plastic menagerie of water fowl.

For years businesses and citizens in the area have struggled to make Copley Square into a beautiful space that sets off the stunning architecture that surrounds it. What’s the message here? They failed in their efforts? Is Copley Square like our ordinary dinnerware? Do we put it away in the cupboard and bring out the fancy stuff when the out-of-town visitors arrive?

Or was this whole thing the concoction of some crazed event planner raised on John Waters’ movies who can’t leave well enough along and must build fiction even when the real thing is only two blocks away?

Or, my theory, was it that the city wanted to show to the ASAE members that there were no lengths it would not go to for their business? We will grovel and embarrass ourselves if you will come here. Close our public parks? Shut down streets? Remake our city in any way you want? We’ll do anything.

It’s kind of sad. Certainly Boston needs a new convention center, and certainly it needs to go about the business of planning, funding and building it. But self-degradation such as this? No. There’s an important lesson I learned a long time ago. Self-debasement and self-humiliation don’t earn others’ respect. It’s a lesson Boston should learn.