I got several warnings from friends that I shouldn’t go to Fluff Fest, Union Square’s annual celebration dedicated to Marshmallow Fluff. I declined to listen. I wanted to like it. I can handle a crowd, and I was puffed with civic pride at the idea of the parochial village of Somerville being the birthplace of Fluff.
I’m not sure what I expected at the Sept. 19 event. I guess I thought there was going to be more Fluff? I was hoping to buy some Fluff-related snacks, have a Fluff cone, see some interesting Fluff-related art and split. In fact, as anyone who attended knows, the average line for any of the little food available was 30 to 50 people long. For the most part, I found myself lost in a massive crowd, but what were we all there to see or eat? Evidently not very much. There were shorter (albeit still too long) lines for the AI-generated food posters, but damn it, I was here to get fluffed!
There was clearly massive demand for Fluff. The two vendors selling Fluff lattes had lines around the block, and the sole Fluff cone vendor (Gracie’s my beloved) could barely keep its ice cream stocked. Fluff just isn’t a big business in Somerville any other day of the year, so it was difficult to get vendors to stand up enough one-day-only Fluffing operations to meet demand. The only Fluffernutters for sale were by high schoolers, and the sandwich we got was squished in a plastic bag. Authentic, perhaps, but not the most appetizing meal in the world.
So, we waded through the crowd, waited in line for a Fluff cone, and left thinking we should have listened to our friends. The age-old wisdom of “nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” applies. It’s easy to be a hopeful Fluffer, just happy to get out of the house – but it takes only one bad fluff to turn you into a discerning and joyless cynic like me.
Nicholas Marchuk is a local author and engineer. His work is available at major retailers and on his website, nicholasmarchuk.com. Comments and questions can be directed to his contact form and may be responded to in this publication.
