The United States Declaration of Independence declares that our inalienable rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There’s a school of thought that suggests the word “pursuit” wasn’t intended to be defined as chasing. But, rather, as being. In the same way that stamp collecting is a pursuit, “the pursuit of happiness,” according to this interpretation, is our inalienable right not to chase after happiness, but to be happy.

There’s no need for all 300 million of us in the U.S. to agree on what individually makes each of us happy. But you can be pretty confident there are two things most of us would agree on: Love. And ice cream.

Love

Love generally requires two people. You and someone you love, and who loves you. Finding that special someone to share love with is definitely a pursuit. In both senses of the word. To achieve it, in the past 20 years or so we’ve developed any number of dating apps. The major criticism of these apps is, either they are too shallow for finding love – like Tinder – or they develop into endless online chats, and people seldom actually end up meeting in real life.

To solve these problems, there’s a new dating app. It’s called The Meetery. The Meetery is focused on people meeting in real life.

In existing apps, the endless online chat issue is all about wanting to know some basic stuff about someone before you commit to going on an hours-long date with them. The Meetery dispenses with all that by setting you up on a commitment-free, real-life mini-date. It only lasts 15 minutes.

New Orleanian Bayleigh Frickey is co-founder of The Meetery app. 

Ice Cream

And so to the other pillar of American happiness: ice cream. For those of us who love it, there’s no doubt that the more we enjoy the taste of a particular ice cream, the happier we are.

In pursuit of satisfying that desire, there are numerous ice cream manufacturers and ice cream stores all striving to deliver that even more chocolatey chocolate, fruity-er fruit, richer salted caramel, and hundreds of other inventive flavors. So, if you’re in the ice cream business it would seem like there’s a key question you’d need to be able to answer: What makes one ice cream taste better than another?

Abby Boone can answer that question.

Abby had been a pastry chef for over 10 years when the Covid pandemic landed her at home with nothing to do but take care of her child, Lucy, and mess around with her little 1-quart ice cream maker. And that’s how Lucy Boone Ice Cream was born. It was, almost literally, an overnight success.

Abby’s husband quit his job to join Abby’s burgeoning home-based ice cream enterprise, and today they make and sell hundreds of pints of Lucy Boone Ice Cream out of a commercial kitchen. They market it exclusively on Instagram, sell it around town at pop-ups, and out of a brick-and-mortar ice cream shop on Constance Street in the Lower Garden District.

You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at our website. There's more lunchtime conversation about dating apps here.

 

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