For those of us who like to stay in town in August, la Rentrée can come as quite as shock. During the last weekend of the month, you can still walk down the middle of Rue de Rivoli at midnight, marveling that le Marais looks like an abandoned movie set, but by the first week of September you will [...]
On one of my soujourns to Paris I sat at a cafe with my favorite book. “We would like some preservatives please,” I overheard the ladies seated next to me asking the waiter. The waiter looked more horrified with each request as their voices grew increasingly louder every time they asked for their ‘preservatives’. After [...]
Yesterday I stopped at a corner traffic light waiting for it to turn green. Standing next to a family of three, I noticed that the father and teenage son were waiving their hands in the air, discouraged each time an empty cab drove by. “Why won’t any of them stop?” the mom wondered aloud. “Don’t [...]
Le Labo Shop is a specialized concept store for the scientifically inclined, but this laboratory is more akin to Jonathan Adler than Dr. Frankenstein. The inventions and experiments of French-American scientist David Edwards (who also happens to be Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Harvard), bring science to street-level. The shop’s chicly plexiglassed design belies a [...]
I was out for a run (don’t laugh) the other night when I saw a steady stream of pizza boxes coming at me. No, I wasn’t dehydrated… these were Domino’s pizza boxes from a new franchise on my street. So many of my neighbors were carrying them that I assumed “they must be giving [...]
Last year when I started my job with company x they paid for two weeks of intensive one on one French classes in Paris for me. The classes were good and I learned plenty but the problem with an anglophone trying to learn French in Paris is that so many people speak English it’s difficult to apply [...]
This is a portion of my favorite metro musical group; I wasn’t able to get a couple of their bandmates in the picture. (And if you’re wondering, yes, I did put a nice donation in their basket.) I’ve seen them most frequently at Concorde but also at the Franklin Roosevelt station. They come from somewhere [...]
Art has always had an interesting relationship with technology. When Edison invented the phonograph and made the first sound recording he envisaged it being used primarily for recording dictation in offices but inadvertently spawned a musical and creative revolution. Today the mecca for the development of this relationship between technology and music is found [...]
Do women make the world go round? The window dresser at the Diesel store on Etienne Marcel thinks so. I couldn’t resist taking photos of these funny windows the other day.
Recently my girlfriend had the idea of having a party that would allow us all to make more room in our closets while enjoying cocktails and conversation with good friends. The concept of la troc party, as they call it in French, is for everyone to bring any unwanted clothes, purses, jewelry, or shoes with the goal of [...]
