It’s a strange thing how trends work in France. Many things here become fashionable only after the Americans have started the fashion. Offhand I can think of: blue jeans, living in former industrial spaces, and the riots of 1968. Sometimes this is a good thing; but there are certainly American trends I would not like [...]
Someone has obviously reached the end of their leash. ><a href=”http://annmah.net/2011/06/02/unleashed/” target=”new”>more</a>
While there is no end of soul searching going on over here over DSK, the voice that is consistently missing from the discussion is a female one. A few brave women have managed to make themselves heard, but I find it appalling that most of the panel discussions are exclusively male, and that there isn’t [...]
Greetings from 1950s America! No, not really. But yes, really. I disappeared last week because I was working on an article for my friend’s Seattle news website about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn debacle — a first-hand report from someone living in the Paris hot zone. It’s not the kind of writing I usually do and I [...]
There has been a drastic jump lately in the number of foreigners getting robbed around the Abbesses/Sacré Coeur area. There is one group of five young men who usually corner a foreign couple and make them empty their pockets and give them their ATM card pin code. The others just plain old pickpocket tourists. But [...]
As of this past Monday, the wearing of any kind of face cover is illegal in public spaces in France. An officer of the forces de l’ordre is not allowed to take off the veil but can order the person to be brought to the nearest police station to have her (or his) identity verified. Under [...]
Do you think it’s OK for me to throw down with a six-year old bully at Lucien’s preschool? No? Dammit. So anyway, about the bully. My son Lucien has been nervous to go to school for awhile now, but we couldn’t get out of him why. We assumed it was because he’s always in trouble [...]
On Saturday, 100 people from the group CIP-IDF (Coordination des Intermittents et Precaires – Ile-de-France) took over the building located at 63-65 Boulevard Charonne and were forcibly taken out by police. This group was apparently evicted from another space in the 19th and has been petitioning the Mairie de 11eme for awhile now to move [...]
A recent New York Times article documents a thrifty weekend in Paris on $74 total, excluding lodging (the author stayed with a friend). As the Readership knows, Experienced Travelers are always on the lookout for cost savings. How else would we accumulate “Found Money” for frivolous spending later on? But we feel obliged to comment [...]
It’s a shock to the fashion world that John Galliano, the super successful designer at Dior, was fired today by his bosses at LVMH, for having mumbled anti-Semitic insults at patrons at La Perle, that annoyingly trendy bar in the Marais. Or is it? LVMH is a publicly traded company, and Dior makes up the [...]
