John Talbott's Paris

Christmas in July I understand but in October?

Over the weekend, I heard loud sounds coming from the street and looked out to see city-crews stringing up holiday lights.  Yesterday, on my way out to lunch a kid shouted "Look at the Olloween stuff" and so I ignored the street for the sideshow of lanterns, masks, etc.

Today, there they were though.  When I was young, an unwritten rule was no Christmas stuff til after Santa Claus came down CPW at the end of the Thanksgiving Macy Day Parade.  But I've noticed a creep, from December to November, and now October.  And the French insist we're the money-grubbing capitalists.

 

A brilliant idea for construction sites: art, history, education and fun in the Palais Royale Garden.

Totally unexpecting it, I left lunch near the Places des Victoires and headed to the #1 Subway via the Gardens of the Palais Royale.  Suddenly I realized the usual plywood surrounding the site was different.  On the North side of the passage between the two sites was a wall of historical explanations and photos of architecture from Roman forward.

Now granted the South side had a panel on the renovation of Daniel Buren columns, which apparently like the Lincoln Center pool have been a problem sibce their inception.
 

And then one had the usual look-see at what was happening to that side:

But that panel on the North side was a great idea, all construction sites take note.
 
  

Montmartre madness: la vendange vient.

Ah, once again our street becomes the center of the world, well, at least Paris, oh, maybe the 18th for a few brief days when the grapes are picked in the last (or next to last) vineyard in Paris.  Anyway it's grand, slim men in Aristide Bruant red scarves riding in antique cars, huge men with hunting horns around their necks marching and balloons some with children attached, all over.

Corny?, you bet; Goofy?, without a doubt, but fun?, certainly.

 

 
  
 Kinda cool eh?  You gotta admit.
 

Random walks: some impressive architecture in the 17th.

As the lawyers say: Res ipsa locquator, the things speak for themselves. 

Neat huh?

News from Paris: Pipi, the new sanisettes and a wall that sprays urine back.

September 1st, I read a Wall Street Journal (yes, I've read it everyday except for the Editorial and Op Ed pages since high school) article entitled "In Paris, Behavior Brigade Battles To Make Oui-Oui a Non-Non: Even the Sanisettes Don't Stem the Flow; Mr. Rebete Is a Whiz at Catching Offenders" by Susana Ferreira.

I have a particular interest in this issue since I have found myself between restaurants and museums and sanisettes and McDo's from time to time and have even once been confronted by Mr. Rebete's Brigade des Incivilites myself, but that's a story for my book.

The article says Mr. Rebete and company's hardest villains are not litter-bugs or dog poop leavers but distributors of urine sauvage = wild urine.  Now Paris is replacing the 400 some 2006-era free toilets with new ones that "include skylights and an eco-friendly design, including reservoirs that store rainwater for use in the toilet" and a Mr Etienne Vanderpooten (you can't make these names up), city architect, unveiled an antipipi wall that has "a jagged surface that splashes urine back onto the unzipped offender."

That's the news from Paris today, folks, like it or not.

The Maison du Jardinage in the Bercy Park; 12th

The Maison du Jardinage is on the Rue Paul Belmondo side of the Bercy Park 1/2 of the way between the Cour St Emilion and Bercy Metro stops.  It is a delightful building full of gardening items suitable for urban gardening as well as a great gardening library and an exhibition for kids.  And they give gardening lessons.

A fun place in an urban oasis.

The Cour St-Emilion: an upscale Coney Island.

 

Now doesn't this look nice?

Why do people turn up their noses?

If you walk from the Bercy Omnisports through the "gardens" to the entrepots it's quite nice, really.

And it's not far away (8 minutes from La Madeleine to Bercy on the automatic Metro #14).

Just don't eat here.  Or if you do don't expect much.  It's cool tho'.

Photos of the elderly in the Marais: Sculpture in the Tuileries

The deconsecrated church marked Billettes (on my map) on the Rue des Archives in the 4th is multi-functional; we bought a rug there two years ago and today it's home to a photo exhibition of old folk, largely in nursing/retirement homes.  OK but as usual, the photo on the poster is the best of the lot.

The Tuileries is hosting yet another exhibition of contemporary sculpture, some of which (above by Richard Deacon) I "get" and many I do not.  But it's a good excuse to walk through the gardens.

Romania - Some culture (Art, Music, Gardens, Buildings, etc.)

We were privileged to experience a great deal in our brief week in Romania and I wanted to communicate some of the high and low lights.

   

For me the highest light was the opening of the season of the Bucharest Symphony at the dazzling Atheneum playing Mahler's 3rd with two choruses; the place (seating 900) is a real jewelbox for something so fine.

 

Second was the Museum of Fine Arts - the European section - with its impressive collection containing El Greco, Tintoretto, Brueghel, Rubens and Rembrandt, not to mention a sizeable collection of impressionists and post-impressionists.  I was not impressed with the Bohemian crystal exhibition advertised above, however.

   

My morning joggies/runnies/limpies were in a lovely park with its inevitable packs of abandoned feral dogs.

 

Unfortunately the architecture is starky, greyly Stalinist for the most part and the Palace of the Parliament,

   

where I had to speak, is Ceauşescu's revenge, the second largest building the the world and a monster.

Silly walks about Paris - beauty and the beasts.

 

"Down by the station, early in the morning, see the little puffer bellies, all in a row."