An ode to Paris

If you’re expecting a paean to Paris, you’ve come to the wrong place.

No baguettes on bicycle baskets here. And absolutely no storybook romance set in the city of lights. And from me, you’ll absolutely never get marinière anyway…No.

I mean truly, I accidentally went near the Eiffel Tower but never ventured up it. I managed to get a private tour of the Louvre at midnight once and attended a Louis Vuitton fashion show there, but for the rest of the year avoided it vehemently. Oh, and the Notre Dame was never what tickled my fancy anyway, so easy to bilk. My Paris was blitzing, and scathing and deeply creative, none of the more touristy stuff ever appealed. In fact I once wrote a little review for VINGT Paris about my favorite restaurant in the city, and it’s Italian.

If you know me at all, you’ll know that Paris and I have a complicated relationship. I had visited many times before I had this terrible idea that yes I should absolutely move there. I speak fluent French, I’m a big city person who loves a chaotic urban environment with people from every corner of the planet, and I was still enjoying all kinds of potations at this point of my 20s.

So, I packed up my whole world (there was a heartbreak right before that may have clouded me, just a touch) and arrived at the jardin de luxembourg - yes, the left bank was my second mistake. I remember when I arrived, the moment I got out of that taxi as I was holding a cigarette in between my fingers, with a drapery of Lacroix covering my knees, and a croissant just casually falling out of my pocket - I looked at the dog shit everywhere, and I knew I had made a mistake. Now sure sure, there are no mistakes, yes yes I get it, it’s true, I believe that and I know that it all leads you to where you need to be. But just go with me for the sake of my story please.

In my head the intellectuals came to Paris to write, to debate, to fuck and get fucked…and fucked up…so Gertrude Stein, Voltaire (who drank up to 50 cups of coffee per day, just saying) this was all for you. Just don’t call it bohemian please. I mean the cafés were also the favorites of the “grisettes”, pretty girls from the countryside, who came to Paris looking for amour and Francs – with names like Mimi or Musette. Everyone made a Paris stop. And you should too. And not in the tourist way, please.

I wrote a few ditties on napkins about Paris, and here they are.

Jim Morrison died for me, and for Paris apparently.

As the evening wanted to commence my Metro slowly found its way underneath the dirty streets of the city of love to the ‘tourist’s cemetery’. So famed, so profound that it had become a reason for millions of people all over the world to squash themselves into airplanes, tidy themselves onto boats and cars and line themselves up into trains to get to Paris. Some of the other methods of getting to Paris are as ridiculous as the crowds of onlookers and gawkers that come to the cemetery - I later discover - so will therefore remain unmentioned. People are strange.

Père Lachaise, the cemetery of all cemeteries hosts for me the most important musician to ever live. But apparently I am not alone in my love for the great ‘lizard king’. For most fans the music will never be over. And for me those black leather pants will live on, for eternity.

My determined stride through the crowded cemetery is completely forgotten as my sole focus is on finding my Jim. Paris was given Jim Morrison whether they wanted him or not and I, the little Paris virgin, proudly stayed in his ex-hotel room on the left bank. That was when I arrived in Paris for the first time so it may have been a hotel manager’s version of tourist trapping.

Finding the grave is easy; I follow the smell of Jack Daniels and cigarettes. Jim is of course waiting for me, as he always will be. The stone on his grave screams at me: “ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ”. Google translate tells me, with no questions asked, that it means “true to his own spirit”. Unsatisfied I text a Greek friend who says it’s more like “according to his own daemon”. I laugh, my non-Paris laugh that makes the residents stare at me. 

Ah Paris, of course you found Jim in your belly. Of course it involves demons, don’t I know this already? And then the sky opens and pees all over me like Jim would have done. Paris Paris, you are always according to your own rakshasa.

That Tower

On the StairMaster after say 20 minutes the machine, with a mind of its own, congratulates me on climbing the Eiffel Tower. It really does, just yesterday I climbed La Tour Eiffel and I can easily do it again today. So why in reality have I wanted to avoid the actual site of the iron lattice Paris tower at all costs – could it perhaps be the flurry of Baguette-fed, burnt coffee smelling tourists that swarm around it as it was the lighthouse of culture. Perhaps yes. 

The tower held the tallest man-made structure in the world title for 41 years, until the Chrysler Building had tumescence, and requires an easy to apply 60 tons of paint every seven years to maintain its shine. So what about all this engineered steel, vulgar stature and upkeep sweat makes the tower the dernier cri of a city so obsessed with haute culture. Ah perhaps it is the iconic nature of the edifice that has given Paris an arresting stardom. Unaffected by fame and fortune, seemingly that is, the city has clutched their ownership of all things culturally acceptable or culturally permitted that is. And somehow that gave the city of lights its notoriety. But Paris, the sufferer of middle child syndrome, did secretly want to appear to the world to be greater than, more chic than…

Voila I say! The Eiffel tower worked its prestidigitation.  

Undeniably it peers at you from every corner of the city, when you come out of the dirty Metro, when you pop your head out of the tiny top window of your atelier and even when you wake from a sleep in one of the many manicured gardens around the city. It doesn’t smile down at the visitors queuing in snake-like formations below. It would probably spit on them if it could. But all the same visitors come and marvel at the engineering and Paris loves, oh really loves, all the attention. But of course my darling Paris will never admit to that. 

Naturally I did a whole episode about fuck Paris, which you can listen to here.

More special Paris jottings below…

A Stranger in Paris

What Paris does so well, so formidably and provocatively well, is lift the chalice of culture above the skies. Too high for piffling earthlings to climb to, but just far enough for everyone to want to stretch out and tingle in its molest. Paris concedes with no allowance for disagreement to be the possessor of culture. So if culture is the full spectrum of learnt human behavioural patterns then Paris has given us some of the blueprints. 

Paris is a city that likes to go sleep a little late and wake up very late, indicative of the ever controversial 35-hour workweek and long lunches enjoyed not only by the blue collars, but white and gold ones too. Mornings are spent with pastries in the blur of cigarette smoke as one of the only city’s in the world where smoking is still the avocation of all. The city inspires smokers to toke double time and non-smokers to now also be screaming fumes from their mouths: a perfect way to bestow upon them a lifelong addiction.

The same way that animals have learnt behaviour, Parisians possess something similar. They have it passed along from generations of over finessed Paris mothers and over fed Paris grandfathers (and the rest of the flavored relatives as perfectly depicted in Julie Delpy’s film “Two Days In New York”). Eating small amounts, being inappropriately sexual, drinking wine in large amounts, swearing as often as possible and always keeping a watchful eye on fashion disasters whilst drinking extra scolded coffee are just some of the markings of a good Parisian; and it keeps them sane. 

But nights in the city are no longer shared with Voltaire, Hemingway or Rousseau. They have finally retired their postulations and decided to rest peacefully somewhere away from the dirty streets and extra small café tables. When David Lynch opened “Silencio” everything changed, it gave Parisians a new notion of who inspires them. Hollywood sneaked through the high fences and Paris accepted the rupture of a new culture by expressing the ultimate encomium. Hail to a new Paris someone said. 

In the same bawl is “Paris Seen By Hollywood” from a decade ago at the city’s Hotel De Ville where photos, clips, sets, décor and costumes were displayed to show just how ingrained Hollywood has always been in the French capital. From Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” to the ever-glamorous “Moulin Rouge”, unforgettable “Funny Face” and of course “An American in Paris” the Air France flights from the US have always been chockablock.

(Dying to see a gay version of this please)

Paris has always stood in the messiness of monarchies, empires, republics and revolutions. Both equally inspiring the city hosts the snobbiest suburbs on the planet and the trashiest ones too. The bohemians have tried to own their city with underground squats and circuses but the conservatives never let go of their grip on the official Paris representation; thus giving way to a city of dichotomy. Beautiful and ugly in an “Umberto Eco” sense where both are needed for the other to exist. 

I mean, on my street was this fisting bar (right next to the laundromat where I met one of my best friends by total chance) that would smell like bleach every morning when I would be walking by to get my morning cafe au lait.

And late night I would stop by this bar where boys are showering simply for our viewing pleasure. I mean, that I appreciate deeply, that dirty, filthy Paris is cleaning up just for us.

So where has this muddle of disorder left the city of love? The right bank is no longer in opposition with the left bank; the suburbs and the inner city are now the holders of gloves as they belabour and pulverize the visions of a new greater city. As the throb of Paris romance continues to give the city the highest number of tourists, of any destination, a different perspective of love is imminent. The bolted locks on the bridges, so often seen in magazines and Instagram, represent an almost desperate attempt to hold onto love’s embrace. Paris feels differently about love. The same way that Paris residents want the locks to be removed, the city wants to feel free again – free from love. Free to find a new love. 

Another story you say? Of course, one more for you.

When I travel I have a little special trick - I Google the words “Pour over coffee [ENTER CITY/PLACE]” - just that easy. Now what I am betting on is that if you care about coffee you’re going to want it served to you as a pour over (or Chemex). Now if you’re in this coffee shop for a similar reason to me, well we already have something to bond about. So it’s a double win - great coffee, and maybe a friend who I can hang out with in Ulaanbataar or Nairobi, or even in Denver. I’ve made some of my best friends this way, managed to secure invites to the best underground discos and art galleries plus I have also found when people are caffeinated they are generally nicer.

Now let me tell you a little story about Paris (having lived there for two years and of course having visited dozens of times before and since).

Un café s’il vous plait

Searching for great, superbly wonderful coffee in Paris is like searching for a giraffe under the Atlantic Ocean. It’s just never going to happen. Of course you can attempt this, armed with a wheel of Etorki Basque cheese to sink you down but you realize it’s a total waste of Parisian time. The French believe that dark roasting (read: brûlé) or, shall we call it for what is actually happening, burning at 500 degrees fire the coffee makes it stronger and by implication tastier. 

A noisette, sounding so wonderfully innocent, will attack your stomach lining with Joan of Arc’s feminist fury. And a Café Crème might thrill you with that fluffy handsome sounding name but what you’ll get is extra, extra one more time with feeling extra pasteurized milk that will last for a lifetime (ask me I left a bottle for three years in a cupboard in the Marais and it was still perfect when I opened it after a very long sojourner) and a tiny spot of, again, burnt coffee. Don’t bother with American drip coffee; the open jawed dismay from your ever friendly waitress will let you know that even if you do get the desired format it will be more than disappointing and potentially rigged with some incendiary device. 

So what makes the French believe they have the world’s greatest coffee? Oh yes the use of a French press (the worst way in the world to make coffee unless you enjoy a strong acidity that is thin in flavor and thick in grossness). Of course the open display for pollution and car fumes to come sit on the too-old-for-use beans and invariably cheap machines may add to the dismay you’re feeling by now. So where did the great writers and artists get their caffeine rushes if Paris cannot deliver a decent roast or bean anyway (minus Telescope Café in 75001 that gets coffee from the U.S. of A.).

Possibly at home, or then again maybe they got their kicks from opium, the beautiful scenery and architecture, the perfect people-watching everywhere or the most obvious – free flowing alcohol. 

In the 18th Century, chess players (including Benjamin Franklin, who, it is claimed, worked on the United States Constitution between games) frequented Paris coffee cafés. Because, as Honoré de Balzac proclaimed, “A café’s counter is the people’s parliament.”

But, if you want great coffee in Paris make sure to drink Italian. C’est fucking vrai.