Paris
Update
Flash News
BUBBLES AND SPARKS
Here’s a revolutionary way to celebrate Bastille Day (July 14) while ensuring a good view of the fireworks: Ô Chateau (tel.: 01 44 73 97 80) is offering a three-hour Seine cruise that includes appetizers, a one-hour tasting of three wines and a glass of champagne served during the fireworks. €80. Reserve.
WATER VOGUING
Paris now has its own version of the Venetian vaporetto: Voguéo, a line of pretty green, blue and white water buses running between the Gare d'Austerlitz and the suburb Maisons-Alfort, with stops at Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand, Bercy and Port d'Ivry. Tickets cost €3, but holders of RATP subscriptions can use their cards at no extra cost. Following a two-year test, the city will decide whether to make it permanent and add other lines or not.
ACCESSIBLE HOLIDAYS
Handicap.fr has launched a new tourism section for people with disabilities, listing over 600 sites and associations, with evaluations from visitors.
GOING SWIMMINGLY
As the Parisian weather finally warms up, many people's thoughts are
turning to swimming. Click here for a useful guide to the city's swimming pools.
SOON-TO-BE-ABSENT PRESENTER
TF1 newscaster Patrick Poivre
d'Arvor (a.k.a., PPDA), perhaps the most recognizable face on French television (and on the satirical puppet show Les Guignols), has announced that he will leave the station after the summer. He will be replaced by Laurence Ferrari, who moves over from the pay channel Canal Plus.
LA RESISTANCE
The French seemed to have accepted the smoking ban in restaurants and cafés with surprising ease, but it turns out that a resistance movement has sprung up: members of a guerilla group calling itself “Happy-Nicotines” have taken to dropping into cafés, lighting up and leaving before the police get there. Other résistants are covertly passing around the addresses of establishments whose owners are willing to let their customers smoke (sometimes in a back room) at the risk of a €750 fine. Meanwhile, anti-smoking groups are demanding that smoking be banned on café terraces, the new turf of puffers.
WISE BRANDING
Will people really take time to read an advertisement on a condom wrapper? Perhaps the effect will be purely subliminal: Brand X = pleasure. That’s what a company called French Card (condoms are called “French letters” in the UK, by the way), which will print your ad on condoms for a fee, is hoping.
LIKE MOTHER, LIKE SON
Anyone who has read Michel Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles knows that he despises his mother. Now maman, Lucie Ceccaldi, has written a book, L’Innocente (Scali) defending herself, in which she gives as good as she gets. He called her a “slut”; she calls him a “parasite,” etc., etc. Sounds like they deserve each other.
WHERE THE FILLES ARE
A new book, Le Guide des Jolies Femmes de Paris (Robert Laffont) by Pierre-Louis Colin, a speechwriter for French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner,offers a neighborhood-by-neighborhood guide to attractive women in Paris: where to find the best legs (Madeleine), bra-free breasts (Ménilmontant) and femmes d’un certain âge (lingerie shops). Colin advocates appreciative observation only.
REVOLTE DES HANDICAPES
Between 16,000 and 30,000 (depending on whom you ask) people from all over France flocked to Paris on March 29 to demonstrate for the rights of the disabled and chronically ill. Adults who are unable to work are given a monthly allocation of €628, which they understandably claim condemns them to lifelong poverty. Although the government announced a 5 percent increase last week, the demonstrators saw this only as further incentive to take to the streets.
WE KNOW WHO "N." IS, BUT WHO IS "G."?
Playwright Yasmina Reza’s account of a year spent in the company of Nicolas Sarkozy while he was campaigning for the French presidency, L’Aube, le Soir ou la Nuit (Flammarion), has now been published in English under the title Dawn Dusk or Night (Alfred A. Knopf) in the United States. Many of her observations about the impulsive, hot-tempered dynamo of a president have been confirmed by the behavior of the man himself since his election. Reza still refuses to reveal the identity of another character in the book, “G,” a politician who was her lover at the time.
BOOK ALERT
Thirza Vallois, author of the Around and About Paris series, recently published Aveyron: A Bridge to French Arcadia (Iliad Books), about a region some would rather keep to themselves but that has been attracting increased attention since the opening of the Millau Viaduct.
FISH FLASH
While the governmental organization Ofimer is busy promoting the fishing industry during the month of April, Yves Miserey, Le Figaro’s science writer, and Philippe Cury, director of a French research center on the Mediterranean, have just published Une Mer sans Poissons (Calmann-Lévy), chronicling the conversion of the world’s oceans into “liquid deserts.”
VELIB' ROLLS ON
Bicycle use in Paris increased by over 68 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 over the same period in 2006 (to avoid skewing the figures, the days of public transport strikes were not taken into account), testimony to the success of the new Vélib' system of short-term bicycle rental, which account for 31 percent of the bikes on the streets of Paris, according to City Hall. The system is also creating jobs: students are now being recruited for repair and maintenance jobs. And regular Vélib'ers have noticed a marked improvement in the availability and condition of the bikes. Bravo! Now if only we could get those nasty motorized vehicles off the streets (and sidewalks, in the case of motorbikes), Paris would be a peaceful place to live. But then again, it wouldn’t be Paris.
SARKO MOOED
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is a never-ending source of entertainment. During his visit on Saturday to the Salon de l’Agriculture in Paris, a required stop for politicians in this terroir-obsessed country, Sarko was not only “mooed” as he shook hands with the crowd, but once again demonstrated his impolitic inability to control his temper. When he reached out to shake hands with one older man, the response was “No, don’t touch me.” “Get out of here, then,” riposted Sarko. “You dirty me,” shot back the man. “Get out of here, then, you jerk,” replied Sarko. But perhaps the real insult was the way the two opponents used the familiar “tu” form with each other, a sign of utter disrespect in this context. The exchange was caught on video by Le Parisien and can be seen here.
Less droll is Sarkozy’s attempt to circumvent France’s highest constitutional authority, the Conseil Constitutional,
which declared unconstitutional the part of a law that extends prisoners’ detention time retroactively. Feb. 27, 2008
PARIS DOCUMENTS HEROISM
Following an international colloquium on the subject of rescuing victims of genocide, held at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (a.k.a. Sciences Po), the City of Paris commissioned a research project on the rescue of Jews in Paris during the Occupation. The resulting booklet, “Le Sauvetage des Juifs à Paris 1940-1944,” which includes testimony from Jews who were protected from deportation thanks to the efforts of ordinary Parisians, is available for free online or from the Hôtel de Ville (49 rue de Rivoli, 75004 Paris) and the mairies of Paris's arrondissements, along with a number of other interesting brochures on the city and its history.
