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• Keys

  The first time I met Paul, I wanted to drop-kick him into the Seine. The suede elbow patches on his tweed jacket, his moleskin pants, and the tiny round glasses slipping down his nose all belied the cracked and unhinged apartment door where he greeted me: Paul had just been paid a visit by the huissier, or repo-man. “Rocky Raccoon” blasted from his stereo out into the hallway, and our English-speaking presence garnered curious looks from returning building residents whose working day was finished. Paul was lit up like the fourteenth of July, and after introducing me to the other revelers in his flat, he insisted on a sing-a-long to “Why don’t we do it in the road?” I wanted to edge down into the stairwell and back into the Marais streets, but for reasons unknown I chose to step onto the crumbling hexagonal tomette tiles in the nearly-empty studio, where I swilled from a plastic bottle of wine bought at ED discount, and put up with Paul’s gap-toothed grin and the way he flipped his graying mop over to the side of his face when he interrupted me for the third time.
  
  
  

• Sans ascenseur

  No elevator, you say? An inevitable, even if perhaps temporary, part of Parisian life is dwelling on the last floor of a walk-up building. In pre-elevator days, the wealthiest Parisians lived on the lower floors of a building, and the hired help inhabited the upper levels – no one who had a choice wanted to climb stairs. Nowadays, even without the benefit of a retro-fitted lift, I rather prefer the highest floors, for they allow me a personalized Parisian skyline: the chimneys numbering in the hundreds any way I look, lazy twirls of smoke puffing out of them, or the late afternoon sunlight reflecting hazily off the round cupolas of the Haussman-era buildings. Something about the dull zinc shine of the cupolas always reminds me of summer’s last breath having exhaled into autumn, even if the trees in the Père Lachaise are now covered in snow.
  
  
  

• Re-new

  For many of the world’s citizens, the first of January is the start of a new year. But in France, September marks la rentrée, which means back to school, but it’s also the time when refreshed, sun-tanned workers return home to Paris ready to tackle their jobs with gusto and a restored sense of work ethic. The promise of one last month of warm weather greets city dwellers before gay Paree becomes gray Paree sometime around mid-October. But some Parisians, whose vacation period just didn’t last quite long enough (two weeks instead of three or five, for example), greet the rentrée with more than a little ambivalence, which we refer to in French as "half-fig, half-grape."
  
  
  

• Futurism(s)

  What do Italian painters Giacomo Balla and Luigi Russolo have in common with Georges Braque, Marcel Duchamp, and Pablo Picasso, or with the contemporary DJ Jeff Mills? They have all, at some point in their careers, shared a common aesthetic, that of F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto. Published in the French newspaper Le Figaro in 1909, the text and its adherents are being honored by the Pompidou Center, or Beaubourg, in a an exhibit entitled "Le Futurisme à Paris - une avant-garde explosive."
  
  
  

• Concrete honey

  Acacia honey, chestnut honey, thyme honey, lavender honey, concrete honey. Wait just one minute there... If honey in France is always labeled according to the plant where bees gather their nectar, what are our striped friends possibly sucking out of concrete? Most honey is of the monofloral variety: for example, thyme honey is produced almost exclusively from the nectar of thyme flowers. But polyfloral honey comes from the creative bees who have collected nectar from all types of plants and flowers before transforming it into the oozing sweet substance that we buy in jars. Since urban bees can’t find much nectar in sidewalks and roadways, they gather in what Olivier Darné calls the interstices of the city: parks, balcony planters, empty lots, rooftop terraces, roundabouts, and tree-lined streets. So Olivier’s Miel béton, or concrete honey, is actually polyfloral, and it’s being produced right in the northern Parisian suburb of Saint Denis.
  
  
  

• Fauna

  It turns out that Pixar doesn’t have the monopoly on epicurean rats living in Paris. Long before rodent Rémy was tasting stew in Ratatouille, an entire vermin population had to contend with an unwanted move when Paris’ wholesale market left its central location at Les Halles. The Road to Rungis, a young adult novel by Christian Léourier, recounts the story of Gaspard and his son Achille, two uprooted rats who must follow their food source from Les Halles [lay al] to Rungis market, just south of Paris, in 1969.
  
  
  

• City of metro love

  We’ve all seen the kind of couple that holds hands innocently on the metro platform. But once inside the moving train, they’re all over each other, indulged in frantic groping and a slobbery kiss-fest. Far be it from me to censure the passengers’ hedonistic enthusiasm – I find it charming – but what I’m wondering is how the metro inspires such amorous behavior? It’s not the sickly yellow interiors, or the harsh glow of those fluorescent lights that prevent homeless passengers from dozing on the tagged vinyl banquettes. Maybe the only place that really feels like summer some years is inside the steamy metro cars. Or maybe it’s because the trains rock their way from one station to the next through long, dark tunnels – powerful metaphors popularized by American blues songs. Perhaps the protection offered by the moving metro prompts budding exhibitionists into action, whereas at street level they’re less tempted to lock lips so enthusiastically. Or it could just be that Paris really is the most romantic city on earth, all the way down to its subterranean transportation system.
  
  
  

• Seeing today

  You could hardly begin to count the hours people spend in Paris lingering over coffee and ruminating their morning thoughts in a public place. In one of my common cafés, a courtesy smile passes over current patrons’ mouths as other sleepy customers push open the café’s glass door and let in the green-smelling gust usually coming off the square Gardette in the 11th arrondissement. The same question persists: how long can I make one tiny cup of coffee last while I prepare the day’s schedule? Longer, of course, if it’s a café américain: watered-down lavasse or sock juice, as they call it here. I’m still mastering the technique of a happy temperature medium, prolonging the moment when I first raise the steaming cup to my lips, but on the other hand, repeating the movement often enough to avoid tipping frigid dregs into my mouth.
  
  
  

• Sleep, my pretty

  Who doesn’t love the simple seductiveness of a poppy? Wherever a tiny quadrant of nature attracts curious urban explorers, they’re sure to find the finely-crinkled flowers poking courageously from a crack between stones. May and June are prime poppy-picking months in Paris: fuzzy fat pods grace the city’s terrain vagues, or empty lots, and then luscious red-orange flowers unfold, exposing pleated petals that would even impress Issey Miyake. Another designer inspired by poppies, Manon Martin creates hats and bags in her atelier in the rue de Turenne, using the fabric pictured here.
  
  
  

• Ripped butter

  One of the greatest pleasures of Parisian food shopping is the astounding availability: any product made in France is regularly trucked and trained in to the city, to the delight of the deep-pocketed foodies who live here. Although I try to buy as locally as possible, from AMAP (like CSA) farmers and producers in the île de France, everyone knows that cows aren’t exactly grazing on the grounds of the parc de la Villette. Can’t you just imagine the tumult caused by cows nibbling tabbouleh from outdoor cinema fans’ picnic baskets? The bovines turn out in record numbers for My Beautiful Laundrette or Pasolini’s Accatone, displacing Parisians in a cinema-inspired transhumance. One trampled city-dweller hears a far-away moo, emanating from somewhere behind the inflatable cinema screen, and he reaches for his cell phone, thinking it was on vibrate mode. No, few Parisians would be prepared to accept a harmonious cohabitation of cow and human in their fair city. And they don’t have to, since nowadays the tractor trailers hauling in our wonderful products from all over the country are being put onto trains, to save on fuel, pollution, and road traffic. Occasionally, after obtaining yet another overdraft authorization from my friendly banker, and instead of spending cash on wicker platform sandals, I’ll walk my flaming pockets straight down to the cremerie to buy one of these imported products: a mini-basket of butter from the town of Echiré.