Kristy+IynVisit Day 6: Shopping!

The day began with a morning trip to the marché aux puces (flea market) of St. Ouen, which is near Porte de Clignancourt just outside of Paris proper. I had vague memories of visiting this massive flea market nearly 10 years ago, but I had clearly missed out on large parts of the market. This time around, Kristy, Iyn and I did only about 50% of the market's surface area, and we had spent nearly half the day.

The outer fringes of the market are deceiving. It looks like a bunch of tents selling knockoff clothing and shoes. However, once you get a bit further in, to the bricks-and-mortar shops, you suddenly find vendors selling Napoleon III buffets, Art Déco dining tables, and Louis XIV chairs. Although there are antique shops devoted to pretty much anything you can imagine (i.e. silverware only), the real stars of the market are the antique furniture sellers. What is most amazing about the place is how you can shop for 12 000€ dining tables in one place, and haggle over 2€ rusty candlesticks somewhere else. The high-end stores clustered towards the center, with the cheaper garage-sale-type stuff at the edges.

Kristy managed to score an old sketch of Saint-Severin, a book of Dürer engravings, and a color photo of a beautiful royal tomb, while I scored a 12-piece ceramic coffee service with creamer, sugar pot and coffee-maker for 20€. The service isn't particularly pretty, but the coffee-maker is similar to the Peruvian-style drip-brew pots that I am very fond of.

Kristy and Iyn also found a bunch of prints of Rackham and Clarke illustrations (19th-c. English, Romantic / Gothic stuff), including a bunch of lovely black-and-white prints for a book of Edgar Allen Poe stories. It broke my heart to see the pages separated from the original book (it's more profitable to cut out the illustrated pages and sell them separately), although what really killed me was seeing, only a few stores away, the remains of a late-medieval antiphoner, hand-written on vellum, being sold as individual pages. Aïe!

After all of that was done, we swung by home to drop off our stuff and have a cup of coffee, then off we went to Galeries Lafayette for some shopping. We picked up some chocolates and other fancy stuff in the food area of the store, and then headed over to the main building to look at the dome and do a bit of shopping. Kristy was looking for shoes and maybe some scarves, but in the end everything was too expensive. Add to that the fact that the place was packed with people, and suddenly we were all very eager to leave.

We headed over to BHV, where we managed to find some nice cufflinks for Iyn; in a Bata shoe store nearby, Kristy found a couple of pairs of shoes that she liked and that were also in her price range. Yay!

After that, the plan was to go to Pere Lachaise cemetary to wander about, but the cemetary had just closed, so we had to look elsewhere. We headed over to the bassin de la Villette, which is part of a chain of canals that passes through the north-east part of Paris and ends in the Seine. There is a movie theatre (in fact, one on each side of the canal) that has a nice café in front of it, so we went there to sit down for a coffee and a bite to eat.

From there, we picked up some bread at a nearby bakery and headed home to eat dinner (mostly cheese and bread, really) and head to bed.

Well, at least, Kristy and Iyn went to bed. I went out to meet Anatoly at Le Point Ephémère for a minimal techno night highlighting artists associated with Mutek. The main artists included Stephen Beaupré, Pheek, and Frivolous. After a week of running around Paris with Kristy & Iyn, I was too exhausted to do anything very ethnographic, so I didn't take any pictures or go out of the way to remember the details of the night. That much being said, it was a great time! I wish I could've stayed to hear Pheek's set....

...but instead I left the bar at 3h30, got home for 4h00, woke up Kristy and Iyn, and took them to the airport so they could catch their 7h45 flight. I was so tired, I nearly missed my stop on the way back home.

Kristy+IynVisit Day 5: Opéra, La Durée, and dinner

I had to work again today, so off I went to work while Kristy and Iyn did a tour of the Opéra Garnier. From Kristy's account, the place was mind-bogglingly gorgeous. How surprising!

Once work was done, I met the two of them at Les Tuileries. We tried to get a bite to eat at one of the cafés in the gardens, but the server was too busy to bring us the menus, let alone food, so we got up and kept walking. We passed Concorde and then headed up to Madeleine, intent on showing Iyn what he missed at La Durée last Monday. We had mostly the same fantastic desserts as before, but the main difference was that we had the oddest and most amusing server ever. The man was young, but clearly trying to take himself very seriously and appear older. He had a pointy goatee and a long moustache (it wasn't waxed...but that was the only thing missing). He had wire-rimmed glasses and a very tight black vest over his shirt.

For some reason, he was intent on speaking English to us, despite his thick accent and my reasonable capacity to speak French. Once we had made our order--with his eyes boring into us with great seriousness, he came back to set our table. He was either OCD or making a great show of displaying his table-setting prowess. He carefully lined up the dishes and plates and napkins and cutlery with minute precision, flipping the knife-blades inwards and pausing for a full 10 seconds to contemplate the placement of one napkin.

When he brought out our food and tea, he paused for a moment, looked at us all, and said "Euh...I wish you...a very pleasant...euh...moment." This would be a literal translation of what all the servers at this tea salon say in French. However graceful it may sound in French, it was pretty awkward in English and it took real effort to avoid giggling.

Nonetheless, the tea and the desserts were great and we had a lovely time. At one point, Kristy thanked the server in French and he looked at her very seriously in and said, "You can say 'Thank you, Arthur.'" WTF? Later on, I thanked him for something (also in French) and he said "Bitte." (i.e., "You're welcome" in German.) After all of that, we were thinking that I should just spontaneously address him in Spanish, just to see what he does.

To top off the event, while he was waiting for my credit card to go through, he started humming along to the background music (one of the few eateries in France where I've heard music). After a moment, he looks at Kristy, and says "It's Carmen." When Kristy responds with a bland smile, he continues, "By Bizet." Now, this is funny, because Kristy was an opera vocal-performance major in her undergrad, and probably knows the opera in question inside-out. Either way, the server was clearly assuming that the Americans wouldn't know anything about opera, and would thus be profoundly impressed by his prestigious cultural knowledge. Bourdieu, call your office! Anyway, I jumped in quickly and said "Yes, she's quite familiar with it," and that put a quick stop to what promised to be an uncomfortable conversation.

Once we were done there, we got on the métro and headed back home. I left Kristy and Iyn to make a detour to Bastille, while I went home and made a quick run to the butcher for some food for dinner. There was some sort of IT-related problem at the residence when I got back so I got sidetracked for a while and didn't get to making dinner until Kristy and Iyn were already back. A couple of hours later, we ate a huge pile of steak and endless amounts of cheese, drank a lot of wine, and stumbled off to bed.

Kristy+IynVisit Day 4: Eiffel, Nôtre-Dame, Chez Denise

[NOTE: Now Improved with Pictures! Thanks to Kristy for taking these.]

Today was a day of real hard-core tourism. We started off the day (a bit late) with a trip to the the best croissant place in town (Pâtisserie Millet), followed by the runner-up (whose name I can NEVER remember). From there, we walked along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower, where we "embraced the suck" and got in line. It wasn't quite noon when we got in line, and it was past 3pm when we got done with that place. Ultimately, as Kristy pointed out, the tower is much more impressive from the ground. Once you're up there, it's just a view of the city like the one you can get at Montmartre or Montparnasse for much less trouble.

After that, we headed off to the Arc de Triomphe for some photos, and then over to the Latin Quarter. We got some cheap turkish sandwiches (a.k.a. gyros, döner kebab, shawarma) and wandered around the neighborhood, stopping at l'Eglise Saint-Severin to let Kristy take a zillion pictures. Afterwards, we headed over to the islands on the Seine to see Notre-Dame. As it turns out, today was the feast of the Last Supper and we were there in time for the evening service, so we hung out near the transept for a few minutes to witness the opening process and choral performance, and then headed back out.

After stopping in the gardens behind the cathedral for a few more pictures and buying some scarves at an overpriced souvenir store, we headed over to Ile Saint-Louis to grab some Berthillon ice cream. As always, Berthillon (see below) didn't disappoint; their ice cream was simply divine. A little while later, we grabbed a spot on the terrasse of one of the cafés overlooking the back of the cathedral, and we hung out for a bit, preparing for our dinner later that night.

Dinner was at Chez Denise (Au Tour Montlhéry), which is this old restaurant that dates from the time when Les Halles was still an open-air market, not an underground shopping mall. The dining is very much home-style, which means the portions are huge and served to the center of the table (to be shared by the diners). I've been here once before and had a really great time. We started by ordering some steamed asparagus in vinaigrette with this HUGE slab of rillettes. After that, I had a strip steak that looked like it was 750 grams, Kristy had the mutton and beans, and Iyn had the boeuf gros sel, which is essentially a very slow-cooked stewed beef brisket served with coarse sea salt. We weren't even able to finish our main dishes, so we let the desserts go and just ordered some digestifs. After a moment to take our picture in front of the restaurant, we hiked back to the métro and headed home.

Kristy+IynVisit Day 3: Louvre, Crêpes, Trois Marmites

Well, I had to go in to work today, so Kristy and Iyn went to the Louvre and took that in while I toiled away at work. It seemed like everyone knew that I was taking most of the week off, so I had a week's worth of IT issues to deal with that day. Nonetheless, I finished only an bit later than usual and headed off to find Kristy and Iyn.

When I collected them at the Louvre, they were dying of hunger, so we hopped over to a crêperie that I knew would had "service non-stop" (they stay open between lunch service and dinner service, which means between 15h00 and 17h30). The place is called La Crêperie du Clown (yes, that is it's name), but the owners seem to prefer spelling it differently: La Crêpe rit du Clown ("The crêpe laughs at the clown"). Very funny.

Nonetheless, they had a very nice crêpe-centric prix-fixe menu, and each of us had a lovely savoury crêpe, followed by an equally lovely sweet crêpe. The meals came with cider or apple juice, both of which were really, really good. When we ordered coffee and the check, service suddenly became glacially slow. Once our coffee had arrived and we had finished it, I sent Kristy & Iyn to wait outside, hoping that this would remind our server that we actually needed our bill sometime soon. A few moments later, he delivered the bill, I layed out the money, and we were off again.

Since we were very close by, I showed Kristy and Iyn l'Eglise St. Germain des Près, which is gorgeous. Unlike most churches, this one has maintained a painted interior, which means that it doesn't have the cavernous, grey look that many medieval churches now have. I actually tried to snap a picture of the choir while showing Kristy how to fiddle with shutter and exposure settings:

After that, we walked down to Saint-Sulpice and took a look in there as well. After Saint-Sulpice, we took a moment to return to the Pantheon (where our restaurant was the night before) to get a few pictures by daylight. From there, we headed off to Montmartre to see Sacre-Coeur and watch the sun set from the top of the hill. When we got there, we realized that the Funiculaire (the cable-car) wasn't working, so we hiked it up all those stairs. Kristy kept a running count, and if I'm not mistaken, it was about 290 stairs. Although the climb nearly killed us, the view from the top was lovely and Sacre-Coeur was even lovlier. The interior of the church was as beautiful as I had remembered, although I think they've done some restoration to the ceilings in the intervening years; all the mosaics were shinier than ever.

As we left the church, we stopped to take a picture of the Eiffel tower in the distance, and then wandered our way down the the side of the hill and back to the subway station. From there, we headed off to Les Trois Marmites for dinner. The great thing about this place is the 19€ menu, which allowed us to have dinner for 3, plus apéritifs, a good bottle of wine, digestifs and coffee for 100€ even.

For appetizers, I had escargots, breaded and deep fried with parsely sauce. Kristy and Iyn had a savoury clafouti made of leeks, which they both seemed to enjoy immensely. For the main dish, I had duck breast in apricot sauce, Kristy had a pork chop cooked in honey, and Iyn had the beef bourguignon. All three dishes were fantastic, although I was especially thrilled with mine. Kristy and I both had the cremet d'Anjou (cream cheese and meringue mixed together) with strawberry sauce, which was excellent, although a bit sweet. I can't even remember what Iyn had. We did have a lot of alcohol, after all.

After all of that foodie exertion, we took a long walk to the 11-line subway stop and glided back home.

Kristy+IynVisit Day 2: Versailles and Terra Nera

[NOTE: Now Improved with Pictures! Thanks to Kristy for taking these.]

Due to staying up until all hours last night, I slept in a bit, then dragged myself to the shower (right around the time that Kristy and Iyn knocked on my door to see what was up). We headed off to the UCParis center (my work) to fax a my teaching application, and then continued on to Versailles. The lines at Versailles were as long as usual, so we took about 2 hours to get our tickets and then get into the building. Once inside, Kristy declared the palace "rediculous" (which became a recurring word to describe the overwhelming beauty of Paris) and spent nearly 10 minutes per room, snapping numerous pictures of pretty much every square inch of each room. Iyn and I stood by and watched.

By the time we got outside to go see the outdoor areas (parks, the canal, Marie Antoinette's "village"), the weather had cooled off substantially. It was still lovely when you were in the sun, but the combination of wind and clouds made things pretty damn cold. Add to this the fact that none of us had dressed for a cold day, plus Iyn still heavy with his cold, and things got miserable pretty quickly. We still had a great time, but we were totally exhausted by the time we got back to the RER station.

Unfortunately, it was already pretty late in the afternoon, so we didn't have time to go home and change clothes before dinner. We headed over to the the Luxembourg gardens and had a quick beer at La Gueuze (previously mentioned here) before heading over to Terra Nera (previously here).

I had wanted to start us off with mozzarella in carozza (breaded and deep-fried mozzarella), but they were out of it that night, so we went for a plate of antipasti and some beef carpaccio. This posed a bit of a challenge for Kristy; you see, Kristy is a picky eater. She doesn't eat vegetables (seriously), she doesn't eat fish, and she's wary of anything that doesn't come in a carb or protein form (pasta, bread, cheese, meat). Nonetheless, Kristy made a valiant effort, eating a few bits of antipasti and trying some of the beef carpaccio (she loves beef, but the idea of raw beef weirded her out).

For our main dishes, Kristy had the ravioli in truffle sauce, Iyn had a pork piccata with gorgonzola sauce (orgasmic, according to Iyn) and I had gnocchi alla sorrentina (a sauce made of cream, tomatoes and cheese). By the time we were done our main dishes, we were all unbelievably full and Iyn looked like he was going to fall over dead. We settled up the bill and lurched back home, collapsing in our respective beds.

Kristy+IynVisit Day 1: Delays and Creamy Chicken

I got up very, very early in the morning to head to the airport and pick up Kristy and Iyn. I checked their flight status and realized that the plane was 4 hours behind, so I went back to bed (thank goodness for internet flight-checking!) and got up a few hours later.

I got to the arrival area of Terminal 2E a bit early, so I took a moment to drink some coffee and sit down. A few minutes later, their flight appeared on the board as "landed", so I headed over to the plexiglass wall that separated me from the baggage claim and watched for Kristy and Iyn. What I soon found out was that the customs and passport check were taking very, very long. The first group of people that streamed out were actually from Detroit (I learned this by asking the other folks waiting at the plexiglass like me); the Detroit flight had landed almost an hour ago, so this was some indication of how long things would take.

As I prepared to wait another hour to see my friends, I begin to hear distant drumming. Now, an airport terminal is possibly the last place I would've expected to hear distant drumming, but nonetheless there it was. At first I thought it might be some sort of hare krishna procession, but: a) we're not on the West Coast of the US; b) post 9/11, I suspect religious processions are not welcome in terminals.

The noise was coming from above, on the departures level, so after making sure that the Chicago flight hadn't started to flow into the baggage claim area, I headed up the stairs to see what was the matter. As it turns out, there was a union strike / demonstration of some sort. I couldn't figure out what the acronym stood for, so all I could figure out was that they were unionized and pissed off. They were beating empty water drums with sticks and chanting something rhythmic that I couldn't make out. Also, the leader had a bullhorn, which is always bad news.

A while later, the group reappeared on the arrivals level, stopping to rest on the row of seats behind me. Of course, this didn't stop them from drumming and yelling, so now I had this once-amusing noise-parade parked behind me. Clearly, I wasn't the only one unamused, as soon a few people around me abandoned the French pro-union ways and started heckling them: "Au chômage!" they yelled. This translates to "go to unemployment!" in other words, telling them to give up their cause and collect unemployment insurance instead. Very sweet.

Kristy and Iyn finally arrived and claimed their luggage, and we started the trek back to my place. Alas, Iyn had developed a powerful cold / flu / plague just before the flight, so he was miserable. We stopped at the pharmacy near my place to get him some decongestants, and it turned into a drug-fest. Pharmacists in France have the power to give out many medications that would normally require a doctor's prescription in the US or Canada. The pharmacist asked me a bunch of questions about Iyn's symptoms, and then we left the pharmacy with 4 different medications (all of which cost only 7€!).

After checking in to my building, getting the keys to their room and letting them settle in, Kristy and I headed off downtown to exchange Kristy's travel vouchers for a set of transit passes. This had to be done at this one particular office near the Tuileries (gardens of the Louvre), so we headed over there and took care of business. While we were there, we took a short walk past place de la Concorde, over to Madeleine. We stopped at La Durée for a bit of tea, some macarons, and a fantastic réligieuse filled with rose petals and raspberries. On the way back home, we also stopped in at the Maille mustard store at Madeleine and I picked up a few little bottles of unusual mustard flavors (Cognac, Thai Spice) as well as a small crock of their fresh "on tap" mustard. For the record, the fresh stuff is amazing, and far better than what you get in a bottle at the supermarket. Finally, we swung by Fauchon (also on Madeleine) to pick up a bottle of violet mustard, which is a mustard preparation from Brive, France, which uses grape must instead of white wine.

With that taken care of, we dropped by my place and collected Iyn, who was feeling better. We did a quick run to the grocery store, picked up the necessary items to keep everyone fed, and then headed back home for dinner. I made my frenchy creamy-mushroom chicken, which Kristy had always liked. It was great to finally make it for her with real creme fraîche. The chicken turned out a bit tougher than I would've liked, but Kristy & Iyn seemed very happy to eat it. We were also joined by DJ, who brought up some wine. I had already opened a bottle of wine, so we made our way through two bottles by the end of the meal.

This was part of my plan all along. By the time we were done, Kristy & Iyn were so sleepy, they went right back to their room and collapsed in bed. I, meanwhile, stayed up until 5am working frantically on a teaching application that was already past due. Yay!

P.S. Check out this ad that I saw on in the airport. This is part of this amusingly relativist ad campaign by HSBC.

The Day In-Between

This was pretty much my one day of rest. I had spent the last week welcoming / orienting the new group of students, hanging out with Anisa, partying with Mark, and yesterday I went out for some fieldwork and fun at Le Rex. Tomorrow morning, my friends Kristy & Iyn arrive from Chicago to spend a week with me, running to and fro around Paris.

So, my schedule, like many Sundays before, was essentially blog--eat--sleep. I also did what felt like 100000000 loads of laundry. I can't say how much I dislike the laundry situation in our building, although I appreciate that it is at least IN our building. meh.

Katapult Party at the Rex

Sometime around 11h00, Mark and I woke up. Mark put himself together, packed his stuff and headed off to the train station. For my part, I fell back asleep.

I can't remember how most of that day went. I woke up in a haze, did some blogging, made myself a bit of food (using this quinoa-based pasta that tastes lovely but breaks far too easily) and got ready to go out again. I'm pretty sure I ate dinner with DJ, but even that isn't clear. Hmm...

Katapult Night @ Le Rex: Baby Ford, Mark Broom, Skat, Alex&Laetitia

0h00-2h00: Skat

I had forgotten that the métro runs till 2am on Saturdays, so I ended up taking the train at around 0h30 and arriving at the Rex far too early. The line was pretty long, though, so by the time I got in, the place wasn't completely empty. The coat check line was pretty short, too, which was a nice change.

Shortly after getting in, I ran into a large group of students from work. Apparently, they were celebrating someone's birthday, and had thought that the Rex would be the best bet for clubbing in Paris (the Rex is generally known in the way that Crobar in Chicago or The Tunnel in NYC is). It was almost 1h30 and they were concerned that the place was still nowhere near full, but I assured them that people usually flood in between 2h00 and 3h00. For the record, I'm not actually teaching these students, so this still doesn't count as my "Holy crap, my students saw my partying" moment. A few minutes later, I ran into another group of students who were out partying. Ironically, both groups had gone out separately, thus making the "critical mass" of U of C students at the night even more amusing. It was like we had organized a field trip.

Skat's set was a overall pretty disappointing. Part of it was that his mixes tended to be abrupt and not well-chosen (i.e., the overlapping tracks didn't mesh), but a large part of it was that I came expecting one sound, and got something very different. My memories of Katapult events come mainly from their float at the Techno Parade last September, as well as their after-party for the event. In both cases, I got the impression that most of what Katapult artists produce gravitates toward microhouse and minimal techno, overlaying a playful house sound over minimal techno's otherwise austere face. In the end, I've discovered that what I like about Katapult is mainly Cabanne.

So if I came expecting click-pop and microhouse, you can look at the videos I uploaded of Skat's set to see what I got instead--especially the second clip. It was like some sort of retro classic house set, which I just wasn't in the mood for. He even dropped the "In the beginning there was Jack, and Jack had a groove" track, which signifies for classic house much like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" signifies for the grunge era.

2h30-3h45: Mark Broom

This was another story of misplaced expectations. You see, my mistake was to remember Mark Broom through his remix of Ken Ishii's Overlap. Listening to this (note: much like most .mp3 blogs, this link will go dead after a little while, so listen now) back in 1996 was almost revelatory. Anyway, as the three video clips below can attest, this wasn't quite the sound Mark Broom is producing these days. It was like there was some sort of nostalgia-fest for 90's era house that I had not been told about. As far as I could tell, that moment of nostalgia had arrived and left on New Year's Eve, 2004, in Toronto.

This isn't to say that I didn't manage to get my dance on, I was just a lot less enthusiastic about it and a bit anxious about what Baby Ford might do to follow Mark Broom's set. At one point, one of my friends walked up to me and said, "What's going on?! What is this stuff? Do you think Baby Ford will sound like this, too?" Clearly, I wasn't the only one taken aback. Nonetheless, clubbing involves both appreciation and celebration, so if we were having trouble with the former activity, we could always focus on the latter.

3h45-4h30: Baby Ford

OK, Baby Ford's set was great, but far too short. He was spinning vinyl, so I presumed that he was going to go for 1.5-2 hours, but instead he lasted barely 45 minutes. His set was definitely microhouse, with a real emphasis on punchy, sparse textures and interlocked percussion. As soon as his set started, I found the same friend I had spoken to earlier, just to share the moment. "Finally!" "Yeah, it was about time!"

This is another one of those moments of affective mirroring and intimacy. During Mark Broom's set, we inquired into each other's experience ("Are you feeling this set?" "No." "Me neither."), and had a moment of connectedness as we found someone to share our disappointment. Now, during Baby Ford's set, we check in on each other, find that our affective states match but in a more positive way, and have a moment of closeness and mutuality. At this point as well, "appreciation" and "celebration" overlap in a moment of intimacy. Later during the same set, I ran into Laurent and several friends of his, and we hung out near the DJ booth and had similar moments of "Are you feeling this?!" "Yeah!" "Me too!!"

For some reason, most of the pictures of Baby Ford came out pretty well, so the lucky bitch gets a bunch of photos, as well as some video:

(That's the back of Laurent's head in most of these photos)

4h30-6h00: Mark Broom AGAIN

After about 45 minutes of dancing to Baby Ford, I began to notice a shift in the sound of his set. The tracks were still somewhat minimal, but getting noisier and veering back toward the classic-vocal-house-without-vocals sound. I looked over at the booth to discover that Mark Broom had quietly taken over for Baby Ford. I was disappointed and pissed, but at least I can say that this second set by Mark Broom was far better than his first. One could imagine it as a sort of middleground between his earlier set and Baby Ford's set. Also, he got on this disco / new wave kick that climaxed in New Order's "Blue Monday" followed immediately by Giorgio Moroder & Donna Summer's "I Feel Love," which totally made the rest of the evening worth it. I love that you can still drop the original 7-minute extended mix of that Moroder track and get a room full of people hopping. I bet most of the people in the club weren't alive when this track was first made. I think I was 1 year old...

I made my way to 5h30, and then limped out to the métro and headed home. The ride home was pretty amusing, as a very drunk and slightly belligerent guy was sitting on the 11-line platform, occasionally yelling "Shut up!" at the whole platform, even though nobody was being particularly loud. At some point, another very, very, very drunk younger guy--who was essentially being held up by his friends) started a conversation with him, which went sort of like this:

"Hey! It stinks in this station.

"Yeah, it stinks of Sarko." [right-wing political candidate Sarkozy, who's not particularly popular with young and/or brown people]

"Yeah, it stinks of that rat Sarko and his little whore.

"Yeah, Sarko's playing in the gutter."

"Yeah, Sarko's a cocksucker."

"Yeah, he sucks tiny Chinese dick."

So, this conversation made sense until that last phrase. Nobody around me seemed to be particularly offended or confused, so perhaps this has metonymic content that I'm missing. I mean, I understand that sucking cock is supposed to be an insult for men, based on rather banal heterosexism, but I don't quite understand why Chinese cock is particularly worse--or why it needs to be tiny. Either way, I'm waiting for the day that someone says that again, so I can ask for an explanation.

Mark descends on Paris, and Open House @ L'Elysée Montmartre

After getting home and crashing Thursday night/Friday morning, I slept in until I got a call from my friend Mark, who was arriving in Paris that day. I gave him directions to my place and started cleaning up my apartment; a short while later, the poor, tired boy appeared and I brought him up to my place. After a quick (but delicious) lunch at a bistro near my place (Le Clairon), I left Mark to take a nap while I washed a load of towels downstairs and worked on some blogging.

Once Mark had finished taking a disco nap (and my towels were dry), we started getting ready to go out. Mark was heading off to Lyon the next day, so the plan was to do a bit of clubbing tonight while he was still in Paris. We first headed out for dinner to a Moroccan restaurant called Au Petit Cahoua. It is a favourite of mine for tagine and couscous, and this time didn't disappoint. I was a bit annoyed that we ordered a vegetarian couscous for Mark and they brought out chicken, but at least they corrected the situation quickly.

After dinner, Mark had expressed a desire to do "something gay," so off we went to the Marais. We wandered along rue Ste.-Croix de la Bretonnerie, the main drag of the gay neighborhood, and eventually wandered into a bar called Cocks (I swear I'm not making this up). The place was nowhere near as racy as the name implied; it was your standard "grab a beer and pose" bar, with innocuous house in the background and reasonably cute bartenders. After a few minutes of wandering around, clutching our beers, we were approached by a friendly couple who wanted to know if I was Spanish ("guess the ethnicity" seems to be a popular game for breaking the ice). They were both very excited to hear that Mark and I worked on electronic music, and we spent a good couple of hours chatting. The only thing that marred the evening was when a certain burly man, who claimed to be a Parisian cop, got rather fresh with Mark. I realize that the police wield a fair bit of power here, but I'm pretty sure they don't have the right to do that sort of thing with their finger...I'm just sayin'.

Since we didn't have pre-sale tickets, Mark and I left Cocks at around midnight, to head to l'Elysée Montmartre for this evening's festivities.

Open House @ L'Elysée Montmartre: The Hacker, Loco Dice, Ivan Smagghe, and Paco

0h00-1h30: Paco

When we arrived at l'Elysée Montmartre, we had a rather amusing "organization à la française" moment. The doors had a short line trailing to the right, a long line trailing to the left, and a disorganized mass of people waiting right in the middle. I approached the shorter line, and asked someone if they were waiting to enter on the guest list, with presale tickets, or without. The guy said "I hope it's the guestlist!" Hmm. We wandered over to the end of the longer line, presuming that it must be for people without presale tickets. I asked a girl who was in line ahead of me, and she said that she wasn't sure, but she was there with a presale pass. One of her friends went ahead to check and then came back and confirmed to us that we were in the wrong line. So, Mark and I went back to the main door to try to see what we could glean from the signs on the doors. One sign indicated a line for people holding presale tickets from a particular online vendor, another one for "passes" from some local radio station, another for the guest list, and another for some other sort of presale ticket.

So, in sum, there were four signs for four different lines, only two actual lines and a disorganized mass of people, and none of them were for people paying cash. Awesome. Mark and I got into the shorter line and asked the people in line again. Nobody was quite sure what the lineup was for. I asked the bouncer at the head of the line, who I recognized from other events at Le Rex, and he shrugged, saying, "Frankly, I don't know. Just get in line and find out." Thankfully, the line we were in was both short and fast-moving, so we got our answer pretty quickly. A host/portier came out and asked us how many were in our group. I said two, and without pausing to ask us what list we were on, waved us into the building. We paid at the booth near the stairs to the main hall, and then we were in.

Once inside, Mark and I circled the large hall, gave up on coatcheck, and hit the bar for a drink. The drink prices were especially painful (11€ for a mixed drink), so we grabbed the "Happy Hour" special, which was two bottles of this "red" beer stuff for 7€. It was AWFUL. We also ran into Nathan and a friend of his, but they seemed to be "on a mission," so we didn't see them very much that night.

The club itself was architecturally quite lovely. Obviously an erstwhile theatre / ballroom, it was now a large room with a very high ceiling, a balcony at the back, and quite a bit of detailed moulding on the ceiling. Check out the pictures below; the lighting made it really hard to pick up the detail, but I managed to get a bit of it.

Paco's set was fun but a bit generic, mixing somewhat house-y techno with occasional moments of electro. During most of the set I took pictures, most of which didn't turn out very well, but here's a few shots of the stage that I liked.

2h30-3h30: Ivan Smagghe

Ivan Smagghe is very well known in Paris as an electrohouse / electroclash DJ, although he is probably better known outside of Paris as a member of the electro group Blackstrobe. Incidentally, one of the men Mark and I were speaking to at that club in the Marais ("Cocks") had mentioned Ivan Smagghe, complaining that, while he had the potential to be one of the best DJs as far as track selection is concerned, he wasted his talent away through drug use. (Note: This is alleged by a third party, so take it with a grain of salt and in no way should this be construed as an accusation of anything illegal whatsoever). While I will stop short of labelling his selection "the best ever," I can definitely say that it was good. It was very much within the electro vein of things.

While I can't say that a great deal of interesting stuff happened during his set, I did get a bit of video, as well as a few interesting shots of the stage. They had the stage backlit, which made for some really neat but entirely accidental effects.

3h30-4h30: Loco Dice

Loco Dice's set was also pretty electro-house, although there were moments that strayed into minimal house territory (you can see what I mean in the video clips below). Earlier in the evening, I had told Mark about my observations of intimacy and sexualized play among (presumably) straight guys at clubs (previously mentioned here, among other places); during Loco's set, I had the opportunity to point out some of the same behaviour among some of the guys around us. Although nothing that night quite matched what I saw at the Rex 2 weeks before, nonetheless there was a group of guys who were getting rather fresh with each other when they weren't getting fresh with the women around them. Shame I didn't get a picture...

Mark had to catch a train the next day AND he had just arrived from an intercontinental flight that morning, so we threw in the towel around 4h00. We tried catching a taxi, but it was the wrong neighborhood and the wrong time of night to catch a taxi, so we grabbed the night bus as it passed by.

Dinner with Anisa, and Fantomette's b-day

So, after the unpleasantness of last Tuesday at l'Ourcine, I was eager to show my friend Anisa a properly good Parisian bistro dinner. After trying to make reservations at a few other restaurants on short notice, I got a recommendation from my boss for a restaurant that he had discovered hear the Parmentier métro stop, called Le Marsagny.

We arrived too early for our reservation (they were still having the server dinner when we arrived), so we spent a moment chatting outside under our umbrella. Once seated, we took a look at the menu and were suitably impressed. For 22€ you could get an appetizer + main dish, or a main dish + dessert. For all three, there was an extra 6€. Anisa had an avocado and shrimp millefeuille (essentially, a pile of sliced avocados and shrimp with a vinagrette), while I had their foie gras (which filled me with the usual mixture of delight and guilt). For the main dish, Anisa chose a grilled steak au poivre (if my memory serves me well), while I had a roasted filet of seabass. Both were delicious--my fish especially, which was crisped on the outside yet soft and moist on the inside, without being too translucent or raw. For dessert, Anisa had a crême brulée with saffron, which was delicious although a bit too bitter (the burnt sugar taste). I had an "evantail de poire" (poached pear partially sliced and fanned out) with chocolate ice cream. I wish I could remember what wine we had, because it was lovely.

After polishing off a great dinner (with great service, I might add), we headed off to a nearby bar, On Cherche Encore... to celebrate Fantomette's birthday.

Fanto's b-day @ On Cherche Encore

Happy birthday, Clothilde! Clothilde / Fantômette's birthday was actually a week earlier, but she scheduled her celebrations for tonight at On Cherche Encore... , a bar located near the Goncourt métro stop. Clothilde is one half of the DJ duo Be My Chose, who have appeared on this blog several times. I must admit that I wasn't really in fieldwork-mode that night, so I didn't keep a close eye on the evening's events and personalities. It was mostly just a great opportunity to hang out with Clothilde and her friends and catch up with Laurent, Nathan and others. Nonetheless, I did come up with a cute set of pictures:

A shot of the crowd from next to the DJ.

Nathan (mixing) and Laurent (live set) keeping the party going.

Nathan and Laurent again, plus some very happy guy in the foreground.