Paris Journal 2013 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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The snake penetrated the
front door of the building, and followed through to the back, out through the
garden, and into the lower level of the restaurant behind our building. The snake would not allow
either the front or back doors of the porte
cochere to close. We followed the
snake out to the sidewalk. It went
into one of several large, plain, unmarked white panel trucks parked along
our street. This kind of snake has
cables inside. We have a similar snake
that is part of our sound system that is used with Tom’s band, Island Jazz,
back in Sanibel. It holds the sound
cables in one, neat, flexible rubber tube. But the snake that
penetrated “our” building yesterday contained power cables. At least one of the big, white trucks had a
generator inside. The night before, we’d
wondered about the traffic cones that had been set up to block off most of
the parking spaces on our side of the block.
Now we could see that they were placed to make way for the trucks that
arrived yesterday morning. One of the half-dozen or so
trucks was parked up over the curb, partway
onto the sidewalk, right next to a construction wall that also
encroached on the sidewalk in front of the building on the corner, resulting
in a narrow passage through which some large people could not pass. Happily, Tom and I aren’t that large, so we
would be able to slip through and around the corner. But first, I approached the
only man I could see who was associated with the trucks. I asked him, in French, how many days would
it be like this? I didn’t like having
our building unsecured, with both the front and back doors open. He responded that it would
only be until 8PM. I said, “Ah.
Merci, monsieur,” and we went on our way. Around the corner on the
busy rue du Commerce, we crossed to the other side because we were going to the
ATM over there, and also because there wasn’t much room on the sidewalk in
front of the Le Café du Commerce as well as the LaCoste and Une Autre Femme
(Another Woman) shops on either side of the “café,” which is really a
beautiful restaurant (not a brasserie or café ). The sidewalk was cluttered
with moviemaking equipment – lots of it.
So much that it would require extra electrical power, provided via the
snake through our building. There were
also several directors chairs set up on the sidewalk to hold the bored bodies
of a number of actors and technicians. We’ve seen movie crews
working here and there in Paris from time to time. It isn’t glamorous at all. It is extremely boring. Much of the time seems to involve sitting
around and waiting. Seemingly, it
takes an entire day to come up with five or ten minutes of the finished
movie. We went by the scene a
couple more times as we returned from the ATM and went out again to walk to
the City of Paris’ Modern Art Museum on the other side of the Seine, in the 8th
arrondissement. Boring, boring,
boring. And very intrusive and
disruptive to the neighborhood. Around 6:30PM, when we
returned to the neighborhood from our museum outing, we were just about to
round the corner and slip through the narrow space onto our street when I saw
that we were passing Madame Billon, a neighbor from our building, who was coming
out of the narrow space. I greeted her. “Bonjour,
Madame!” She recognized us with a
big smile and stopped to chat. Her
French is so exquisitely perfect that we understand her every word. She must have gone to good Catholic girls’
schools. We talked about this and
that, and then she brought up the subject of the filmmaking. She said that the film company asked the
permission of the owners (the Billons own most of the building). The owners (mostly the Billons) said, “Non.”
Nevertheless, this morning, she explained, they set up anyway and
began their disruptions and instrusions through the building. Why? Because the property management company for
the syndic (like a co-op board or
property owners association for the building) claimed that it is the law in
France. Cinema is so important to the culture that it can go where it
wants. Wow. Is that really true? Or perhaps the property management company
was paid by the filmmaking company and this is the storyline they fed to the
elderly Billons? We chatted for a while then
about Monsieur Billon’s health and other matters, and then said good evening
to Madame. In the apartment, we
figured out where we would go for dinner:
Le Zoo. The existence of Le Zoo was
news to me. Evidently, it opened for
business in 2011. Le Zoo isn’t a zoo
at all, but rather a classic little old French bistro just a few blocks away,
at 12 rue de l’Amiral Roussin. We never
have much reason to turn off of the rue de la Croix Nivert and onto the rue
de l’Amiral Roussin. So we hadn’t seen
it. But thanks to
Lafourchette.com, Le Zoo came to our attention when I searched generally for
restaurants closest to us for last night.
Obviously, Le Café du Commerce is closest, but it didn’t appear on the
list for last night because the filmmaking company had taken it over. I reserved a table for us
at Le Zoo and off we went at 7:45.
What a pleasant surprise! The sidewalk tables were
occupied by chatting and drinking neighborhood people when we arrived, and we
took a place in a front corner of the dining room. Soon after we arrived and ordered a bottle
of sparkling water, other neighborhood people came in and took their
places. By the end of our dinner hour
there, only one table for two remained. There was only one other
table occupied by foreigners: a family
of four Asians on vacation. (There’s a
Best Western hotel on the rue de la Croix Nivert, nearby.) They, like us, spoke French to the servers. Everyone else was
local. They seemed to be mostly
40-something urban bureaucrats or hard-working professionals. This was not a pretentious crowd, but
rather a normal, down-to-earth, middle-class crowd. There was really only one
server, but the bartender pitched in and did a lot of the serving as
well. The kitchen seemed to be short
one person, so the chef had to come out once in a while to summon one of the
servers to be sure plates arrived on tables while food was still hot. The servers were quite
amiable. We enjoyed watching them
work. The chef was quite serious. He had the look of a highly disciplined,
former military type. The servers were
about as un-military looking as possible.
And they were full of joie de
vivre. The bistro was as lively
and convivial as can be. It’s décor
was sensible and old, but clean and serviceable. The effect was charming. Clearly, some bistro or another has been in
this spot for a long time. The food was
excellent. We shared a croustillant de gambas appetizer that
involved shrimp wrapped in serano ham, then grilled. It came upon a thin bed of cool, candied
shallots that weren’t too sweet, some shavings of aged parmesan, a sprinkling
of chives, and a topping of a small clump of lamb’s lettuce with just a hint
of vinaigrette. We loved it. We each ordered the lamb
and puréed potatoes. I haven’t had
such good puréed potatoes since Joel Valero’s, or perhaps Bistro 121’s in
mid-July. The serving of lamb was
small, and so we had room for dessert. We ordered the moelleux au chocolat, but weren’t too
surprised when, 20 minutes later, the server apologetically explained that
this dessert would not be possible. A moelleux au chocolat, if it is truly fait maison, takes at least 20 minutes or more. Often, restaurants require that you order
it at the beginning of the meal.
However, we were not presented with the dessert slate until after our
main course, so that wasn’t possible. We then ordered the
tiramisu instead, and it was excellent.
As an apology, the server brought us two little glasses of a light,
clear, apple liqueur (not Calvados).
That was sweet. The entire day was sweet,
in spite of the filmmaking company’s disruptions. In the afternoon, we’d
walked up to the Modern Art Museum at the Palais de Tokyo, a monumental
building that had been constructed for the 1937 world fair on art and
technology. After passed through that
fantastic jungle-swamp African-music-filled garden of the Musée du Quai
Branly, we crossed the Seine on the Passerelle Debilly (pedestrian
bridge). The passerelle is seeing more
foot-traffic now that the awful urine-soaked pedestrian tunnel under the Voie
Georges Pompidou, leading to the rue de la Manutention, has been replaced by
a crosswalk and stoplight on the Voie. The official
entrance/address is on the other side of the Palais, on the avenue du
President Wilson. But we were coming
from the south, from the river, and the Palais welcomed us with a broad
expanse of beautiful stone steps, leading up to a plaza level that is a
favorite place for well-behaved skateboarders. There is also a big, rectangular pool of
bright-green algae-laden water in the middle of this plaza. I think it is river water, polluted by
agricultural areas outside of Paris.
You put that water in a pool exposed to the sun when the circulation
system isn’t working and voila! You have an algae farm. The weather was pleasantly
warm, so we decided to have refreshments on the attractive, big terrasse at the top level of the
plaza, where the museum entrance was located. Inside the door, on the
left, is a café/small cafeteria where we selected a muffin and bottle of
sparkling water to share, a café
gourmand for Tom, and a little plastic glass of chardonnay for me. The three petit fours that came with Tom’s café were so pretty! There was no problem finding a table with a
little shade out on the broad terrasse. Refreshed, we went back in
to take a look at this museum. Once we
were through security, we went up to the ticket desk, only to be told that
(unlike the Petit Palais and the Musée Cognacq Jay) we did not need
tickets for the permanent collections.
Okay, so the rules aren’t the same for all the City of
Paris museums. The museum was great. We highly recommend it. Due to ongoing renovations, a few rooms
were not available to us. These are
supposed to open again in June, so next summer we will return to the Modern
Art Museum to see the rest. I won’t attempt to describe
the wonderful holdings of this museum, but you can check out its web site, if you’d
like. The bookshop was extensive, so
if you’re looking for books on visual art, this is a place to examine. When we finally finished checking
out the museum and bookshop, we rested again in the shade on the broad terrasse. The place was not crowded, so there was no
need to purchase beverages or snacks if you wanted to just sit there. When it becomes a victim of its own
success, as has happened with the café at the Petit Palais, this will not be
possible anymore. Enjoy it while you
can. We enjoyed seeing that the
big white trucks were packing up and preparing to leave when we returned from
dinner. The snake was still
penetrating the building, but would soon be gone. Speaking of snakes, we
found a good use for all those invasive exotic pythons that are wreaking
environmental havoc in the Everglades.
In the decorative arts part of the Modern Art Museum is some lovely
furniture, including a gorgeous set of armchairs covered in python
snakeskin. Now if some entrepreneurial
furniture maker would simply set up a workshop in Florida, pay some of those
good old boys to go out with their guns and kill the pythons, and then use
skins to make gorgeous, environmentally correct chairs like these, we’d have
more jobs, fewer pythons, and great furniture, made in Florida. Any takers? |
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
If
you squint at this motif on a building on the avenue Elisée
Reclus, the entire thing has the look of a feline face.
Tom
steps over the snake in the porte cochere.
Filmmaking
crew and their equipment takes over most of the
sidewalk in front of the restaurant where they’re working for one day.
Making
a movie involves lots of waiting around.
Statue
that greets us as we ascend the steps on the Seine side of the Palais de
Tokyo. You see a few of the umbrellas
of the broad terrasse
up there.
Skateboarders
and algae-laden water at the Palais de Tokyo.
Views
of the Seine from the Passerelle Debilly.
Python-snakeskin-covered
chairs at the Modern Art Museum.
Croustillant
de gambas at Le Zoo. |
