Paris Journal 2012 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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Due to Tom’s fruit buying rampage in “Diabolique” the other day, we ate more fruit than usual yesterday and so were not as hungry as usual in the evening. So we just went to the neighborhood pub, Le Commerce Café. That place is so popular! The “terrasse,” especially, is full of yammering locals. As at most brasseries/cafés, the terrasse simply consists of tables placed on the sidewalk, but this sidewalk, at Le Commerce, runs along the edge of one of those quintessential, ubiquitous, little Parisian parks with the trimmed chestnut trees, decorative iron fence with little swing gates, a tot lot, pretty park benches, a bandstand gazebo, ping pong tables, and a flat dusty place for playing boules. That’s the long side of the café. The short side of it is on the rue du Commerce, which has been changed to emphasize use by pedestrians, not cars. So when you dine or drink on the terrasse at Le Commerce Café, you are not deafened by traffic noise and nor are you choked by auto exhaust. You still might be choked by cigarette smoke, however, which is why we choose to dine indoors. The dining room at 8PM was not crowded, and so we got a choice table. Tom ordered his usual carpaccio of beef, which comes with a salad and shavings of Parmesan cheese, and a side of hand-cut steak fries. I ordered a 10-euro Margherita pizza with chorizo added to it for a euro. Pizza at Le Commerce, and generally in Paris, is not so heavy and filling. This pizza was typical: very thin crust, made before your eyes by the pizza man at his station. Toppings are applied lightly: tomato sauce, only a smattering; cheese, just a thin layer, no big greasy globs. The chorizo is a nice substitute for pepperoni, which usually is not offered. The chorizo seems to be less fatty than pepperoni, and it is more flavorful. I almost never eat the outer crusts of my pizza; Tom likes them, so I cut them off and give them to him. Isn’t that sweet? He offered me one steak fry in return. I’ve often caught myself thinking that the people who work at Le Commerce Café look like they’ve worked for the circus in the past. Then last night, as if he could read my mind, one of them started singing one of those classic circus melodies, “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze,” as we went about his work in the bustling café. He sang the notes, not the words. That song was written in 1867, by the British singer, George Leybourne, with music by Gaston Lyle. So what’s French about it? The story told in the lyrics is about the trapeze artist Jules Léotard (1842 to 1870), who was from Toulouse. Yes, he’s the one that leotards are named for, because he made them popular. He also is the one who developed the fine art of trapeze acrobatics. He originally developed his trapeze routines over a swimming pool that his father managed. He dad also taught gymnastics. Jules started to study to become a lawyer, but his passion for acrobatics took over. He joined the Cirque Napoleon and debuted on the trapeze in 1859, when he was 17. Then Jules got a job performing with the Cirque Franconi in Paris. He was well paid. Sadly, he died young, at age 28, of a disease that might have been smallpox, typhoid, or cholera. He was in Spain at the time. Our server, Valerie, looks like she was a dancer, or an acrobat. She’s too tall for a gymnast. She also has a very expressive, theatrical face and a great way with kids. The man who seems to run the place (so very well, I might add) has a bit of the look of a carny. All of the people who work there seem to be athletic, in one form or another. But then working in a brasserie that is this busy is hard, physical work. |
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Poster
on a theater near the Place Dupleix.
Les
Gontellis, a mini-circus for children, set up in
the Place Dupleix.
Old-fashioned
Coca-Cola decal on a café window near the Place Cambronne. |
