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Category Archives: Paris popular culture
Astérix and the lost streets of Montparnasse
I am a latecomer to the adventures of Astérix, the hero of more than 30 bandes dessinés – comics, or perhaps “comix” à la René Goscinny, the creator of Astérix and all those other “x” characters. There’s Obélix, the pigtailed … Continue reading
Posted in Paris churches, Paris popular culture, Paris streets
Tagged Albert Uderzo, Astérix, Galettes bretonnes, Hotel de l'Industrie, Martin Sorrell, Nicholas Breach, Notre Dame du Travail, René Goscinny, Richard Cobb, rue d’Alésia, Rue de Gergovie, rue Vercingétorix, Slightly Foxed, Suffren
13 Comments
A taste of France
Many years ago, a friend gave me a birthday present consisting of three small objects, with a card that read: “What every young woman needs: a car, a taste of France, and a chance at a million.” The car was … Continue reading
Posted in Paris flea markets, Paris food, Paris history, Paris popular culture, World War I
Tagged absinthe, anise, fennel, pastis, Paul Verlaine, Pernod, Ricard, tarragon
21 Comments
Twenty questions
A happy Saint-Sylvestre to you all! A few of you may wonder what that means, but in France, New Year’s Eve is often called by the name of the saint whose day falls on December 31. That fact got us … Continue reading
Posted in Paris churches, Paris history, Paris popular culture, Paris postcards, Paris streets
Tagged Arc de Triomphe, Arc du Triomphe du Carrousel, avenue Foch, Café Varenne, C’était un rendez-vous, Centre Pompidou, chasse-roue, Chevaux de Marly, Claude Chappe, Claude Lelouch, Deyrolle, Dufayel, fiacre, La Samaritaine, Le Grand Mogol, Marie Antoinette, Marie Curie, Mel Bonis, metonymy, Notre Dame du Travail, Oscar Wilde, Place Beauvau, Point du Jour, Porte St-Denis, Porte St-Martin, Quai d’Orsay, Rose Bertin, rue de Varenne, rue Xaintrailles, rue Xavier-Privas, Saint-Sylvestre, Sophie Berthelot, St-Fiacre
14 Comments
Nostalgic images of a vanishing city
Photographs of Paris in the snow were big news earlier this month. We are Canadians. As Gilles Vigneault sang of this country, “Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver” (My country is not a country, it is winter). … Continue reading
Posted in Paris art, Paris nostalgia, Paris popular culture, Paris streets
Tagged commissionnaire, Curiosités de Paris, Edmond Morin, Franco-Prussian War, Grand Café d’Harcourt, Henri Boutet, Le Monde illustré, Neuvaine de Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, Neuvaine de Sainte Geneviève, omnibus, Serge Férat
12 Comments
Voutch and the evolution of a cartoon style
You know how it is: you notice something properly for the first time, and for the next while, you see it everywhere. So it was with us and the cartoons of Voutch (real name: Olivier Chapougnot). We had wandered along the … Continue reading
Posted in Paris art, Paris popular culture, Paris postcards
Tagged boomerang, Credit du Nord, Dominque Fertil, Editions Cherche-Midi, Galerie Dominique, Le Monde, Librairie Les Traversées, Madame Figaro, Olivier Chapougnot, Olivier Vouktchevitch, Psychologies, This is as Bad as it Gets, Voutch
9 Comments
Getting married in the City of Light
Many people dream of getting married in Paris. How romantic. How fashionable. Like this 1998 image of a Christian Dior wedding gown on a beautiful model, a Paris wedding seems like a dream too good to be true. The fantasy element appears … Continue reading
Posted in Paris history, Paris popular culture
Tagged Le Petit Journal, marriage, Montmartre, Paris en Images, weddings
5 Comments
Enough to make a cow laugh
New Year’s is a time of cleaning up and clearing out, and to that end I have unsubscribed from all kinds of newsletters and mass mailings to keep my head clear and my inbox manageable. But I’m keeping a few, … Continue reading
Posted in Paris food, Paris history, Paris popular culture
Tagged Benjamin Rabier, Beziers, Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF, Galerie Georges Petit, Gallica, Gillian Tindall, gruyère, La Revue Politique et Littéraire, La sardine francaise, La vache qui rit, laughing cow, Léon Bel, Les Ambassadeurs, Musee de l'illustration jeunesse, Ravitaillement en Viande Fraîche, Vachkyrie, Wachkyrie
10 Comments
First we take Manhattan, then we take Paree!
I bought my first Eloise book from a secondhand bookstall at school when I was 9 or 10. It was Kay Thompson’s Eloise in Moscow, and I was captivated by Hilary Knight’s illustrations, including a fold-out view of a wintry … Continue reading
Paris in the year 2000, viewed from 1900
It seems that humans cannot resist dabbling in predicting the future. We have an innate need to ignore Yogi Berra’s clear warning, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” So what did the year 2000 look like from a … Continue reading
The scavengers
Major nineteenth-century cities such as Paris or London depended on complex ecosystems in which the showiest sometimes obscured underlying layers. Consider a city in which by 1900 it was said that as many as 300,000 cigars (perhaps the number included … Continue reading
Parisian Fields 