Paris Werewolves

We turned a corner in Bordeaux and found ourselves face to face with ... Dracula? The Prince of Darkness at Place du Parlement. The buildings around the Place du Parlement in Bordeaux date from the 18th century. Maybe this mascaron is a lion. Certainly not a werewolf, which would have been most appropriate on Rue du Loup- Garou. Close enough.

Like his contemporary Hector Guimard, Jules Lavirotte won architecture awards for the Art Nouveau façade of his signature work. But 29 Ave. Rapp in the 7th Arr., designed by Lavirotte in 1900 with extensive ceramic tiling by Alexandre Bigot, makes Guimard's Castel Béranger look like a model of restraint. If Guimard was the Sly and the Family Stone of Art Nouveau, Lavirotte would be Parliament-Funkadelic; maybe not as groundbreaking, but a little funkier and a lot weirder. The Lavirotte building has too much to appreciate in one go--I've been back a few times, and still can't take it all in. In addition to the floral details ubiquitous to Art Nouveau, sculpted bulls and numerous mascarons (both human and vegetable) adorn the façade, while the ironwork includes peacocks, cats stalking birds, and notably, a lizard for the front door handle. According to some, "lézard" used to be French slang for male genitalia. This from a country that takes a rooster for its nation...

Greetings, kiddies, from the haunted flea market of Sainte-Ouen. To my great joy, I'm part of a generation that was raised on a heavy dose of spooky culture. On TV, old horror movies ran on weekends while reruns of the Munsters, the Addams Family, and Scooby Doo were on every day after school. Titles like "The Witching Hour," "Werewolf by Night," "Swamp Thing," and "Tomb of Dracula" were on the comic book racks at 7-11. "Monster Mash" and "Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House" got regular rotation on my record player. Basically, if you watched, read, or listened to anything targeted at kids back then, any normal day might include imagery of ancient cemeteries, old dark mansions, and crumbling castles. And that's not counting monster-themed toys and games (I know I built the Aurora glow-in-the-dark "Wolf Man" model, and maybe the "Mummy," too) or standard Halloween icons such as bats, witc...

Les Halles was the site of Paris' wholesale fresh food market from the 1100s until the 1960s. It was the principal setting for Emile Zola's 1873 novel "Le Ventre de Paris" ("The Belly of Paris"). Among Les Halles' many renovations before its complete demolition was the expansion over the former Cimitière des Innocents--which had gotten so full that an underground partition wall collapsed in the 1780s, spilling mud, bones and adipose corpses into a restaurant cellar--and Napoleon III's personal insistence on the construction of indoor metal building, inspired by London's Crystal Palace and Paris' Gare de l'Est train station. Les Halles was completely demolished in 1973, and now is an open space with gardens, playgrounds, and performance spaces sitting atop an underground parking lot. It was in this repurposed space that Sugar discovered "Écoute" ("Listen"), by Henri de Miller (1986).  He's telling her she's a ve...

  Commemorating the whole family piling into the Fiat Cinquecento for a Sunday at the beach in Nice. I'm not a crowds person, which might make Paris an odd choice as a place to live. But unlike, say, Pier 39 in San Francisco, there's no question in my mind that the tourists who come to Paris to enjoy the food, culture and history are making a good decision--although for the life of me I can't fathom why people would wait for hours to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa. From what I can tell, it's an undersized portrait that no one but Leonardo collectors and art aficionados cared about until newspapers and magazines sensationalized its 1911 theft by a Louvre employee. There were other copies in existence before then, and anyone who wants to appreciate the painting's composition and craftsmanship would do better with a Taschen coffee table book. I myself vastly prefer Mona Gorilla , in any case.  My love of the ocean also makes landlocked Paris a strange base of operati...

  Birding in Paris is a challenge. There are not a lot of wild spaces accessible by transit, and there are people everywhere in the green spaces in town. That said, by keeping a pair of 8 x 25 bins in my pocket, making a few dedicated forays to bigger parks at the edge of town, and getting outside of Paris on side trips, I've been able add 67 species to my life list since September 2022. One of my favorites is the Common Kingfisher ( Alcedo atthis ), spotted in l'Île aux Cygnes in my neighborhood and La Palu nature preserve in Saintes. As an aside, birders should not be allowed to give birds their non-scientific names. This kingfisher might be common in terms of range, but it is definitely uncommon in terms of beauty. The orange and teal blue colors seems impossibly vivid, even without binoculars. I don't have the patience or equipment to photograph the birds I see, so I'm letting this anonymous street artist represent the species. A great rendering of an uncommonly be...

Last night, things got pretty crazy around France. Not anywhere near us in Paris--the upside of living in a "boring" part of town is that it's still boring when the "excitement" gets out of control and dangerous. Which in France happens often and, historically speaking, gets taken to another level. But it was not just Paris that melted down in a rage spasm. Earlier this month, we cut short a trip to Bordeaux to get home before strikes shut down the railway. So the burning of the front door of Bordeaux's city hall (mairie) last night bookends for us a pretty disappointing stretch--though certainly not as disappointing as if I had learned I would have to work for another two years or having my car flipped over or business set on fire. Perspective. We spent a great couple of days in Bordeaux, but not necessarily for any organized wine tasting. Basically, every wine I've ordered by the glass at any restaurant in France--usually a red from Bordeaux or Côtes d...

What I saw when I looked up was a mascaron of a werewolf devouring a mascaron of a green man. I don't know if that is what the architects or the current building occupants--Le Musée de l'Amérique Latine--intended. To paraphrase every bigfoot, UFO, and Loch Ness monster witness: I saw what I saw.

Coming out of a cold European winter on the first day of Spring, I'm remembering conditions from last September when we first hit town: it was hot, there were tourists everywhere, Sugar was miserable. Let's get under a café umbrella.

Cathédrale Saint-Pierre We discovered Saintes after driving around the coastlines in the Aquitaine-Poitou regions. We had seen the citadelles and the beaches, and decided to go inland a bit for a Gallo-Roman amphitheater. Turns out, the amphitheater was closed for lunch. What we could see from the surrounding rim was mostly covered in scaffolding for maintenance. If you like it now, you'll love it in another millennium or so. No matter, because for a small town, Saintes overflows with great architecture and outdoor spaces. One of the best is the Basilique Sainte-Eutrope and its crypt. The Basilique was constructed over the 11th and 15th centuries and holds the remains of the early christian evangelist and martyr Eutrope and his notable convert, Eustelle, daughter of a Roman governor. According to tradition, for this breach of decorum, Eustelle's father had her decapitated, whereas the future saint's head was split open with an axe.  Sugar explores grounds of Basilique Saint...