Paris Werewolves

La Salle des Colonnes, Musée Grévin, 9th Arr. Le Musée Grévin is probably as close as Paris gets to a Pier 39 or Times Square-level cheesy tourist trap. Opened in 1882, it's a wax museum like any other you may have been to. There are some historical figures, current celebrities, and all-time favorite personages. I'm not well-versed on who's currently famous so I can't say whether the likenesses were spot on, but the figures were incredibly lifelike. Maybe it looked like Lady Gaga. Who knows? The dude in the jeep had a DeGaulle-like air about him, especially against a backdrop photo of the Arc de Triomphe. They also throw some curves at you, with figures placed and composed throughout the museum to look like other attendees. I stood for awhile watching a woman sitting on a bench near the entrance reading a museum guide. I was there just long enough that, had she moved, I would have been the creepy one. Grévin is good for what it is--and since it is a bit off-the-beaten p

Thanksgiving Grocery, circa 2014, 4th Arr. There's no Thanksgiving holiday in France, though they certainly don't lack for days off from work and school. Even without the traditional US feast day, however, they have had no problem adopting Black Friday sales. Préparez-vous pour les Doorbusters! But up until 2018, an American expat ran the Thanksgiving Grocery in the 4th Arrondissement. It specialized in U.S. brands such as Skippy peanut butter, Jell-O, and Campbell's soup. It also claimed to have "cuisine de la Louisiane," which I assume was just Tabasco Sauce. The store is now closed, although I'm aware of at least one other épicerie Américaine (American grocery store), The Real McCoy, where you can get Thanksgiving fixin's like Jiffy cornbread mix and Libby's canned pumpkin--maybe the only place for canned pumpkin in the entire country. The Real McCoy épicerie Américaine, 7th Arr. It just ain't real Thanksgiving without Uncle Henri's stuffin

  "Are we on the plane of reality, facing an actor dressed as a monkey or a monkey performing a stage act? Unless, in the register of fable and caricature, this animal, a figure of duplicity and imitation, parodies a speaker? "

"Roue de bicyclette," Marcel Duchamp (originally, 1913, later 1951) Marcel Duchamp was not the original bullshit artist, nor even the most audacious. But he may be best remembered now for what amounted to pranks on the art establishment, notoriously submitting a urinal to an art exhibition (signed "R. Mutt") and titling a snow shovel "In Advance of the Broken Arm." "Bicycle Wheel" is much a much subtler piece of kinetic sculpture, but still seems intended to provoke less-disciplined thinkers into pointless arguments about "what is art?" and perhaps into more important considerations about who gets to decide (the answer is people with money, in case you have other things to do besides read the rest of this). If the information card on this display at the Petit-Palais as part of the "Le Paris de la Modernité, 1905-1925" exhibit is correct, Duchamp was greatly inspired by a visit to one of the early Paris aviation shows. "Pa

Balard Metro station, 15th Arr. Exiting the Balard Metro station, we came across a lovely stairway installation. Just like with the 16th Avenue Tiled Staircase in San Francisco, I always wonder how they get the images on the risers to line up. We actually went to the 15th Arr. to walk along the Petite Ceinture, a railroad belt along the edge of the city reclaimed as a green space, and then drop in on the Latino Market for enchilada fixin's. We learned the hard way that in the few months since we had last been to the Ceinture, dogs had become banned there. And the Market was closed--hopefully unscheduled, and not permanently. So we did not get a good walk or enchiladas. A piece of street art doesn't make up for those annoyances, but it helps.

Relative affordability of different cities in 2021 and 2023. Indexed to Paris 2021 costs = 100. Metro-area i nflation data from the US Department of Labor and Eurostat were applied to  Numbeo's Cost of Living Index , averaged over 2019-2021. Affordability 2023 data are also weighted to reflect the (downward) performance of US and international stock indices since June 2021. The other night, as I was watching the replay of a Warriors-Kings game on NBA's International League Pass, it occurred to me that I might not be doing Paris correctly. I get the same feeling sometimes when I'm at the American Library, when listening to English-language podcasts or sitting on the couch reading the New York Times. Did we really sell, give away, or junk almost all our belongings and move to a different continent just to do the same things we did in San Francisco? This is a ridiculous, fleeting thought. We did not move to Paris to avoid basketball or NPR. A number of push- and pull-factors l

A clever piece of street art in Chartres, famous for its Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres.  A much more orthodox rendition of the BVM can be found on a 12th century fresco in the cathedral's crypt. I like them both. 12th century fresco, crypt of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres.

"Nest in Liaigre" (2023), Tadashi Kawamata, 8th Arr. What more can you say? Curiously, though just a block away from the frou-frou shops of the Champs-Elysées, no one else seemed interested enough at that moment to snap a photo.  Or maybe because it's just a block away from the frou-frou shops of the Champs-Elysées.

The posing tourists and glamour girls are gone. All that's left on the Champ de Mars is fog, drizzling rain and mud. Out of sight are a handful of the usual guys who hang around trying to sell cheap, tower-shaped trinkets and twinkling tchotchkes to the thousands of picnickers who crowd the lawns every day and night, all summer long. Today they have added umbrellas to their inventory. There are not many customers.  In Paris, where there are always lots of people everywhere, all the time, dozens of people would be the same as none. On the Champ de Mars, hundreds is the same as none. Elsewhere in Paris, it was Toussaint , a national holiday coinciding with the Catholic Feast of All Saints. Traditionally, French people visit cemeteries on Toussaint, sprucing up the resting places of their deceased loved ones and ancestors--in a way, getting out in front of All Souls a day early. Or you could do what I did: brave the throngs of tourists up the Buttes de Montmartre and wait in line for