Among the myriad stories of the global financial crisis that appear almost daily, this one from the New York Times today caught my eye.
The economic downturn is impacting that most sacrosanct of French traditions, the bar-cafe.
The article notes Balzac’s famous dictum — “The bar of a cafe is the parliament of the people” — in detailing how the French cafe is in real trouble these days. Simply put, people are going out less and when they do, they’re spending less.
The days of the long, leisurely French lunch — a couple of courses accompanied by a bottle of wine — have been replaced with the take-out sandwich, eaten on the run.
If they do come to the cafe, a owner named Maria Malichier tells the Times, “it’s a carafe of tap water, main course and off you go.”
“Now people don’t eat,” says another cafe owner, Gérard Renaud. “They come in for a coffee or a little aperitif and that is it. We are used to being busy, but now we feel lazy, and it is depressing.”
What’s behind this? Obviously a bit has to do with the financial crisis. But at the beginning of this year a smoking ban extended to include bar-cafes, which is hurting business. So is a renewed crackdown on drunk driving, with cops apparently staking out cafes to catch tipsy drivers.
Anyone that spends any time in France, Paris or elsewhere, quickly comes to see that the cafe culture, dying or not, is something one can only admire about the country — how people seem to carve out time in their day for it, which of course is time carved out for food and drink and conviviality. There’s a reason why Hemingway’s A Movable Feast is so evocative of a certain time and place.
Now we have this arresting fact from the Times piece: Two bar-cafes close every day in France. In 1960, there were 200,000 of them countrywide; today it’s fewer than 41,500.
Barack Obama has done what very few Americans have done before. No, not run for president. Get respect from the French.
An art gallery in Paris is running a show that demonstrates just how much street cred the the Democratic candidate has with Europeans. Dorothy’s Gallery, in the Bastille District of Paris (Rue Keller) will be running the show until November 17th. Most of the works on display are by French artists; and most, if not all, cast the Illinois Senator in a positive light. There are sculptures, photographs, sketches, caricatures and photo collages.
I doubt many red-staters are going to put the Dorothy Gallery on their itinerary. I’m sure very few undecided voters are going to be swayed by a visit. And French people aren’t going to head to the polls a week from Tuesday. So the Obama exhibit is more about the way French culture celebrates celebrities and statesmen than it is about politics. No word yet on whether Jerry Lewis will lose his status as top American if Obama pulls out a victory in the elections.
Rich, the relief co-pilot, looked over my shoulder and pointed to the radar.
“Looks like you’re painting some weather there.” He said.
I looked down, noting the sea of green ahead.
“It doesn’t have much vertical to it.” I replied, which meant the clouds hadn’t developed into anything that would produce much in the way of bumps.
“I think it’s just heavy rain.” I said.
After flying around Hurricane Ike and Hanna, it was nice to get away from the Caribbean weather by escaping to France. Sure, there may be some specks of yellow among the green Rich had pointed out, but this was no real thunderstorm from what I could see.
Soon we entered the clouds from above. The sunrise we had been enjoying was gone now and the cockpit was a bit darker. As we descended towards 20,000 feet, St. Elmos fire began to sparkle on the front windshield. This phenomenon looks like lightning, but it’s actually static discharges occurring right on the glass just in front of our faces.
Rich grabbed my camera to film the scene. [Video after the jump]
As we approached Paris on the arrival, we broke out long enough to see the sun trying to peek above the cloud layer. Moments later we flew through a few small build-ups. This weather was hardly painting on the radar, yet these were some powerful little clouds. The airplane bumped and shook for the next ten minutes causing Rich to give up with the camera. He couldn’t film much longer anyway, since we were about to reach the 10,000 foot sterile period.
Checking in on the radio behind us was a U.S. Airways flight that was beginning to pick up the same ride conditions we had. Since I was working the radios, I gave a quick pilot report about the moderate turbulence we had just flown through, hoping the U.S. Airways flight might do a better job avoiding it than we did.
It turned out Rich made a good call. The green weather with specks of yellow turned out to be rougher than anything I’d ever experienced in Europe. Fortunately we were through it by the time we reached 10,000 feet.
Captain Frank finished off the approach with a nice landing at Charles de Gaulle.
We talked about our plans as we rode the bus into the city.
I’ve always wanted to do it. Maybe this was the layover to give it a try. The reflective vests and helmet makes you look so goofy. Could I get past that? I mean, it is a form of transportation, and I do like gadgets. But I wasn’t sure I’d be able to convince Rich to join me.
Of course I’m talking about taking a tour of Paris on a Segway. City Segway Tours offers as many as three of these tours a day during the summer with the rides tapering off as winter approaches. So I would have to do it on what would likely be my last Paris trip, number 17, of the year.
At 70 Euros, it doesn’t come cheap, but amazingly Rich really wanted to give it a try. He’s a bit of an adventurous type, who’s currently heavily involved in his new hobby of beekeeping. Since touring around Paris on a Segway wasn’t something he’d done yet, it didn’t take much to convince him.
Fat Tire had an opening on their 6:30 p.m. tour, so Rich and I had some time to roam around the city. I told Rich that Grant Martin, the editor of Gadling who normally resides in Michigan, was just a few miles from the hotel playing a competitive game of Frisbee at the Cité Universitaire.
We had some time to kill and we agreed that it’d be interesting to see what was involved in a competitive Frisbee game, so we walked over to the park where he and his girlfriend had met up with his sister and some others for a game.
It was apparently the nicest day of the summer according to the local media with warm 70+ degree temperatures, perfect for hanging out in a park and I suppose ideal weather for a Frisbee match.
Unfortunately, we wouldn’t see a real Frisbee match, since a local falconer was out flying two of his birds at the field. It gave Rich a good opportunity to take the pictures below while I shot some video.
Grant trying to determine if this bird would be using the field for the rest of the day…
The falcon unexpectedly took off after a kid ran towards it. (See video below)
We agreed to meet up with Grant and the ladies later that evening if we survived our Segway experience.
We met Lisa at Fat Tire Bike Tours and City Segway Tours at their office near the Eiffel Tower and she immediately made us sign away any rights and agree to pay for any damage we may do to the machines. That didn’t dissuade us, so we took the next step and picked out helmets before joining the five other riders.
Our guide, Dana, was an enthusiastic American who was rather adept at Segwaying through Paris. She gave us a good thirty minutes of instruction on how to operate the Segway.
Before we knew it, we were all getting comfortable with the motions needed to step on, move, turn and most importantly, stop Dean Kamen’s amazing little invention. The tour takes four hours and covers the major sites of Paris. Rich and I had seen these landmarks before, but we couldn’t stop grinning.
In just a few minutes we completely forgot just how dorky we looked on the Segway and we began enjoying the freedom it provided.
Our concerns with the €70 per person had been put to rest almost immediately. This was worth it.
It’s easy to underestimate just how fast 12 miles an hour is, until you’re on a Segway. We flew through the parks, mostly at a comfortable 1/2 speed, occasionally ‘opening it up’ a bit to feel the wind blow through our hair while demonstrating our prowess to the other riders.
I struck up a conversation with one of the riders who had his new camera damaged a few days earlier. He wondered if I might forward him some pictures and video, and I told him I was writing this up for a blog, and I could at least sen
d him a link.
Much to my surprise he was a fan of Gadling and he was pretty sure he’d read a Cockpit Chronicles. Or at least he thought.
So I vowed to send him this story–a post I’m sure he’ll remember, if only because he was actually there.
Dana gave everyone the option of stopping for a drink and an appetizer at a café, or simply taking a rest break at a Creperie/Bistro so we could spend more time running around the city.
Everyone decided to keep the rest break short and continue our tour as we were really enjoying the zippy little wheels. I was amazed that battery life wasn’t an issue even though we were almost constantly moving for the four hours. These machines never seemed to slow down.
For a novice, riding a Segway is almost more demanding than a bike tour, since your feet and calf muscles aren’t used to the corrections and weight-shifting required to speed up and slow down.
I was able to balance the device, even while shooting video along the way. I may regret this, but I’ll go ahead and share the video:
I know I’ve recommended the Fat Tire Bike tour of Paris and Versailles in the past, but you just might have to forgo those, and give the Segway a try. No one in our group regretted it.
We met up with Grant and his girlfriend over at the Latin Quarter at almost 11 p.m. Grant’s sister Chi twisted her ankle playing Frisbee and couldn’t join us for drinks and dessert. I would have enjoyed talking with her–to get her viewpoint on what it’s like as an expat living in Paris for the past few years. I guess I’ll just have to keep reading her blog. Here’s the day from her perspective along with some great pictures of the Falcon demonstration.
We’re no longer flying to Paris for the winter, so it’s time to bid farewell to this amazing city. It was more expensive this year than in years past, but far more memorable, too.
Now it’s back to the Caracas, Miami, and who knows what other trips we’ll see this winter. Stay tuned…
Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in Boston.
We all know that Parisians have a reputation for being smug and snooty. Want to order a coffee? Better pronounce café au lait with an impeccable French accent or you can forget about good service. But stereotypes are just that: stereotypes. And not all Parisians have a propensity to rudeness, at least not those part of Paris Greeter.
Created by a group of locals intent on showing the good side of the Parisian nature, Paris Greeter is a service that provides the traveler with free tours in nine different languages. Groups of up to six are led by true Parisians that have a love for their city and a love for sharing it with foreigners; the organization’s French name, Parisien d’un jour, Parisien toujours is very fitting.
These aren’t trained tour guides working for big companies, they’re just regular locals that want to give their city a good name. In the words of one of the volunteers, “I’ve always heard my American friends say things like, ‘Paris is wonderful – except for the Parisians. And I always wanted to do something about it.”
If you’ve been to Paris any time in the last few years you’ve probably noticed the ubiquitous bicycle rental kiosks. Called Velibs, the concept has become so popular that the model has been replicated elsewhere. Just this past summer in Denver for the Democratic National Convention, the city outfitted the downtown area with a variety of stands.
With such a large user base and number of units on the road, maintenance becomes a critical part of operations – and an important thing to look out for when picking a bicycle. Many a time have I spent twenty minutes plugging my American Express card into the kiosk, paging through the terms and conditions and picking out a unit only to jump on, get halfway down the street and realize that the bicycle doesn’t shift out of first gear or that the seat slooooowly sinks when I’m riding it. Trust me: as a tall person, nothing sucks more than riding a bicycle with the seat all of the way down.
A host of things can go wrong with your Velib after you check it out, which is why I now equate them to a mixed box of chocolates. They may all look the same until you’re heading into traffic and you find out that they handlebars aren’t bolted into the front fork.
At this point I’m past surprised or frustrated if something is wrong with my bicycle – now it’s a personal challenge to see if I can adapt to whatever is wrong with it. But for you, my advice is as such: kick the tires and test the seat before you rent a bicycle. The ten seconds you spend checking out your Velib is well worth the frustration of dealing with a broken bicycle on the road.