Paris Adventure

And it's about time.

We arrived two hours late on Friday, April Fool's Day, both tired and feeling the after-effects of shared colds. This trip was going to be a real vacation.

We spent the first day and a half napping, rising only to roam around the neighborhood picking up the essentials of life — foie gras, brie de melun, terrine des legumes, baguette tradition, etc. The usual. We already had some Badoit sparkling water and some Orangina in the flat. I took the suitcases down to the cellar and made it back up with some very nice wine which we are enjoying and will have to replenish shortly - the first of which was a 2005 Volnay from Picard. We slept until noon on Saturday and so missed the Batignolles organic market. But not to worry, the vendors we look forward to are also at the market on Raspail on Sunday. I called Sylvain to announce our arrival and we arranged to meet at the Raspail market and then go on to Caféothèque.

We took off to visit and buy goodies on Sunday morning. A fine crop of onions, tomatoes, sausage, a tranche of filet de boeuf, and a potato pancake, of course. But, alas, no Sylvain. He'd had a sleepless night and even our phone call (from a booth - we hadn't recharged our Paris cell phones yet) didn't rouse him.

We had some espresso de jour, a freshly roasted Peruvian bean, at Caféothèque (which arguably serves the best coffee in Paris), and bought 250 grams of that single estate coffee ground for our espresso maker so we'd be able to get a jump-start on Monday — which was shaping up as a big day.

Monday April 4th.

On the third day of our "vacation", we met up with Tanya for coffee at Le Chope, a nice brasserie at Guy Moquet. Here's a shot of Karen vacationing at the tax office window in the 17th Arrondisement. She's with Tanya, who helped us find the apartment back in 2006 and lives just a kilometer away. Tanya speaks French very well and we needed her help to arrange to get our property tax paid automatically - a task we thought we had accomplished LAST spring. Turns out there are TWO taxes: a property tax and a habitation tax (to cover garbage collection, street cleaning, etc.). Now they both will be deducted annually without any fuss. So much for the "vacation" part, eh? Merci bien, Tanya.

This was the first picture I took since we arrived. Upon the taking of which I discovered that the camera battery was low. When we got back to the apartment, I then discovered that I had failed to pack the recharger OR the recharging USB cable. Sigh... Some day I will remember how to pack.

Along with the inability to recharge the camera, I discovered that my hitherto quasi-comfortable arrangement of a little computer table and a borrowed kneeler for a chair were simply no longer functioning for my ergonomic needs. As I began to write a little, my neck and knees were killing me. And I had an appointment with my friend Francisco at 3:00 to begin the redesign of my website. Website, Paris news, work on ImageS #13 and general email were going to occupy a lot of time here and I couldn't make things work physically. Time to invest in my ergonomic future.

But first a trip to Gibert Jeune at Place Saint Michel to get some refills for my pens and a copy of the Mossa book for my friend Richard Katz. Karen stayed home and took another nap. Francisco came at 3:00, as arranged, and we played, as Karen put it, "comics history of artists" delving into the careers of Alex Toth, Victor De La Fuente, Jordi Bernet, Dino Battaglia, etc. He brought his computer with some ideas for my revised website, and ended up giving me about eight gigabytes of Alex Toth images - much of which I hadn't seen. And I'M supposed to be the Toth expert. Well, I was 25 years ago. Things have changed (and I haven't). We spent the afternoon and evening in discussion of many things artistic and web-related and Francisco stayed for dinner. Sorry, no pictures. Camera/battery/etc., remember? But I do have a shot of the wine bottle. This a 2007 Cote De Nuits Villages from A. Chopin & Fils from our cave. It was purchased last year from Nicole at Cotes Cepage further up Rue Legendre towards Parc Monceau. Very nice.

Tuesday April 5th.

We finally made it to Damiani's today. Jim got his croissant aux amandes and Karen got her croissant with chocolate and orange. Took the Metro to Hotel de Ville and BHV to get a second set of sheets for our bed, but we were too early. Just about everything was still closed, including Caféothèque, our wonderful coffee shop down by the Seine across from Ile St. Louis. So we walked to Bastille, looking for old Burgundy. Our first thought was Le Caprice de l'Instant in that direction. Didn't find anything really old, but it's beginning to look like that's not in our best interests anyway. When we began drinking Burgundy back in the mid-1970s, a bottle from one of the better vineyards from a good vintage needed 15+ years to develop into its mature state. That aging added a dimension to the wine that we found very desirable. Nowadays, a ten year old Burgundy is most likely to be over the hill due to the changing style of wine making. There seem to be fewer and fewer wine makers who dare buck the quick-maturing trends and, as sons and daughters replace the previous generation, even the tastes of the wine makers have changed. Sigh. Everywhere we went we faced the same reaction, C'est la vie. Those days are over.

So we bought some vintages on the recommendation of Greg at Le Caprice and, so far, they've been very nice, but not in that classic, mature Burgundy style we distantly remember. There is a 1999 red Meursault we're anxious to try.

As we were both still a bit jet-lagged and still recovering from those colds, we ate in again. The last of the salad fixings from Sunday's market and the filet de boeuf from our favorite butcher there. The wine was also from our cave, an unmemorable 2007 Chateau des Estubiers, described in wine literature as being from "the northernmost portion of the southern Rhone." I don't remember where we got that one, but it was red and from our cave.

Wednesday April 6th.

We'd been seeing the posters all over town for the Caillebotte exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart Andre, so today we went. Gustave Caillebotte painted "The Floor Scrapers", one of our favorite paintings at the D'Orsay Impressionists gallery. His brother, Martial, was a photographer and, while "The Floor Scrapers" is on tour in the U.S. at the moment, we were exposed to many of Gustave's other works. You can read about it HERE.

They came from a fairly wealthy family and took some pains to be seen as something other than dilettantes. Gustave actually used some of his money to encourage other Impressionists like Monet and Renoir by sponsoring exhibits. He eventually gave up painting to promote the work of his friends. Quite a few of the canvases were perfunctory — all were skilled, but some more finished and displaying more effort than others. Some of his work was quite innovative for the time. Several of Martial's photographs were stunning, but en masse they had the feel of casual shots and portraits.

One very interesting sequence was of Martial's son and daughter as children. The mode of the day was that pre-pubescent children were treated identically, that is, as girls. Same hair, same dresses, etc. There was no social "branding" of gender until the boys were about 12 at which point they got their hair cut and began to be treated as young men. It seems like such a civilized approach, though it may have been more than traumatic for the children involved. We don't know.

There is apparently another version of Gustave's "The Floor Scrapers" painting. We saw it on a TV preview as we were standing on line to gain admittance, but the painting itself was not on exhibit (alas). We also noticed that there is an iPod app for the exhibit, which would allow one to skip the rental fee on the Audio Guides. Now there might be a good reason for buying one of those puppies.

The museum is on Boulevard Haussmann near Gare St. Lazare. We visited a nearby FNAC store afterwards looking for the camera cable and were directed to a Nikon specialty shop over near Place de Champerret. A task for later. First was lunch at Da Pietro. Still no pictures, sorry. Karen had a Pizza Isabella (fromage et anchois) and I had what the lady at the next table was having, aubergine gratineé - an aromatic concoction of eggplant, tomatoes and cheese. Yum.

Today I was determined to do something about my workspace here. I needed a chair and I'd recently (well, a couple of weeks ago in California) done some research on the Herman Miller Aeron chair. I'd looked up Herman Miller chairs Paris on Google yesterday and found an address over by Madeleine, 31 Rue Tronchet, and added it to my agenda.

Dinner was at home with the remains of the Rhone. Karen asked me if we had any Champagne. I said no.

Thursday April 7th.

Damiani's for breakfast and café. Today was unscheduled. No plans other than some laundry and some effort towards a chair. First was a trip to Place de Champerret and the Nikon store. Place de Champerret is where the twice-annual book fair is located, so I had been there before. The PC3 bus line traverses the northern boundary of Paris just inside the Peripherique, In intersects the 54 and 74 lines at Porte de Clichy. Yes, everything on the North/South axis from Ste. Trinite, just north of Opera, to the northern border of Paris seems to have something to do with some Clichy or other. From Rue de Clichy to Place de Clichy and Blvd. de Clichy to Avenue de Clichy to Porte de Clichy - it's easy to get confused.

I found the Nikon store on Rue de Courcelles, and easily got the cable I needed to recharge the camera. Not cheap, 14.50 €, but frankly less than I expected. Feeling like I'd dodged a bullet, I stopped by a wine store I'd passed on the way tand looked around for some time. It was a small shop, with a personable owner whom I told I was "just looking." It was he, Patrick, who explained eventually when I DID ask for help, that there simply was no way that I would ever find Burgundy as I remembered it. He had a few older bottles of Grand Cru wine, but 10-12 years is the maximum he told me. It's the same story that Greg at Caprice de l'Instant had been relating and I was desperately trying not to believe it. I think I finally got convinced.

He did have a bottle of Bollinger Champagne, La Grand Annee 2000, which I purchased to comfort Karen in her sans-Champagne doldrums, and a 2008 Rully that he recommended as drinking nicely. I went home.

Karen was napping. We were both still pretending that the colds weren't lingering. I dropped off the wine, hooked the camera up to the recharging cable, and headed off for Rue Tronchet. There I was met at the door of the 2eme etage Herman Miller office by a nice young lady named Sandra who heard me fumbling in the hall and took pity on me by opening the door and inquiring how could she help? I told her that I had heard much about the Aeron Chair, but had never sat in one then asked her if she had some at hand, could I sit in one, and could she sell me one. Yes, yes, and no. I did manage to spend a good half hour learning about the Aeron, the Mirra and the EmBody chairs, all of which would serve my purpose but only one of which could I barely afford. During the visit she took me to her own work area to show me a variation on the Mirra chair and I noticed that she had an orange "thing" that put her laptop at a steep angle and raised her screen a good 10-12 inches above her desktop. "Oh, we make that, too," she said when I asked. She gave me two addresses of dealers in Paris and I left with hope in my heart and fear in my wallet.

I immediately eased them by eating lunch at Madeleine and then looking at more wine. When you're considering the expenditure of 1000 €, it's helpful to ease into it by spending 10 € and then thinking about spending 100 €. I did neither. I spent 30 €. and then went to one of the furniture stores Sandra had told me of, Siltec, on Rue de Miromesnil, and was shown an Aeron chair for about 1750 (gasp) € and a Mirra for 1200 €. I thanked them kindly and figured I needed to do more research (read ebay.fr). What I REALLY wanted was the EmBody Chair, which is the third generation of the Aeron and has magic lumbar support, but it was in the same price range as the Aeron and I knew I'd never manage one. Still.

Karen was up and fixing a salad for dinner when I got home and we discussed the directions I might go. There was a used Mirra Chair on ebay.fr in Germany for 499 € plus 39 € delivery. The Mirra is the second generation Aeron and was what I knew I would have to "settle" for. I ordered it and we opened up a bottle of 2006 Chablis Premier Cru - Mont de Milieu, for a change of pace, and sipped the evening away.

Friday April 8th.

Except for breakfast at Damiani's, we seem to be eating at home. Went shopping down at the various Guy Moquet markets and at Carrafour (supermarket) there. Karen was going to make, drum roll please, Soupe a l'Oignon. Naturally, we needed an audience and I called to invite Sylvain over to make up for our missed connections on Sunday. I left a message.

Also on my schedule was to deliver some copies of ImageS #12 to L'Album and to visit Frédéric Manzano at Editions Deesse. Both over in the 5eme Arondissement, so off I went. Mike at L'Album had emailed me that morning that he would be there, but when I arrived at 12:15, he was at lunch. C'est la vie. When reached by phone, he authorized the hands on deck to pay me for the magazines and just as I was about to depart, in walked Germanico, Mike's #2 man. We stopped to chat. I thought it coincidence when he mentioned in an off-hand manner that we had a Parisian friend in common — Sylvain Despretz. Yes, I said, just as my cell phone rang. Speak of the devil. We arranged a time for dinner and that he should bring flowers, as I had the wine already picked out. Then Sylvain said hello to Germanico and he and I went out for lunch.

After a jambon au fromage et crudité sandwich and a pleasant talk, Germanico went back to work and I headed off towards Rue Cochin. The sign said the hours were 14:30 onward. It was 13:50, so I walked over to the Seine and looked at old books at the Bouquinistes for a half hour or so. Fred eventually showed up at about quarter to three, tired and jet-legged having just returned from San Francisco and WonderCon. We visited for awhile and I called Sylvain to request that he bring a copy of the Wally Wood catalog that I had marked up for him last fall and hurried off to get home in time be a proper host.

Sylvain, when he last appeared in these chronicles, was getting ready to publish a book. Four of them, actually, and since then he had succeeded. In 1971, Thaddeus Golas wrote and published a pamphlet titled "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment." Sylvain acquired the rights to the title as well as two other short unpublished works, a recording of the author reading "The Lazy Man's Guide" and an unpublished autobiography. In the space of a few years, Sylvain went from being a Conceptual Designer for films to being a publisher.

Sylvain appeared with a lovely bouquet, the Wally Wood and Thaddeus Golas books, and we had a lovely evening of Soupe a l'Oignon, salade, and assorted fromage. To ease us through that feast, we opened a bottle of 1999 Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Aux Beaux Bruns by Ghislaine Barthod. We got it from Le Caprice de l'Instant, where Greg had described her as being one of the up-and-coming wine makers in Burgundy. Sylvain gave me a set of his publications and I gave him my latest ImageS issue and he eventually departed around 2300 hours.

And the camera was FINALLY recharged.

Week one in Paris. A VERY different trip than any that had preceded it. Stay tuned for part two with pictures other than wine.