Why you want to keep that fireplace

February 9, 2010

PARIS – Say you have always been dreaming of your own place in the centre of Paris. And let us say that fortune is kind with you, and you find yourself standing on the parquet  flooring, with light coming in through the high windows from the boulevard outside. Happiness. You look around to see the decorated ceiling, wood paneled walls and the fireplace. Ah, the fireplace. Doesn’t that make you feel at home straight away? But there is something strange going on with the fireplace.

Although they are no longer used for heating, most of the apartments you will have seen in the city will have them. And not just one of them, but perhaps even one in every room. It looks great, of course, but do you need it? If you are wondering why this question even needs answering, you are probably not paying rent in Paris. Say your apartment covers 55 square meters, subdivided into 3 rooms – the Parisian average. You will presumably be moving in there with your girl(/boy)friend and perhaps a baby (2.2 average household size), or perhaps a friend who still can’t find his own place. This makes the apartment relatively small. So that fireplace, which admittedly looks great in the bedroom, is now actually taking the place of a cupboard or a side table. This may make you wish it away, but grant me a few moments to delve into the archeology of the matter, to see if I can make you see it differently.

Let us start by establishing that the fireplace, anywhere other than the living room (and even there!), is indeed in the way. You do not need it, and the precious space could have been used for more useful purposes in your day-to-day life. But try to think of it differently. The fireplace is a relic of the past. Of a past when there was no central heating. Of a past when life was different for whoever was living in the place. It is a link between your existence and other people who lived there before you. Same place, but another time and life. In the other direction this works too, as one day, you will no longer be living in that apartment, and someone else will be there. Accepting to live with a relic in your midst is accepting a place, or your role, in the development of your culture. You take care of something that was passed on to you, and which you in your turn will pass on to the next. Someone you may or may not even know.

If this all sounds like a lot of thought emanating from a fireplace, I am convinced that it does have that effect. It works because the fireplace no longer serves its purpose. A huge block of marble to support the cards your friends sent you is clearly not an optimal use of your precious space. That is exactly why it can remind you that the world is not completely moulded around you, to suit your needs. The fireplace, as the city, was already there before you and still has its own future independently of you. It increases your consciousness of your place. Conscious about your role in life, your relation to others, and your relationship to the world around you. It helps to make you a better person, to take better decisions. To be happier person. To feel at home. And surely that’s what you wanted, when you dreamt of your own place. And as an added bonus, you might even light that fireplace one day.

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Paris Burning

September 21, 2009

Fire La Taverne by Eric Tenin (c)sept 2009

Fire La Taverne, (c) Eric Tenin 2009

ParisDailyPhoto :: Eric Tenin :: 12 sept 2009

Journalist Eric Tenin is one of those people who not only take beautiful pictures, but also have the heart to share them online, in a charming one-a-day format. Today, he showed us a picture of a fire at La Taverne, a restaurant in the 9th arrondissement. It was not the only fire he had seen last weekend, having witnessed one at the Freemasonry headquarters of the  Grand Orient de France, which is located right by his house on rue Cadet in the same district. Perhaps in a wave of concern, he looked up the statistics on fires in Paris too. The results, as he must have noticed, were quite remarkable.

With a little bit of calculating, we can see that in 2008 there were 4,260 fires in Paris. That is 82 a week, with his arrondissement, the 9th, accounting for 3 of them. That’s 3 fires a week! Now if you think that sounds like a lot, then you are right. A quick glance at the map below could, alarmingly enough, also remind you that the 9th (which houses the Opera Garnier and the Grands Magasins) is not very big either.  A few calculations further down the line, looking at number of fires per Parisian square metre, we notice that his arrondissement comes as second worst hit, after his southern  neighbour the 2nd district (the textile industry HQ the Sentier).

fires in parisBefore we all start urging Eric to get out of there as fast as possible, let us look at population density as well. Naturally, the population density of the city varies, as urban space is not only housing, think of the space taken up by schools, churches, hospitals, cemeteries, parks, shops and ministries.  The resident density of the 9th (27,100 per km2) classifies as just over average by Parisian standards. So if we take the number of fires per inhabitant, the rate drops to a little over the city’s average.

Should he one day wish to reduce his chance of having another fire next door, he would have to consider a move to the left bank. Curiously enough, the southern arrondissements, although slightly denser, have considerably less fires per person than the right bank (2.9 fires a week per 100 000 inhabitants as opposed to the 4.1 fires a week on the right bank). But Eric’s beautiful picture actually does not show the fire. He shows the smoke and the Parisian firemen. They not only belong to the biggest fire department in Europe, but they also offer an impeccable urban coverage. And thanks to them, another fire was extinguished without anyone getting hurt.

www.parisdailyphoto.com // www.pompiersparis.fr

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Tradegy at the Box-office

July 13, 2009

LolPARIS – Why does the press insist on reminding us of the financial success of films, as if the audience is composed of potential investors? Knowing that Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis was the absolute box-office hit in France in 2008, does not make it a better film. This is akin to claiming BP’s petrol is better than Exxon’s because their stock is more stable. It really is not related. But why do we keep seeing it?

This year starts with a similar curiosity as 2008, with the film Lol (Laughing out loud) by Lisa Azuelos having attracted the most viewers. Having been one of those people who walked in, but also walked out(!), something which happens to me very rarely, the thought that it would now hug the limelight is embarrassing. I had even snobbed it out of a crushing review. So how does a film like this attract so many people? Before being accused of living in some little Parisian bubble, notice that even on the IMDB only 2 people bothered to comment on its merits! But let me make a case for the attraction of the film anyway.

For those lucky enough to have missed it, the concept is actually quite appealing: the always beautiful Sophie Marceau, who was a teenager in the hugely successful 80s party film La Boum, is now back as a mother with a partying daughter. A true generational film, especially for those who were around in the 1980s to live the original with her. Sounds like fun. But the movie near opens with a young girl claiming something along the lines of “he MSN-ed me and I downloaded it from Myspace”… and you know that the film is a farce. Not because a teen could not say that sentence, but because it is so obviously constructed, like the title. A film can not be about youth and have to explain such trivialities such as “Lol” as well, should there still be anyone around who does not know what it means. But of course, this is not a debate about quality, or lack thereof. This is about misguidance.

Lol is not a good film and you would waste your time going to see it, as I have (partly) done and many others with me. No doubt some people appreciated seeing Sophie Marceau again but that does not change the appalling level of the film. If the audience was offered the chance to reward the film with a number of stars on leaving the cinema, as one does when one deletes an iPhone application, movies could be judged on appreciation instead of on financial gain or number of people who were caught out. Of course, even with appreciation level established, we could be very surprised by the result… lol.

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New iPhone’s and Bee Wax

June 20, 2009

iPhonePARIS – As first Apple shop on the European continent is still being built in the Louvre’s chic Carrousel shopping gallery, the new iPhone (3GS) rolled out of FNAC’s and Phonehouses throughout the city. Yesterday was not only the announced release day, but they were actually there. And so was I. After having sat out my time for an iPhone with a proper camera, the day had come to say goodbye to years of phoning with an ordinary mobile phone.

Fiddling around with the fancy gizmo, I have to admit that I now feel a part of a new mobile era – searching information on the go, replying to emails as I’m queuing up somewhere, taking pictures, panning through my calenders as I listen to random songs from my ENTIRE music collection. I realize that many people have had this wonderful experience before me with their iPhone or another smart phone, but do you still remember how exciting this actually is?

I would love to brag that I managed to fill it up to the rim, but 32 Gb is a lot of filling to do. There is enough memory there for 6000 songs. Or to put that differently, you can have 2 weeks of non-stop music. Or actually, there must be a little App programme in the App store out there you can download to calculate your iPhone’s song capacity exactly…

That evening, I polished my shoes. I rubbed the bee wax polish onto my leather shoes, spreading it out evenly so that they would shine the following morning. As I was polishing, struggling in vain not to get the wax on my fingers, I felt a comforting connection with my ancestors, who for hundreds of years have had to have their shoes polished. They would have found themselves in the evening either polishing them or getting their shoes to someone who would do it for them. Perhaps I felt that shared moment there, rather than in other things I do, because shoe polishing feels so antiquated. And yet, the next few hundred years it is not expected to be any different.

But if shoe polishing feels antiquated, as an invisible impossible link to another time, then the iPhone is its opposite, linking you invisibly and impossibly to the current time, the world as it is now. A world which allows you to stare at it and interact, as you move around in it yourself. Feeling the connection with our world is exciting. Feeling a link with your ancestral past through shoe polishing is existentially comforting, as a little escapade away from the immediate. Even if it is not nearly as much fun, as I walked out the door in my freshly polished shoes I felt a self worth I could reflect back through the mirror of the internet phone. And I also realized that I’ll need it too, because cyber-bullying, spam, viruses, cyber fraud and identity theft all just stepped out the door with me…

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To that little shop around the corner

June 14, 2009

La-20Quincaillerie-201_actualites_largePARIS – There is a common nostalgia for buying hats in a hat shop, gloves in the glove shop and bread in a bakery. Only the last one has really survived the onslaught of modernity with it’s super-and hyper-markets. The local bakery even has little chance of being toppled by any new concept, as people love their local boulangerie, which not only makes good bagettes and patisserie, but on top of that the owner tends to be nice to you. And that is where you see the rest of the local commerce go down the drain. Nobody in Paris wants to live in a strictly residential area but keeping those awkward local shops alive is becoming a communal pain. These shops have little to offer, are populated by a rude staff and worst of all, generally do not have a stock of what ever it is they claim to sell. We have reached a stage where we seem to buy there out of charity!


In my neighbourhood, we have a great curiosity called the La Quincaillerie, which sells doorknobs and handles on boulevard St Germain, with atrocious opening hours to discourage any potential customer. As it so happens, I was in the market for them and had walked in. They have a surprisingly limited selection -given the concept of the shop- but amongst their designer wares, I found some beautiful painted porcelain doorknobs. On the day I  would need them, I walked over to the shop to pick them up. Of course it does not work that way with a local shop, and I was told that I would have to wait FIVE weeks for them to arrive! That was of course out of the question. If you would have to wait for weeks for EVERY item you need as you are renovating your apartment, you will never finish! Walking home, I was left wondering what the concept of that store was as I could do better myself – why not just order them directly from China, they will get them here faster than that. (On the internet, myfab.com is a fun consumer experiment.) Or just go to one of the big chains, which actually have something to sell.


Everybody can conjure up a story of their own such as the one above, but the thing is, these local shops are almost all outdated. A painfully limited choice should be shameful. Not having a stock should lead to not having any sales.  Rude staff should lead to snubbing. People are too nice to these little shops, keeping them afloat on a customer unfriendly concept. I was at the IKEA today, arriving too early and with goods to be returned. We were welcomed at the door to let us know they were still closed, they held on to our goods while we were offered a free coffee in their restaurant. All that with free parking, smiling staff and dirt cheap interior design which was all in stock! A similar experience the week before at the DIY chain Leroy Merlin. These places are, of course, in the suburbs and require a car to get there with time to burn a traffic jam.


People are not only nostalgic for old school shops, which have long stopped being an emblem of craftsmanship and style, but also the services industry has taken on the transformation. Many people say they miss the little cinemas. Today they only subsist on the left bank, with most of them in the Latin Quarter. The rest of the city has multiplex cinemas. Do not pity them. Although an evening spent wandering through the old crooked streets of the left bank, with a little red plush cinema showing a black-and-white Marcello Mastroianni movie sounds divine, the reality is not quite up to it. My local cinema, the Cinéma du Panthéon, has been around since 1907, still looks great and has a tea room co-designed by nobody other than Catherine Deneuve(!). But the lounge is only open till six (!?) and the cinema, although they try, seems to have films lingering on for months on end, and the staff…. Is it really that great to go the old, little screens?


When you think of the MK2 multiplex cinemas, which offer super screens and sound,  chairs for two (so you can lay one against the other), or one which features a little boat from one to the other (Quai de Seine) and a stunning lights-in-the-water terrace view, and one which features a design restaurant and an immaculately stocked bookshop (MK2 Bibliothèque), what is more attractive? They offer a wide choice of films, which, let us not forget, is the whole point of going to a cinema. It is hardly surprising that they are doing so well. If the small cinemas want to survive, they should be fighting as the big ones do to find their added value. The embarrassing truth is, that as with the shops,  audiences are often just people who wish them well, rather than those that just want to be there. People are too nice.


At some point or other, we are going to have to accept that consumer business should survive or fail based on the applicability of the services they offer. A shop which has nothing to sell, or a cinema which has nothing to show does not need nostalgia aid, but a change of management. The little shops and cinemas should be thankful for the kindness of their audiences, but that will not continue forever. We all know you are subpar. You presumably know that you are subpar. And someday our generosity will falter. Perhaps in times of financial crisis… Learn to be nice from the boulangerie, learn to sell something from the successful. We might forgive you for the pain you put us through. We might.


www.laquincaillerie.com // www.myfab.com // cinema.pantheon.free.fr // www.MK2.com

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How long do we have to wait this time?

May 27, 2009

cannes2009Cannes Film Festival / UGC Cinemas :: France :: 2009

After the Champagne sipping, backslapping and air kissing is all over on the picturesque Mediterranean and the film producers, sellers, models, journalists, actors, and wannabes have all returned to their respective polluted metropolises, the audience is once again left in bewilderment. Surely this is all about us in some way or another? When do we get to see Haneke’s masterpiece?

Cinema loving France, including yours truly, is feeling the chill once again. UGC,  Europe’s largest cinema operator, announced that the winner of the 62nd Festival de Cannes, The White Ribbon, will be screened as of the 21st October 2009. In case you missed that, that is in five months time! This may be slightly faster than after previous festivals (remember l’Enfant?) but seriously, is that the best they can do? All the buzz of the moment will be distant whispers by the time the audience gets back from a long hot summer. Every year has a winner, surely some planning is possible?

One of the beauties of cinema is its power to share- a million copies of the same film can be made and watched all around the world at the same time. We live in a digital era where if a member of the public gets their hands on a copy, it can be distributed through an internet peer to peer system and be available worldwide instantly. The professional bodies of film producers, distributors and buyers are nowhere near such efficiency. They need to learn a lesson from the world’s teenagers to get their distribution in order. Reading raving reviews of new film is exciting, but considerably less so if you are left outside staring at the poster.

UGC, Allociné, Festival de Cannes

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Are hotels hospitable?

May 19, 2009

DSC04283

London Euston Premier Inn :: Hotel :: 1 Dukes Road, London, WC1H  9PJ, UK :: 17 May 2009

The most common response would be people telling you that it depends on the hotel. This is of course true, as we have all stayed in charming hotels and have our favorites somewhere. But for those who have jobs, and depending largely on your line of work, will also have been confronted with business hotels. The concept is fairly simple: a standard design, spacious,  meeting rooms, conveniently located and perhaps most importantly, with a lot of rooms. Business travelers are not flexible, time wise, and need a room on the day they specify. They do not, on the other hand, mind a view of a busy boulevard, nor do they mind over-paying for the room (as it is not their bank account). Last night, I stayed in the UK’s biggest hotel chain, Premier Inn, with 500 hotels across the country! Although it has four stars, it is a simple but large hotel hoping to capture not only those business people but also travelling families. It is relatively cheap by business hotel standards (expect a little over €100 a night). But take a look at what you really get for that amount. Let us run through the experience.

As you can see from the opening image, the outer design is atrocious, a cross between a hospital and a temporary construction site office. On entry, you will notice that the insides are designed to scare away any self respecting youngster or romantic, accentuated with monochrome purple. This is an aesthetic selection at the Premier Inn door to weed out the trouble makers – after all, which self respecting youngster would want to be seen in such an office environment?

The guest, if he stays, has to first comply with the police state rules – name, identification number, address, show papers and hand over money. The Mr and Ms Smith hotel freedom era can not take place in such a corporate glass brick institution. Naturally, as with almost all “security” measures, if you do not want to be registered, you only have to check into one of the more dodgy hotels around the station, and there is no lack of those. State security rationale seems to dictate that terrorists and the likes can spend the night in hotels, but only if it is grotty with stained sheets and costs less than 50€. In their dusty lobby you will still be welcomed as Mr and Mrs Smith… but comfort, even at a low level, is reserved for non-terrorists only.

P1020671

Up to the room, armed with the keycard. Swipe a machine to open the elevator doors (impenetrable security!), floor 5 please. At the right room number, push the keycard into the slot and pull it out quickly. Instantaneously, anyone in the corridor will have distinguished the experienced traveller from the debutant as you do or do not hear the door open with a click. Hopefully unembarrassed, you can walk into a spacious environment which is now temporarily your home. A normal hotel room in 2009. I made myself a coffee, took a sip and as my eyes opened up to the purple reality around me, I saw the usual little green milk capsule with the curious inscription “Tastes like fresh milk”. But think about that for a second. That, of course, is another way of saying “this is not fresh milk but you will not notice”. Hardly reassuring. Basically, they think I am willing to kid myself into believing I am enjoying some milk in my coffee while I am actually drinking something else, something fake. And I do not know what…

P1020669I took off my coat and to my great surprise the coat hangers were placed so low that even an adult shirt could not hang there! This is absurd! They could mark the cupboard on their list as being there, but it can’t be used! I wanted to put my wallet in the safe, but this one was not free… the hotel was telling me that their staff is not necessarily trustworthy, nor are their locks, but if you get robbed it was your own fault for not having paid the extra for the safe… What kind of a world have I landed into?

On to the bathroom – there is no shower. You have to balance in the bathtub to take a shower, if you want one. This is a common feature of both hotels and apartments today, but should this not be questioned? To get in and out of the shower is very uncomfortable and dangerous for many old people. Once you are inside, if you remain standing up, there is no space to turn and your feet are on the slanted slopes of the bath tub. The hotel is aware of the discomfort and risk of falling, but instead of installing normal showers to solve the problem, they added support bars all around the tub to make you feel like an invalid. That way, like with the safe and the coat hangers, it is your fault (now for being clumsy or old) rather than theirs. This is typical big-company rationale – rather than solving a problem, you spend more to circumvent it but leaving it in place.

P1020664But if the discomfort had not hit you completely yet, try washing your hands: there is a separate faucet for the hot and cold. Again, this is common, but why do we not just admit that this is grossly outdated. Either you burn your hands under the hot tap or freeze them under the cold. If the hotel wants to insist on an 18th century experience, then the basin has to be deeper and narrower and easy to close so that people can actually wash their hands in it. Perhaps having a porcelain jug next to the sink which you can fill up like it is the French revolution might help as well. Again, it is you who is made to feel bad for ignorantly not using the sink as it was intended and hence freezing/ burning your hands rather than them just simply solving the problem (or not creating it in the first place).

On the surface of things, Premier Inn, or other similar simple hotels, offer a room as hotels have always done. But it is remarkable how little comfort such a 4 star hotel really provides. And remember that there are 500 of these in the UK and this is a recent building. These discomforts are no coincidence. It is equally remarkable to notice that it seems almost engineered to be uncomfortable and to make you feel bad. But why do they do it? Complaining about any of these elements is petty because they are so common, but you could also expect a chain to try to innovate at least a little bit themselves. Of course I would have written this all last night, but, unsurprisingly, the hotel did not offer Wifi…

www.premierinn.com

P1020668

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Doing something with your life

April 27, 2009

Quartier MouffetardThere is a 50 year old man cycling around the square outside my window right at this instant, a Monday morning at 10:30 am. That means he woke up, put on his baggy multi-coloured trousers, got out his bike and started riding around in circles on the street down below. No shower, hair a mess, shirt from yesterday. Or the day before. As you would perhaps expect, he managed to get his bike tangled up with a stationary one, as he tried to ride by it clumsily. Humiliating. Even in his actions of complete futility, he manages to cause someone grief. Clearly, he has to do something with his life… But do something? Like what?

It is curious that there is a preconceived idea about what you should be doing with your life, without even, that we can put that directly into words. For those who, like me, saw the fellow with the bike, know that he is not doing it; whatever it is. Let us look a little further around the square. There are now about 30 people, with an equal number of cameras, taking pictures of each other on the square. There is a young man on a bench on the phone. A couple smoking and talking. Cars driving by. A few people drinking coffee on the terraces. A lot more people walking by, one stumbling with a large package. Notice that these people are all not doing anything special. Ah, finally, two men from the park service arrive, to clean out junk people threw into the fountain during the night. Men with jobs doing something useful.

Doing something with your life though, does not mean you have to be doing anything special, work or not. In fact, it seems only to suggest that a grown up man should not be riding his bicycle in circles around a square on Monday morning. But why not? What is so special about that? Why do we think he should be doing anything else? Is it jealousy of his idling? “Doing something” with your life is, after all, just seeming to be doing something, seeming to have some purpose. Perhaps there is some hidden purpose to the bike ride?

I think the real issue, if the man circling the square or untangling himself from the parked bicycle impacts you at all, would be that he is just in the way. By wasting his own time, he risks wasting other people’s time (the owner of the parked bicycle) He is just in the way. “Doing something” with your life, is not as much a judgement of their lives, as it is a statement about their dead weight presence, their blocking the way. It is a plea to others to keep out of the way of those people that are actually “doing something”. Which, of course, is us.

Image source: parisruemouffetard.blogspot.com

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New Cabinet, minus two…eh?

April 11, 2009

New cabinetI am sure most people would agree that this makes a fantastic story: two ultra-orthodox newspapers printed pictures of the Israeli prime minister Netanyahu’s new cabinet with two minsters (Livnat and Landver) photoshopped out!

The story goes that the Israeli religious daily Yated Ne’eman altered the image by putting male ministers in the place of the two female ones, and the Sha’a Tovah, a religious weekly, blacked out the faces and figures of the ministers. Supposedly, the ultra-orthodox newspapers consider publishing images of women as a violation of their modesty. The story then ends with the statistic that 8 to 15% of Israeli’s are ultra-orthodox, to make it all more dramatic, when we are talking about two very marginal papers here.

But is it all true?

It is remarkable that although the story went around the world, nobody printed a link to the offending papers, and most just repeat the same content. The papers do not seem to have an active website (of course), but what journalist could resist taking a picture of the cover of the ultra-orthodox paper if he actually had it in his hand? Have a look at a few papers who printed the story:

Courrier International (F) BBC (UK) Associated Press (US) The Guardian (UK) The Independent (UK) The Star (Canada) Die Welt (Germany)

Did any of them check if this is really true?

The Guardian and The Independent both have an Israeli correspondent write the story, but did they see the offending newspaper themselves? (They both use the AP image like everybody else.)

That ultra-orthodox jews consider that women should not be in government does not surprise me (otherwise you would not call them ultra-orthodox), but pretending that reality is different than it is, is just ridiculous – it’s a newspaper! What is the point in reading fake news? If the ultra-orthodox really thought pictures of women were immodest, they could also have not printed the picture and just written about the new cabinet.

So why is there not a copy of the newspaper cover anywhere? The Iranian newschannel Press TV managed to find an old anti-internet quote from the Yated Neeman editor, but still, someone could have scanned the newspaper to show that this is not an April 1st joke … or is that why nobody managed to find any proof?

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Hadopi Rejected! Sanity Restored!

April 10, 2009

UPDATE 11 June 2009: The French Constitutional Council confirms that internet access can not be restricted by a bureaucrat sitting on a Hadopi board, irrespective of the government’s wishes or their corporate sponsors. This enlightened decision, written up in illegible legal slang, was put up on June 10th. This leaves the Hadopi law as “a big spam machine for the entertainment industry, paid for by the taxpayer”, as Mr Zimmermann of the Quadrature du Net (digital rights defense) humorously commented. With Hadopi crippled beyond use, perhaps it is time to wonder why the UMP party, who runs the government, could not have figured out themselves that this law would be unconstitutional? Do we really need to be saved (again) by the EU?

UPDATE 22 april 2009: The industry commission of the EU has decreed that internet access can not be restricted on anyone without a court order. This effectively restricts the possibility of introducing the Hadopi law in France (or any other EU country).

UPDATE 9 april 2009:  The Assemblée Nationale (French Parliament) reversed it’s opinion on the anti-piracy law Hadopi, which had been accepted a few days before! After a week long wave of public criticism, the government, surprisingly enough, dropped the heavily flawed law, an excellent decision. Although it is a great sigh of relief, the proposal will be re-evaluated on april 28th. That is probably too soon, as clearly not much work had gone into this proposal…

UPDATE 13 may 2009: Hadopi passed after a revote! After passing through the Assemblée Nationale (French Parliament), the proposal has now been approved by the Senate too. This embarrassing result will now lead to a showdown at the European Court of Justice, for allegedly beaching European law. The Strasbourg European Parliament, who is (thankfully) bitterly opposed to Hadopi, are still fighting to have it scrapped, and will argue the illegality of by issuing punishment through the Hadopi administration rather than a court of law. Fingers crossed.

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