The Local: “‘They are squatters’: Are Paris cafés right to clamp down on laptop users?”

I’m not against laptops, but I am against the minority of users who will sit down for four or five hours, with the cheapest drink. That’s not respectful to the space, so the decision came about because of those few who do that. We call them squatters, he says.

We make less revenue at the end of the month, because the business costs are higher, Jeff says, adding that Fringe is not a co-working space.

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The Dancing Goat’s policy is to allow laptops during the week, but not on the weekends. Aaricia, a barista and the head of The Dancing Goat’s social media presence, said that this comes down to the energy of the place.

On the weekends, we want to be able to welcome families, children and grandparents she said.

Aaricia sees the no-laptops-on-the-weekends rule to be a fair middle ground – allowing the many people who work remotely a place to come on the weekdays, while offering a more “energetic” and inclusive space on the weekends.

Genevieve Mansfield

The growing popularity of remote work is causing interesting social changes, some more obvious, some less expected. And naturally some are also pushing back against these new behaviors. In this particular case I tend to side with the owners who seek to restrict remote work in their shops, since it makes little business sense for them to allow people to occupy a spot for hours, when they could instead have dozens of customers in the same time span. One might reorganize things to be more accommodating for remote workers, but that would probably require a shift in the business model, perhaps an extra charge for renting a seat for a certain amount of hours, access to faster Wi-Fi, and so on.

The New Yorker: “The Invisible City beneath Paris”

All cities are additions to a landscape that require subtraction from elsewhere. Much of Paris was built from its own underland, hewn block by block from the bedrock and hauled up for dressing and placing. Underground stone quarrying began in the thirteenth century, and Lutetian limestone was used in the construction of such iconic buildings as Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, and Saint-Eustache Church. The result of more than six hundred years of quarrying is that beneath the southern portion of the upper city exists its negative image: a network of more than two hundred miles of galleries, rooms and chambers, extending beneath several arrondissements. This network is the vides de carrières—the quarry voids, the catacombs, which together total an underground space around ten times the space of Central Park.

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Urban exploration is international in its geography, with groups, crews, and chapters scattered around the world. There is a surprising number of female explorers, and the class base is mixed, often drawing on a disaffected and legally disobedient demographic. At its more political fringes, urban exploration mandates itself as a radical act of disobedience and liberation, a protest against state constraints on freedom within the city. The subculture has its subcultures: there are explorers who specialize in “track-running” underground rail systems to gain access to off-limits parts of those networks; others are particularly known for their ascents of factory chimneys in former Soviet-bloc countries. Detroit and Pripyat—the city evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster—might be thought of as two meccas for those urban explorers who seek out the problematic pathos of “derp” (explorers’ argot for “derelict and ruined places”), Instagramming shots of collapsing pianos, scattered archives, and children’s toys abandoned in the corners of dusty rooms.

Robert Macfarlane

Fascinating deep-dive into the hidden geography underneath Paris, its centuries-long history, and the contemporary people exploring the tunnels and escaping into an alternative life not possible at the surface. I have visited Les Catacombes during my time in Paris, but naturally only the ‘safe’ space available to tourists. I was vaguely aware they are much larger, but I had no idea how extensive, nor that they were used as shelters for the population and hiding places for the French Resistance during World War Two. These days, they are fulfilling another human need, offering a sense of the unexpected, a target for exploration in a world that so often can seem steady and predictable.

The Guardian: “Call My Agent: the French comedy gem A-listers are desperate to star in”

If the show’s premise is somewhat predictable, its handling of fame is altogether less so. Each episode features a titular guest star – BéatriceDalle, Cécile de France, Guy Marchand – but rather than being written as the focal point, the big name is instead that day’s worry to assuage, the problem to be fixed. Call My Agent does that rare thing that interviews often fail to achieve, and makes these people, who live decidedly abnormal lives, very normal.

There are administratively challenged actors who need help answering emails and vetting nannies, and matrimonially challenged stars who want help finding a date. There’s the actor who can’t drive, the actor who can’t swim and the actor who suddenly can’t act. There’s one who, as Andrea puts it, is “doing a Day Lewis”, and can’t stop acting, unable to come out of a very intense Revenant-style survival role. He ends up being dropped from his subsequent gig as a clean-shaven banker when he literally attacks the producer’s dog, with his teeth.

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The material for all of it comes from co-creator Dominique Besnehard, an actor and director who spent two decades as the most well-known agent in France. The man’s CV reads like a history of contemporary French cinema. From Jacques Doillon onwards, he’s worked with everyone. Which is to say that not only are the guests in Call My Agent mostly names in Besnehard’s own address book, the storylines are rooted in his lived experience. It all happened, he repeatedly tells the press.

Dale Berning Sawa

I recently finished watching this series on Netflix – binged from start to finish in a little over a week, since each season only has 6 episodes – and I have to say it was phenomenally fun to watch! I know few French actors, so I have not picked up on the premise that real actors are playing themselves until the forth episode – I remember Audrey Fleurot from another French series I watched on Netflix, Le Bazar de la Charité. This innovation aside, the real interest for me were the four agent, their daily trials and tribulations dealing with their clients’ fickleness, but also with each other’s chicanery and intrigue. Some situations felt a little over the top, especially in the lives of the main characters, but at the same time this made the watching experience that more exciting. I was glad to find out there is another season coming, even if it will be the last.

Washington Post: “The battle for Notre Dame”

The holidays passed without a Christmas Mass in the beloved national icon or a Christmas tree on the public square outside its richly decorated west façade. When I visited in October, I passed by only once, and it was painful to see the great church off-limits. The writer Hilaire Belloc once described Notre Dame as a matriarch whose authority is familiar, tacit and silent. But she now seems not just reticent, but mute.

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Repairing Notre Dame was one of the most urgent projects, and Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, one of two architects put in charge of restoration, began to undertake extensive and controversial changes. Perhaps no one in the history of the cathedral understood it better — its quirks, structural oddities and weak spots — and no one was more passionately hostile to earlier renovations that had altered its gothic design. But Viollet-le-Duc’s definition of restoration was more like that of a contemporary theater director approaching an old script than a preservationist working with scientific and historical rigor: To restore a building, he wrote, is not to maintain, repair, or redo it, but to reestablish it in a finished state that may never have existed at a given time.

Viollet-le-Duc changed the windows, added decorative elements to the base of the flying buttresses, remade statues, and created wholesale many of the grotesques, chimeras and gargoyles that visitors often assume are the essence of the cathedral’s gothic character. He also built a new spire, out of wood and lead, to replace the one that had been removed in the mid-18th century because it was no longer sound.

Philip Kennicott

Interesting overview of the history of Notre Dame and the transformations it underwent over the centuries. It’s all too easy to assume it has always looked this way when in fact much of its visual style was redefined in the 19th century restoration. After the fire in April last year architects proposed radical redesigns of the spire and roof area, from a glass roof to an urban green space and even a swimming pool atop the cathedral. The final decision announced last month was fortunately more conservative, aiming to rebuild the spire according to Viollet-le-Duc’s 19th century design, using original materials like wood for the roof. I for one would prefer it that way – there is more than enough space in Paris for green roofs and glass structures, no need to convert cathedrals into modern styles that may be out of fashion by the time the reconstruction finishes.

The Guardian: “Paris, city of romance, rues new image as the dirty man of Europe”

The city of light and of romance has become a dirty old town, or as locals have nicknamed it, Paris poubelle (dustbin Paris).

On Saturday, World Cleanup Day, Parisians were urged to pick up the mess they and visitors have made. Paris is definitely getting dirtier. It’s filthy everywhere. The city needs an aggressive policy to make the streets cleaner and safer, said Matthew Fraser, professor of communications at the American University of Paris, who has lived in the city for the best part of 30 years.

Paris thrives on its own moral chaos. Nothing is organised, everything is urban anarchy. I don’t think Parisians notice it, because it’s their chaotic energy. But if you’re from the outside, or from another culture, the city is a mess.

Kim Willsher

Despite its reputation as city of romance, Paris has never been the cleanest city, but apparently that problem has grown out of proportion in recent years. Though I would dispute the idea that it’s the dirtiest city in Europe – people who think that clearly haven’t seen Bucharest. I’ve been wanting to return to Paris for some time, and maybe this will be the year to finally do it. If so, I must remember to compare them and report back with a longer article on the blog.

Aeon Video: “The mystery of flying kicks”

The Mystery of Flying Kicks

A peculiar meme with global reach, you can find shoes hanging from telephone lines in New York City, Sydney and Madrid. Like being able to find a McDonald’s or a Starbucks in almost any major city, the spread of the strange phenomenon is a testament to how quickly ideas and culture travel in the global age even when the significance remains opaque. Depending on where you are and who you ask, you’re likely to receive varying interpretations – some sinister, some strange, some hopeful – as to what exactly the ‘flying kicks’ mean.

Described by the Australian director Matthew Bate as a ‘digital collaboration between the filmmakers and the international public’, The Mystery of the Flying Kicks is a crowd-sourced collage that combines animation, donated video, photographs and phone messages to shed light on the trend. But as theories, second-hand stories and anecdotes pile up, so does the complexity of the mystery.

Matthew Bate

I saw some flying kicks in Paris, on the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, and always wondered what they meant. Apparently, nobody knows for sure, but there are many fascinating theories.

Nouă săptămâni la Paris - și nici măcar n-am urcat în Turnul Eiffel!

Cred că sună incredibil de arogant pentru cineva care nici măcar nu a ajuns la Paris și‑și dorește asta de cine știe când, dar nici măcar n‑am simțit nevoia să urc în turn. Am trecut pe acolo într‑o zi ploioasă, cum au fost multe în vara asta din păcate, și prima impresie a fost de schelă gigantică în curs de ruginire. Stând chiar în centru între piloni sub corpul principal și urmărind cu capul pe spate picăturile de apă desprinse cum cădeau cu încetinitorul am avut o senzație vagă de ireal; chiar mă aflam acolo, sub simbolul unui întreg oraș, Mecca unei armate de turiști din toate colțurile globului? M‑am minunat de conștiinciozitatea cu care lumea în jurul meu se înșira la coadă să urce în turn. Nu s‑au mișcat nici măcar când a început să toarne cu găleata în timp ce eu m‑am refugiat sub un stejar în parcul din apropiere. Într‑un fel e de înțeles, atunci când ai poate doar câteva zile la dispoziție vrei neapărat să bifezi un obiectiv atât de faimos. Însă pe de altă parte în timpul pe care îl pierzi la coadă, probabil 2‑3 ore în medie, ai putea să vezi altceva, locuri mai puțin frecventate, mai autentice, unele chiar gratuite – ceea ce nu e de lepădat, de vreme ce faima Parisului ca oraș scump se extinde și la obiectivele turistice; taxa minimă e în jur de 8 EUR¹. Și sunt atâtea de văzut în orașul ăsta! Chiar și după nouă săptămâni (mă rog, am mai și muncit, sunt mai degrabă nouă week‑end‑uri) plus încă două bonus o lună mai târziu mă tot gândesc că n‑am epuizat nici pe departe destinațiile, că n‑am făcut suficiente fotografii. Dar, cine știe, poate data viitoare…

Fiind cazați la început pentru o săptămână la periferie, într‑un orășel de care nici măcar parizienii n‑au auzit², prima vizită a fost la Versailles. Un mic sfat: dacă mergeți în grup trimiteți pe cineva să ia bilete în timp ce restul stau la coada uriașă de la intrare, e mai rapid așa. N‑am fost extrem de impresionat de interior, probabil pentru că am tot văzut castele în zona München‑ului, majoritatea inspirate de opulența Versailles‑ului. Dar nici îmbulzeala de turiști nu cred că a ajutat. Grădinile sunt imense, ar fi nevoie de vreo două zile ca să explorezi în liniște și castelele și împrejurimile. Parcă să ne facă în ciudă, când am ieșit din corpul principal au fost oprite fântânile – poate cel mai frumos aspect – și au pornit din nou de‑abia seara pe la 6 când ne pregăteam să plecăm. Ca și în restul Parisului, m‑a deranjat stilul de a aranja totul (pomi, alei, flori, canale) perfect ordonat, în linii drepte, arată auster, prea artificial pentru mine. În schimb în spatele micului Trianon spațiile verzi au fost amenajate (la indicațiile Mariei Antoaneta) cu o temă rustică, de la căsuțe la iazul cu nuferi, de la vii la răsadurile de legume – mult mai primitor. Tot la Versailles am avut parte de prima întâlnire cu regulile mai neobișnuite ale Franței; mai concret verificarea biletelor se poate foarte bine face și la terminarea turului, așa că păstrați‑le cu grijă; tot așa la metrou în unele stații – la aeroport de exemplu – trebuie să validați biletul și la ieșire.