Out and Down in Paris

Posted in Life by Jonathan on November 28th, 2009

I’m in Paris now, trying to catch my breath and working on the next Jenner book. I’ll be here for a few days, taking photos and making notes of locations, and having a much needed visit to Alain, my barber, who’ll transform me from a bushy-bearded Charles Darwin clone to something more highly-evolved, almost metrosexual.

Alain, who bills himself as the last Master Barber in Paris, entertains me immensely – he has such a finely drawn sense of himself. The first time I went there, we talked about what I wanted, and then he did exactly what he thought best. When he’d finished, he stepped back, looked at me critically, then pronounced it “Nettement mieux!” – clearly better. And he was right.

His tiny barbershop/barbering museum on rue St. Claude, a narrow, gallery-filled side street in the Third Arrondissement, is worth a visit by anyone in need of a haircut or – his specialty – un rasage à l’ancienne – a traditional shave. You’ll need an appointment.

It’s noon on Saturday, grey skies, soft light, quiet, other than the distant toll of church bells. My apartment here is in the Marais, the part of medieval Paris left standing when Baron Haussman radically reconfigured the city in the 1800′s. It’s a lovely part of the city, narrow streets lined by beautiful old buildings – it’s particularly wonderful at night, when the tourist herds have thinned. The Marais is also the heart of Jewish Paris, with so many temples and delis and black-hatted Orthodox jews that if it weren’t for the macarons and Paris-Brests in neat rows in the patisserie windows, I’d think I was in Brooklyn.

An unexpected advantage of living in the Marais is that the place actually is quiet on the weekends – Jewish businesses here shut down by sunset on Fridays, and remain closed through Saturday. Even though this is also the heart of gay Paris, Friday and Saturday nights are blissfully tranquil. Of course, there’s a flip side to that: the shops are closed, which means a slightly longer trek when I’m feeling lazy and hungry…

And, speaking of lazy, I’m lazy today. I get the worst jetlag, and am doing the worst thing for it: it’s almost 1PM and I’m still in bed. I should be out, finding breakfast and taking photographs, but I’m happy to be warm and cozy, and to look at the grey world outside from the comfort of my bed.

To make up for that, I’m going to post a couple of photos I took on my last visit. Here’s the Place des Vosges, one of the most elegant squares in Paris, built as the Place Royale in 1605. The layout is precise and symmetric, with a bosquet of lindens framing neatly defined lawns that are punctuated with tonsured firs and fountains – Nature well and truly tamed, in the grand Enlightenment tradition. It’s very difficult to capture in a photo, since the square works best as a three-dimensional experience, the shifting perspectives as you walk past the straight lines of lindens articulating an elegant aesthetics of geometry.

Here, even the dullest streets are pretty.

Bed. Bed is good.