Travelers' Tales Paris by James O'Reilly Read Free Book Online

open-air market and eat it on a bench along the Seine, or in the garden of the little Ukrainian church at the corner of the rue des Sts-Pères and the Boulevard St-Germain. Now I often do the same thing, joining other picnickers in the Place de Fürstemberg, outside the Delacroix Museum, and then sitting over an espresso or a citron pressé at the Deux Magots or the Flore, the Bonaparte or the OldNavy, watching the ghosts of both the past and the future. No matter how loafingly the body coils or uncoils on wire or wicker chairs, Rive Gauche Present invites contemplation of Left Bank Past.
    Symbolic of both the change and the sameness is the adventure of the St-Germain-des-Prés wino called P’tit Louis , or Little Louie. He was selected as a photographic model by Timberland Shoes, which had decided that the one thing a Left Bank hobo needs is a sturdy, long-lasting pair of American boots. After auditioning more than 50 “personalities of the sidewalk,” the advertising agency chose P’tit Louis because of his authentic hat, nose, overcoat, and grizzled style.
    The day I read about this in the morning Figaro , I happened to meet Little Louie on the steps of the philosophical and geographical institute located between the Café aux Deux Magots and the Café Bonaparte, where he was being asked about his views of the world by a French television team with the usual tense and worn international media faces. He was earnestly discoursing on the life of a clochard (a word that means one who sleeps under bridges and clocks) while occasionally taking a deep puff on his cigar or an even deeper drag on his bottle of Gros Rouge—for inspirational purposes only, of course. He was wearing The Shoes. He was not wearing socks. Today he was, as everyone is supposed to be for fifteen minutes of a lifetime, a Star.
    Later that day I had lunch at chez Lipp, the brasserie of politicians, littéraires , filmmakers, the famous, and those who want to look at the famous, and I failed to recognize Leslie Caron at the next table. I too have grown older. Nearby, poodles were yipping in the laps of their lovely mistresses, who were feeding them morsels of sausage. (Poodles don’t develop cellulite.) My friend at lunch, a journalist who has lived most of his life in Paris, a man who ranks high in the Café-sitting Olympics, stipulated that the Left Bank isn’t what it used to be, and nothing is, but it is still “agreeable.” The pickpockets and the arrogant waiters are more fun than elsewhere, the people are still humble and modest (and proud of it, in that French way), and the rusty treasure of a place is still atreasure, even polished up for display in a living museum of impacted time. If a person can be entertained anywhere, or bemused by the nearness of history, he can be bemused and entertained here.
    â€œLet’s search the Left Bank,” I proposed to a friend. “Let’s try to find a bad meal.”
    We succeeded. It was in an Algerian restaurant on the rue Xavier Privas, because we wanted couscous, that North African specialty of grains and vegetables and spices and various meats. But we cheated: it was a restaurant aimed like a missile at tourists, with a barker outside; and even here the food was merely mediocre, perhaps even interesting, which of course is not a word of highest commendation for food. One can eat poorly only with the greatest difficulty in the myriad small restaurants of the Rive Gauche.
    Paris is still Paris, portions of the Left Bank are still something of the bohemian nation, but of course elements of Bon Chic, Bon Genre —the French version of gentrification, yuppification—have turned many of the former attic rooms into pretty studios. When I was a poor student and would-bee buzzing around St-Germain-des-Prés, Montparnasse and the Latin Quarter, I knew a little hotel in the rue de l’Odéon where other would-bees stayed for 50 or 60 cents a