"Service Après Vente"

When a ripple of globalization finally finds its way to Paris, it's hard not to see the upside. Like when Starbuck's started popping up everywhere from the Madeleine to the Marais. Sure, it was hard not to feel guilty passing up an authentic neighborhood café for an obnoxious American chain, but it's amazing how no-smoking signs, friendly service, and soy milk can melt guilt away into pure contentment. Or when “returns" and "exchanges” finally became part of French salespeople’s vocabulary.
Yes, service après vente in Paris has definitely come a long way. I still have nightmarish memories of my failed attempt to return spoiled cheese to my local G-20 market eight years ago. I went in mustering all of my French-acquired politeness, asking with wide eyes what the store policy was for returns. But the store manager took one look at me and my rotten cheese and started yelling. How dare I come to him with cheese problems when obviously he wasn't the one who had made the cheese! Another time, I tried taking a top back to Benetton--it had reacted with my deodorant the first time I had worn it and turned into a mottled mess of ghostly white stains. The saleslady told me with a snotty smile that it wasn't Benetton's problem; I needed to complain to my deodorant maker. . . so basically all purchases used to be final in France--unless a store had a specially designated service après vente annex building (and the customer had a lot of time or was at least willing to cry pretty hard).
Dieu merci, in the past few years, service après vente has become intriguingly simple. I am happy to say that I have successfully exchanged rotten Noirmoutier potatoes at Monoprix for fresh ones, and I have even exchanged a flawed clothing article twice without a whimper of a protest from the sales assistant. Nothing spells globalization like a helpful salesperson in Paris.

Alan Ruck, Matthew Broderick, and Mia Sara as Cameron Frye, Ferris Bueller, and Sloane Peterson. [Online image] 1986.

Detoxing for Fall

The sun decided to leave Paris last week. It didn't ask anyone if it could. It just up and decided that it'd seen enough bare necks and painted toes for one year and hid behind the clouds (and there were plenty of clouds to hide behind). So just like that, fall came a bit early this year. And so did Parisian spleen.
Melancholy waiters ushered tables and chairs back inside dreary cafés, and irritable parents harried their children out of parks and back indoors. "C'est le changement des saisons !" they cried, rushing home to pull last year's scarves and boots out of their closets.
The lady who runs my yoga center had a more holistic approach: detox cocktails (sans alcool évidemment). "When the seasons change, people's livers are often filled with a lot of anger," she explained. To help purge the liver of its foul fall bile, she recommended a 20-day regimen of black radish juice and other plant extracts (available in ampoules at the pharmacy). I just hope my liver is ready to be that happy.

Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo. [Online image] 1952.

"Derrière Le Volant"

I just can't seem to get the hang of it. The breeziness of it. The one-handedness of it. All I want is to stay in 2nd with both hands gripped around the wheel. But the engine always cries out for more. Even in-between roundabouts, it wants to be in 3rd or 4th. And once it goes over 50 mph, it's not happy with anything but 5th.
I hate 5th. I cringe as I try to push and shove the stubborn stick into the top right-hand corner, holding my breath, waiting for the engine to cry out and leap like a wounded animal.
How do the French make it look so easy? They whip through chicanes and minuscule countryside roundabouts in their toy-like Peugeots and Renaults as though they were born driving.
"Il te manque de la confiance en soi," my instructor concludes after another grueling lesson of priorité à droite and démarrage en côte. That or an automatic car. . .

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly as John Robie and Frances Stevens. [Online image] 1955.

September Slack

In Paris, the only thing more frustrating than finding your daily repères closed in August is finding them closed in September. As though the fermeture annuelle of your favorite boulangerie during the entire month of August weren't punishment enough, the city of Paris has decided to turn the rentrée into one endless force-fed goose chase. For one, it had the original idea of emptying out all of the city's pools at the same time. But even though swimming off the calories from all those croissants ordinaires may not be an option, you'll get quite a workout just tracking down an open pool in the area.
If only all the fonctionnaires could stay on vacation, life in Paris would be so much simpler.

Jacques Villeret, Daniel Prévost, Thierry Lhermitte, and Francis Huster as François Pignon, Lucien Cheval, Pierre Brochant, and Juste Leblanc [Online image] 1998.

Smoking is Still Chic in Paris

Even though more French women have started looking American around the middle, pressure to stay slim in Paris is as heavy as a six-egg chocolate mousse with extra crème fraîche and butter. Curvy just doesn't spell chic here (except maybe to Vincent Cassel).
But instead of reaching for running shoes and nonfat yogurt to stave off unwanted kilos, chic Parisiennes manage to eat what they please and rarely break a sweat. How do they do it? Cigarettes.
Unlike in America, where chain-smoking went from glamorous to trashy last century, in France, spewing lung-poisoning fumes in front of others is still considered perfectly acceptable behavior for an upstanding citizen. Which means that most days, you'll find yourself sputtering your way through a labyrinth of smoke emerging from the unabashed mouths of well-dressed businesswomen, friends gossiping in sidewalk cafés, and young mothers pushing (with one-hand) smart Maclaren strollers.
It’s enough to make you want to return to the land of Botox and celebrity diets, where even the head of state has the decency to smoke in private.

Sharon Gless as Madeline Westen. [Online image].