Halloween in Paris: Less Fuss, More Fun

For the past few years, the French have been feeling pretty smug around la Toussaint. "Halloween is gone for good," they gloat. "It wasn't a French holiday to begin with--it couldn't have lasted," they shrug, pointing to bland shop windows that used to be filled with gaping jack-o-lantern grins and spindly spider legs in woolly webs come October. Even store chains like Monoprix have started to skimp on the Halloween déco, content to fill their seasonal aisles instead with Christmas-themed candy and decorations as soon as the weather turns cool. With the exception of the odd chocolatier's--or Le Bon Marché's--displays of plump pumpkin-shaped chocolates, Halloween could almost go unnoticed now. Almost.
Because what the French haven't completely forgotten is the magic of make-believe. Wobbly toddlers turned ladybugs and wild Indians are led by the hands of proud parents to their crèches' Halloween parties, where even the staff has been transformed into witches and devils. Older Parisians stop the children on the street to compliment their costumes and joke with them, no doubt remembering costumed goûters d'anniversaire of yore.
So maybe with a less commercial version of Halloween, the French, young and old, will stop seeing the holiday as a capitalist intrusion and more as what it always has been: a good excuse to dress up and eat candy--pumpkin-shaped or not.

Drew Barrymore as Gertie [Online image] 1982.

Fall in Paris Means Really Big Produce

After months of bite-sized berries, wee apricots all ablush, and innocent heads of leafy greens, fall produce can come as quite a shock here.
Suddenly market stands are weighed down with giant slices of pumpkin (they're too big to be sold whole), fat apples and pears in all shapes and colors, and piles of twisted black radishes.
Shoppers hobble home laden with their spoils, conspicuous stalks of leeks and chard peeking out from bags and baskets, not knowing the culinary coup that awaits them. . . For tonight, Madame will cover them in egg and cream and put them in a pie!

Illustration by Beatrix Potter [Online image] 1893.

Cupcakes Vs. Croissants

I always wonder if kids in Paris know how lucky they are to grow up here. Walking home from school with a flaky croissant in one hand and a suave Parisian papa's reassuring hand in the other, do they know that their never-ending afternoons of goûters and Guignol in the park aren't the stuff that other childhoods are made of? Not that I'm knocking celery sticks and peanut butter with 30 minutes of Mary Tyler Moore. But the average American after-school program today seems to be filled with a lot less fiber and a lot more TV.
With cookies, doughnuts, and cupcakes slowly gaining space on French pastry shop shelves, though, Parisian palates may soon get sweet on gourmandise à l'américaine. Luckily French TV is nowhere near as entertaining as a puppet holding a stick.

Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette. [Online image] 1996.

"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.