Day 28: Picnic

Again, about fucking time, right?

Above: How we do

To be sure, I was at first a mite trepidatious. After all, this was a picnic in Buttes Chaumonts, the Parc in eastern Paris that I was told would be most like Dolores Park. This, after I explained that Dolores Park was "that park in San Francisco where you can buy mushrooms." Well, one metric ton of baguette and red wine consumed in broiling sunshine later I have to admit that I'm no richer for psychoactive fungi. But to say nothing of the possibility of purchasing drugs, you can plainly see that Buttes Chaumonts is not only the place to picnic but also beautiful, strikingly so.

Oh, your park doesn't have an island palace?

I found out about this little picnic through Couchsurfing, which I can't recommend enough as a way to find things to do in Paris that you wouldn't have a chance of discovering any other way. A couple of days ago I was at a midnight open-mic somewhere in the area of Montmartre; tomorrow night I'm going to a meeting of a Parisian film club on their way to see, of all things, Serpico. Today it's a picnic, and I'm enjoying a hearty Munster (which evidently is not only a French cheese but an AOC cheese. Shame for my ignorance...) next to Robert, who answer the question "So what do you do?" with "Picnics, basically", and Miguel, a pastry maker from Mexico who moved to Paris to learn to bake bread. Incidentally, he baked the baguette I'm currently eating and yes, it is extraordinary.

This waterfall, a Frenchman boasts to me, is entirely artificial.

After eating our Maître de Picnic decides to take us on a walking tour, cutting westward through his old neighborhood to the Canal St. Martin. Most of the commentary takes the form of childhood anecdotes and occasionally heated debates about the relative antiquity of various buildings. While we walk my new friend Richard, a Minnesota native and a critic for DJBooth.net, complains about how annoying it is to have to justify his love of Kanye West to his frustratingly leftist, Marxist friends. He brings up some interesting points about censorship--if a musician can make a fortune selling music that encourages sexism, violence and consumer capitalism then it seems we should blame society rather than the artist. Robert doesn't hear any of this, but he does point out these "magic stairs", each of which represents not only six inches in height but also one year back in time.

Don't look so magic to me...

Cobblestones, check. Ivy-covered building, check. Community garden, check. It's official: this neighborhood is charming.

 After we descend the steps, returning to the present day, Robert takes us along the Canal St. Martin, another neighborhood in the 10th that savagely confirms my suspicions as to where reside the Hipsters. You may recognize the Canal, by the way, as the place where Amélie goes to skip her stones. I was surprised to find it completely abandoned, unlike that bakery from Cake Boss in Hoboken. But then, I guess Parisians have much less interest for their own whimsy than Midwesterners have for baked goods.

If only I had a sack of flat stones and an unusual haircut...

A really cool store that I wish I'd gone into...

Our walk takes us to Le Comptoir General, a genre-defying bar that actually tries to do the impossible and be trendy along all possible dimensions simultaneously. If you were wondering what you would get if you combined an organic bar, a greenhouse, a secondhand bookstore, an art gallery, a vintage clothing store and a compost depot, then you might have your answer in Le Comptoir General. In my mind it's a bit like building a spaceship that is also a submarine but also a t-shirt, but then that didn't stop me from ordering a pint.

Most important lesson of the day: the French word for vintage clothing store is Friperie.