Category: Culture

There is no more after… in Saint-Germain-des-Prés… (and no more before either!)

Been to Saint-Germain-des-Pres? Not only does it not exist, but it hardly even briefly existed. Just enough time to forge a media and historiographic myth called for sustainable profitability. This is the thesis supported by the historian Eric Dussault in The invention of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (247 pages, 22 euros, Vendémiaire), probable synthesis of a large-scale university work if we judge by the importance of the sources. He explains the phenomenon by the indifference of cultural historians and by the subordination of history to memory. Because if until 1960 the narration of the epic was well done by journalists, afterwards it concentrated exclusively in the mouth and under the nostalgic pen of actors and witnesses of the time who were authoritative by dint of being taken over. in loop for sixty years without the slightest critical perspective. They are Léo Larguier for his picturesque Saint-Germain-des-Prés, mon village , the Fargue of the unequaled  Pedestrian of Paris , Simone de Beauvoir memorialist ( La Force des choses) and Boris Vian, indispensable master of the premises and author of the Manuel de Saint-Germain-des-Prés guide  (written in 1950 but published in 1974). Continue reading “There is no more after… in Saint-Germain-des-Prés… (and no more before either!)” →

Paris is Turning Its Dark Underground Parking Lots into Organic Mushrooms Farms

The startup Cycloponics is growing 100-200 kilos of mushrooms a week in underground parking lots in Paris, Strasbourg, and Bordeaux.

By Andy Corbley | Feb 16, 2021

What can you do with a dark underground parking lot that isn’t being used anymore? Think fungus.

Unused parking garages around the French capital have been turned into organic mushroom farms, thanks to a company called Cycloponics.

Allowing an extremely nutritious crop to be grown and sold directly in Paris, the initiative is part of a number of renovation projects the City is encouraging and sponsoring.

Along with shitake, oyster, and white button mushrooms, Cycloponics grows chicory—a French delicacy that can grow in the dark—as well as microgreens like mini broccoli. These are delivered via bicycle to local organic grocery stores.

Their location in Paris is called “The Cave,” and it’s one of three such converted garages that have been co-founded since 2017 by the coincidentally named Theo Champagnat. Continue reading “Paris is Turning Its Dark Underground Parking Lots into Organic Mushrooms Farms” →

How French comedy of manners ‘Call My Agent’ became an American sensation

That feeling when you have eaten all the candy in the house and you look on the doorstep to find that someone has sent you a 1-pound box of assorted nuts and chews is pretty much how I felt learning that a fourth season of “Call My Agent” had landed on Netflix.

The series, called “Dix Pour Cent” (“Ten Percent”) in its native France, first came to my attention a couple of summers ago, by word of mouth, when the first two seasons were available. It was quickly clear that this was a series that had my name on it, handwritten and bordered in gold, presented on a dish made of silver. Set in a Paris-based talent agency, it is salted, after the manner of “The Larry Sanders Show,” with real French screen stars, including Isabelle Adjani, Juliette Binoche, Fabrice Luchini, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Jean Reno (and in the latest season, American Sigourney Weaver) playing ironic versions of themselves, and shot in real Paris locations. And though it is obviously not completely original — it’s a workplace comedy in more than one television tradition — it’s also different in the way that one language is different from another even when a sentence says the same thing. Continue reading “How French comedy of manners ‘Call My Agent’ became an American sensation” →