Fitzgeraldien Summers in the South of France


 Sepia toned photographs of sunbathing beauties sprawled alongside phonographs or posed underneath papery umbrellas and a few Art Deco mansions tucked amongst tastelessly built apartment buildings, tell tale of summers past when everything was grandiose.

Jacques-Henri Lartigue  1927


Fitzgerald dedicated his book Tender is the Night to the very couple that launched the trend of summering on the Cote d’Azur and inspired the main characters Dick and Nicole Driver. “Many fetes,” his inscription to Sara and Gerald Murphy who convinced the owner of the Hotel du Cap to stay open through a season when the businesses normally closed. And so the story begins “On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border.”
Sometimes I think they had it right in the 1920’s when Normandy’s beaches were the French destination for summering. To migrate towards heat rather than escaping it seems counter intuitive in a country that functions without air conditioning.
While there isn’t much of this modern oceanfront town that resembles F. Scott Fitzgerald’s accounts, Juan les Pins remains a retreat of the privileged where the beach monopolizes daylight hours. “It seemed that there was no life anywhere in all this expanse of coast except under the filtered sunlight of those umbrellas…”

The population climbs with the temperature. Native dames sunbathe topless, slipping the straps off their one-piece bathing suits and shimmying them down to their hips. They spend months cooking their skin to an orange patina that lasts through the winter while wrinkles add up like growth rings in a tree trunk to account for each summer. Families picnic on French bread sandwiches eaten from aluminium foil wrappers, and about the time the Mediterranean Sea is heated warm as bathwater the jellyfish arrive. Translucent pink like the rose in everyone’s wine glasses, they add an element of risk to late summer swims.

…”Few people swam any more in that blue paradise…most stripped the concealing pajamas from their flabbiness only for a short hangover dip at one o’clock.” It is still very much see and be seen minus the day ware trend for pyjama pants that was born here in the 20’s. Renting a chair on the beach in the bustling heart of Juan les Pins at the Belles Rives Hotel, once called Villa Saint-Louis when it belonged to the Fitzgeralds, will set you back an excessive 40 euros. Winding away from town through the airy Cap d’Antibes mansions, I like to nestle in amongst the parasol pines to swim behind the Villa Eilenroc. From there a footpath traces the rocky peninsula of the Cap d’Antibes and ends on a cosy slice of beach called la Garoupe, a spot where the Murphys, Picassos and Fitzgeralds lazed summers away drinking sherry. Though it is often crowded as all the local beaches are in season, Fitzgerald voiced distaste of it having become overdeveloped even in the five year span between the opening and closing his novel, the view is unmarred.
All quotes from
For more images of the 1920's by Jacques-Henri Latrigue visit this excellent photography site la petite melancolie.   

How to Order Coffee in France


How to Order Coffee in France

Ordering a cup of coffee in France means more than just getting your caffeine fix. After a day of wandering or working, it is a chair in the sun, a place to rest your feet, a bathroom you have permission to use, a dessert (coffee is often served with a piece of chocolate or a speculoos biscuit), but most importantly, it initiates you into the café culture of stretching something that takes a few minutes into an hour long affair.

Whether you’re people watching or setting up writers’ residency in a cafe like Hemingway, you’ll want to order the right cup. Here’s how:


Robert Doisneau, Les coiffeuses au soleil, Paris 1966



You can usually help yourself to a table rather than waiting to be seated, especially those that are outside but when in doubt, ask. If you’re alone make sure to have a prop such as a cigarette, magazine or notepad to scribble on.

Try to make eye contact with the waiter, who will no doubt be very busy and very aloof. A simple, “Monsieur, s’il vous plait,“ should get his attention.

Drink wise something that resembles a cup of drip coffee is referred to as allonge.

Coffee with milk is referred to as café crème. You are often given the choice of a petite or grande portion.

Cappuccino is a universal term for coffee with frothed milk.

For those that are “gourmande” as the French call being indulgent, a café viennois is topped with whipped cream and a dusting of cocao powder.

I find the coffee very acidic therefore a thimble full is often enough. If you prefer your beverage black order a shot of espresso and fit in. Put a splash of milk in it and it’s called a noisette.

You can request tap water by asking for “une carafe d’eau.” Don’t forget to follow that with a “S’il vous plait,” as courtesy is expected.

You may be asked to pay upon your drink’s arrival in contrast to dining protocol where you won’t be presented the bill until it is explicitly asked for. You’re still entitled to stay as long as you like. Time stands still.

“Sometimes we used to enter secret wayside cafes. There might be a step down, and there was always a table to choose in the silence or the murmur of speech. A shadow was the most ancient of the regulars. A long, long time she had sat at every place. The sun would be there, on good terms with her, lying upon her forehead, on your hand, on a glass. And soon he left, like a god one forgets. During these halts that seemed to become eternal, experience came to us, and we always left these secret cafes subtly changed from what we had been before.” Guillevic, from Stopping Along the Way

Enjoy the commotion of life unfolding around you in a moment of meditation. When finished you can leave the change on the table for your waiter or choose to pocket it since service is included in menu prices.

Voila, there it is. For more café culture images and quotes, I like this book...

paris je t'aime

Monumenta at the Grand Palais

Monumenta at the Grand Palais

Each May an artist is given carte blanche to create a monumental installation that dialogues with the expansive verrière of the Grand Palais. Freshman president Francois Holland was there under polka-dot sky for “Excentrique’s” opening night vernissage.


Past experiences have been: other-worldly with Anish Kapoor’s black orbs, holocaustic in mountains of discarded articles of clothing,
and Zen garden-esque in paths traced around Richard Serra’s bronze sculptures.  This year a ceiling of circles interlace with the checkerboard-shaded glass panes transforming the space into a Technicolor kaleidoscope.

The art deco greenhouse constructed in 1900 for the International Exposition is the location of choice for Channel defiles during Paris fashion week. Setting foot inside is a treat on any occasion, though some find Monumenta’s “space as art” concept anti-climatic as I did. Several seasons past at my first Monumenta I thought, “Is that all?” And yet each spring I return to see what guise the Grand Palais will be shrouded in, the beauty of it in the metamorphosis.

To see another of Buren’s exemplars travel upstream from the Louvre on rue de Rivoli to the Palais Royal courtyard where an array of black and white striped pedestals were erected in 2007. When “Les Deux Plateaux” fell into disrepair that Buren dramatically deemed vandalism of the state, he threatened to have them demolished. They have since been restored.

Excentrique runs through June 21st. Entry is 5 Euros.

The Nice Carnival, Like Mardi Gras but Better

As the two-week stretch of Carnival in Nice from February to early March began to approach, I surveyed friends and colleagues to find out the best views on the parade route and any other insider's tips. Such inquiries were met with responses like, “Oh carnival? I went a few years ago. It’s alright,” or “It’s more for kids.”  While the Nice carnival doesn’t rank high among locals, the lack of enthusiasm may be due to the inconvenience it causes in shutting down city-center traffic. So I approached the festivities with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised.

To me the Nice carnival incorporates elements of the New Orleans Mardi gras like floats and parades without being drenched in the Bourbon street stench of beer and urine. Of course there isn’t Cajun food or French quarter jazz but Niçoise specialties like socca, a thin chickpea-flour pancake, and pissaldiere, a sort of onion and sardine topped pizza, are festival sustenance. The fast food at Rene Socca is the best reputed and its location, nestled into the old town a stone’s throw from the parade route, is convenient.

The Cote d’Azur one-ups swamp-riddled Louisiana geographically with an Yves Klein blue sea on one side of the frame and mountains on the other. Though beads and deblounes aren’t a part of the tradition in Nice, there’s none of the tacky flashing that goes with them either. Instead expect silly string and confetti showers from little trick or treaters. Children masquerade getting double duty out of Halloween costumes while for adults masks, hats, wigs or any over-the-top accessory goes.

The parade and floats travel in a circular route from the checkerboard place Massena down the seafront drag called the Promenade des Anglais and then back. Grandstands line the route but I followed the Best of Nice Blog’s advice to forego buying tickets and walk against the current.

Even though the theme changes each year, the larger than life paper maché characters always manage to look menacing. This year’s sports-centered parade was no exception with each red-eyed giant more nightmarish than the next but dancing hotdogs, blue birds on stilts, living dolls in red hoop skirts and block-long balloon dragons kept the atmosphere whimsical. Walking the whole route took a little more than an hour but I could have lingered for much longer.

When ready to vacate the premises the light rail can whisk you away to the train station because parking can be tedious during busy hours.

When everything has blown over the locals sigh their relief. The only telltale sign left behind after the grandstands are disassembled are strings of tinsel snagged in palm frond fingers making spring look a little like Christmas.

Paris from the vantage point of a worn green lawn chair
Parisians use the Tuileries like a backyard
for barefoot picnics and lazy afternoon sunbaths. 

I enjoyed the graceful, hollow-eyed dancers
of Mary Laurencin's canvases in the Orangerie. 
 

How Antibes Weathered the Storm

When the wind kicked up I walked down to the end of the street to greet the waves and my heart beat a little faster with each step closer to the sea. The old town is protected by ramparts, a good twenty feet tall in some sections, which wave crests surpassed pattering on restaurant terraces and the medieval facades. A wave could swallow me up in one lick, I thought, but I couldn’t pry my eyes off the violent sea. In a knee-length coat that caught gusts of wind I had to fight to hold my ground. With a strong enough umbrella I’m sure I could have traveled like Mary Poppins.

After a night of interrupted dreams when shutters hammer on windows, trees do backbends, and power lines are plucked like harp strings, things were relatively calm. With seaside roads closed by a layer of seaweed and branches, traffic stacked up on accessible roads. The weather continued in a pattern raging through the night but was well-mannered enough to abate come morning the whole week through.

The Cote d’Azur greeted by full November sun for the weekend began to assess damages. The beaches in Cannes and Juan les Pins got off easy ankle deep in sea weed. The restaurants that line the thin strip of beach operated unaffectedly serving full houses of sunglass clad clientele.

The beach in Antibes, however, more closely resembled a beaver dam, the sand hidden underneath branches. Trunks crowned by root canopies and logs as wide as car tires were stripped of their bark by the washing machine tumbling of the ocean. Many beachcombers walked back with arm-fulls of wood, some to feed fireplaces, others for artistic endeavors.

Amidst the carnage of the storm a faerie of driftwood forts has been erected that I’ve been to visit every day since discovering. I asked a brown headed ten year old on his hand and knees if I could enter. When he nodded yes I ducked inside and took a seat on a log. His mother explained, “We spent about two hours yesterday building the structure. When we came back this morning only a few of the logs had fallen.“ Her son continued to fence in a front yard burying the spear tips of snapped branches to stand perpendicular in the sand. Another little person was decorating a found playhouse with bits of plastic. “This is the kitchen,” he said as he gave me the tour.

I intend on making my own contribution to this collective work of art as the weeks wear on. Like all things ephemeral, there is a magic to not knowing how long the forts on the Pointeil beach will remain intact. It will undoubtedly take months to clear the debris.