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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Jul 8, 2010 22:57:17 GMT
bjd - Yeah, I was sketchy on the exact details because it was something I think I saw on a documentary about Herzog ages ago (or maybe an interview I heard on NPR). If they didn't want to eat him (Kinski) he probably just made the locals angry enough to want to kill him.
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Post by dahuffy on Jul 8, 2010 23:10:52 GMT
We have a few pet cemetaries here....one just up the street from us in fact.
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Post by ilbonito on Jul 9, 2010 5:59:42 GMT
bixa; the last picture under the gargoyle billboard was the fountain (Igor Stavinsky fountain?) outside the Beauborg centre. The water has frozen over (I was there in December). One thing I never knew about the French was this subculture of brightly painted delivery fans - they were at the street markets all through the city. I thought they were so interesting and surprising. [imghttp://i846.photobucket.com/albums/ab24/ilbonitofour/paris%20selection/P12403771.jpg[/img] i846.photobucket.com/albums/ab24/ilbonitofour/paris%20selection/P12405441.jpg[/img]I think that is what I really loved about Paris, which I hadn't understood until I went there. It has an almost perfect (for me) mix of elegance and earthiness. Sure, there are the stunning streets and monuments and carefully manicured parks and floodlit spires - and they are beautiful. But it had all seemed to me a little ... clinical. I hadn't realised that it is also a city of brightly painted grafitti and the frankly edgy-feeling late-night metro (those clanging metal doors!) and blaring hip hop music in immigrant neighborhoods. I loved how both sides of the city complemented each other.
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Post by Jazz on Jul 9, 2010 6:29:17 GMT
I think that is what I really loved about Paris, which I hadn't understood until I went there. It has an almost perfect (for me) mix of elegance and earthiness... I loved how both sides of the city complemented each other. Yes. Very enjoyable essay and oddly enough, I have been to most of these places, but without a camera. Thank you for this.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2010 6:46:12 GMT
What bothers me is how many people just want the elegant 'Gigi' Paris and are put off by the other areas (which of course they normally only see if they get lost). Many traditional tourists don't even like Montmartre, since parts of it are run down and the most direct path to it involves going through a small amount of sleaze.
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Post by ilbonito on Jul 9, 2010 7:26:29 GMT
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Post by ilbonito on Jul 9, 2010 7:33:48 GMT
My favourite building in Paris is the immigration museum, which used to be the Museum of African and Oceanic arts, and was originally built for the the 1931 Colonial Expo (that Kerouac2 had a thread about not too long ago). The museum itself was fairly boring I thought (except for one piece; a mannequin of a Muslim woman in a headscarf buying "halal" lingerie from a vending machine). But the building was wonderful!! Its facade is covered with intricate concrete carvings of people in "the colonies" and all the exotic products they produced for France. It was both beautiful, and grotesque in the assumptions it was making about African and other colonial peoples. Usually when I visit famous buildings or museums I whizz through. (I thought one day was perfectly adequate for Angkor Wat where my guidebook had insisted three was the minimimum). But I must have spent an hour just walking up and down outside the building before I went in, admiring the facade, and then I splashed out 60 euros in the hardcover souvenir book too.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 9, 2010 7:35:02 GMT
Well, one couldn't ask for a prettier Paris picture than the middle one above. This has been so enjoyable.
I guess we can assume you'll try for a longer stay the next time.
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Post by ilbonito on Jul 9, 2010 7:35:24 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2010 9:14:36 GMT
One thing that is becoming increasingly interesting in Paris is "wallpaper graffitti. I think some of the graffers have switched to this after receiving hefty fines for "vandalism" when painting walls. Since the new paper versions can be peeled off quite simply, it probably has created a legal loophole on the definition of vandalism.
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Post by lagatta on Jul 9, 2010 14:39:25 GMT
Many former colonial powers have those museums of "le temps béni des colonies" (or, the good old days: for whitey). There is a beautiful one in eastern Amsterdam as well. It is now the Tropenmuseum, that explores lives and cultures in tropical countries. www.tropenmuseum.nl en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TropenmuseumWhat can be cringeworthy here is old depictions of Indigenous peoples and cultures. I was most relieved, when I first visited Montmartre, that it is certainly not all like Place du Tertre or Sacré-Coeur.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 9, 2010 16:10:02 GMT
Oh, Ilbonito ~~ apologies for my extremely bland comment above, which was meant for your post #35. I posted at the same time you did and did not see your amazing display on the Immigration Museum at #36. Damn! I can see how anything inside the building would pale in comparison with the magnificent facade. Yes, it's uncomfortable in one sense to look at how the various peoples are depicted, but my god, the artistry!
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Post by ilbonito on Jul 10, 2010 1:24:31 GMT
Oh, Ilbonito ~~ apologies for my extremely bland comment above, which was meant for your post #35.Don't apologise, all complimetns gratefully accepted my god, the artistry! Yes, I love the detail of it all...
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Post by lola on Jul 10, 2010 13:15:50 GMT
One of my affectations is considering the Eiffel Tower kitsch.
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Post by lola on Jul 10, 2010 13:24:48 GMT
frenchm and bjd, if you can find it watch Herzog's My Best Fiend about Kinski. Apparently he really was a wild man.
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Post by lola on Jul 10, 2010 13:42:15 GMT
AND: terrific thread, ilbonito.
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Post by ilbonito on Jul 11, 2010 2:20:22 GMT
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Post by ilbonito on Jul 11, 2010 2:27:11 GMT
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Post by fumobici on Jul 11, 2010 3:29:06 GMT
@ Hangman Sarkozy
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Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2010 3:37:09 GMT
Aha, so you do have some photos of the 'paper graphic art'!
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Post by ilbonito on Jul 11, 2010 9:26:03 GMT
Ah thats what you mean, the "wallpaper grafitti"! Yes I saw that. Oddly enough in Australia the trend seems to be the opposite - the papering was popular a few years ago but less so now. The coolest kind of graffiti I saw (in Sao Paulo) was "anti-graffiti" where grimy walls are selectively cleaned to produce lines or patterns. I thought that was cool...
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Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2010 9:59:10 GMT
We don't have grimy walls in Paris. ;D
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Post by ilbonito on Jul 11, 2010 10:37:40 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 11, 2010 17:09:18 GMT
Ha ~~ no flies on Ilbonito!
although I only saw one anti-graffiti example in the video
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