Paris - Day 1

Three places besides the Yay Area I'd like to live for a year: Maui, Kobe, and now very much in the running, Pari, France.  I haven't even been here 36 hours yet and it's already begun to take hold. 

 I'm staying in St. Germain de Pres  in the sixth arrondisment. It's one of the more upscale parts of town. Heck, the apartment building of my Airbnb studio has TWO courtyards.    And half a block up the main drag is littered with shops like Cartier, Montblanc, Hermés and Patrick Rogers Chocolatier (If that dude came bragging to my high school reunion I'd be like, "Slow your roll dude, it's just chocolate!")  (5 seconds later: "Oh snap, Wait a minute! I know this bright, funny, beautiful, woman, OMG  ;-) who loves chocolate...!  Vous avez une carte de visite?"). Lol.  

(By the way, this is all iPhone voice dictation because my HP netbook I brought with me for more convenient Internet browsing email etc. is a piece of crap. So you don't know how hard it is to edit myself when I'm just talking. But then I think does anyone really want to read aaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllll this?)

(Note to self: whenever I think something should be put in parentheses I probably should reconsider whether to include it at all. Help needed but not wanted: an Editor). 

Anyway, that said I had my first experience of this is what they say, but this is how it really is that traveling affords. It's funny that the guidebooks suggested that Le Marais in the fourth and   Saint German in the sixth were the only places to stay, and well good luck keeping all your money (or limbs) if you were to venture to Montmartre. I went there today after the Black Paris tour led by Ricki Stevenson and Miguel Overton Guerra,  and I got to say it's just a leafy, vibrant place. Sacred Heart (Sacre Coeur) and terraced lawns below it  attract a large number of people, tourists and local folks, it seems, to just lounge  and enjoy the open space. 

Sure, men whose origins are equatorial and southerly hawked bootlegged Heinekens and frozen bottle water. (My French studies have utterly  failed me;  for all I know the two euros I paid for a Cristaline that was 3/4 iceberg  was €1.5 too many; for all I know I could've bought a Heineken instead.).  So maybe these guys  might not have such free reign in the 4th or 6th but here in the 18th they sell freely.  

And a word on being ripped off:  these would be economic(?) existential (?) cousins of the three-card Monty guys who were run off in the New York Times Square face lift, but someone tell me how  all those "upscale" shops on Rue de Rennes hawking $20 chocolate bonbons to carry in $500 handbags aren't  in fact a bigger rip? Is it the bright lights, air conditioning and starched shirts that misdirect? 

Anyway, maybe Montmartre and the 18th are The Mission (SF) or Oakland. ( Oakland of now or Oakland when it was a byword and a crinkled nose,  it's all still oakland)   My main point is it is highly habitable; you don't have to stay half a block off Union Street, Rodeo Drive or Park Ave to be "safe", much less have a full and enjoyable experience. 

 Anyways the trip to Sacre Coeur  was preceded by the Black Paris tour.   So many cool facts besides just those revolving around Josephine Baker or  Richard Wright.   There are the biographies of people like Chevaliers, Bessie Coleman and one amazing, Forrest Gumpian Eugene Jacques  Bullard.   Here are three other tidbits that are either fundamental or  funfactamental (funamental? No? Ok...) about the origins and/or preservation of Paris. 

 1. The Egyptian Isis  is the patron deity. Paris is most likely a derivation of Par-isis (the s is silent, obvi)  which literally means the  devotees of Isis.  Isis Horace story. Many similarities to the more well-known examples of mother son father dynamic, least least of which is Mary, God the father and is the father incarnate son.  Ever heard of the black Madonna? It's Isis and Horus. 

2.  When Louis the 14th initiated the city's rebuilding he mandated that all the buildings be constructed with the same materials as the pyramids are made of i.e. limestone and imported millions of tons.  But also he wanted the same type of artwork that he had observed in Africa. So he commissioned master Malian ironworkers, Adinkra, to make them and many of the designs include classical west African symbolilogy such as that representing sankofa. The ironwork and designs are literally everywhere in the city.   And as the tour guide Miguel took pains to point out, this is Louis the 14th.  Have you seen Versailles? he wasn't doing anything on the cheap; he really did get the best. Also he wasn't bringing in a servant/laborer class to destabilize the social order;  Paris already had serfs. 

3.  OMG, a black woman, trained in Paris, is the one who made the best of Franklin D Roosevelt that we see on the dime  Whuuut!?!