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The Hallucinatory Walk Through Paris That Inspired Deleuze and Guattari | The New Yorker
One doesn’t need to be schizophrenic or have a degree in French theory or urban studies to understand that cities are made up of various complex, interrelated flows: people, traffic, information, goods, sewage, refuse. City agencies exist to manage these flows and seek ways to impose their vision of order on them. In recent decades, American cities have actively encouraged design and zoning that seek to channel the movement and sway of individuals toward officially sanctioned ends. Far beyond neglecting design that includes space for the homeless, particularly those among them suffering from schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, cities keep trying to eliminate or restrict their presence. In New York City, for instance, these “monotopic” or “monocultural” directives can be glimpsed even in supposedly open spaces, like parks. At the smallest and subtlest level, there are those cunning triangular tips on fences and ledges and planters insuring that no one can rest on them. Benches now have blunt metal dividers that make it impossible to lie down. Parks and streets are lit with aggressive floodlighting, and carefully timed sprinklers make sure that anyone sleeping on the grass will wake up soaked. And then there’s the greater presence of police officers, in addition to security cameras, and surveillance. Despite these countermeasures, the city’s homeless population endures, and the bowels of the metropolitan transportation system are as much an incubator of schizophrenic reverie as Besse’s Luxembourg Gardens or the Gare d’Austerlitz, even if less romantic. And still nothing has stopped the occasional schizophrenic from conducting the music of the spheres by stepping out into traffic or climbing down to the subway tracks.The Parisian Label That Grapples with Race, Class, and Gentrification | Cody Delistraty
He calls the spirit of his brand “mixity,” and he has tapped into both a sense of bohemianism and basketball culture to gain the support of Nike and global celebrities like Rihanna and A$AP Rocky, while also attracting the praise of the established fashion elite, including Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president of fashion, who has been mentoring the thirty-five-year-old designer. The result is a mass of super-fans who run across the fashion spectrum, from streetwear fanatics to high-fashion devotees.Making life harder to live in the moment
Adam Gopnik in his “Paris Journal” who wrote, “The special virtue of freedom is not that it makes you richer and more powerful but that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive.” And yet perhaps the only way to achieve this freedom, and therefore this ability to understand what it means to be alive, is to go somewhere entirely new and foreign, a place where even the most basic actions – a trip to the grocery store or the pharmacy, ordering at a restaurant, or even negotiating the language – become deeply fascinating, trying, difficult.New York Times closes editing and press operations in Paris, cuts up to 70 jobs
the proposal we announced today would result in the closing of the editing and pre-press print production operation in Paris, with those responsibilities moving to Hong Kong and New York. France remains a vital market for us and we will maintain a robust news bureau in Paris as well as a core international advertising office there.
Lejoyeux points to the “Florence syndrome,” described by French novelist Stendhal in the 19th century after he was overwhelmed by the beauty of Michelangelo’s David. The “Jerusalem syndrome” refers to “mystical” events and hallucinations experienced by some visitors to the holy city. “Traveler’s syndrome is an old story,” he said. The Paris syndrome is different in that it stems from the reality falling short of romanticized expectations. The visitors have to contend with unfriendly locals and tourism professionals who aren’t always welcoming, Zhou said. “Waiters are impatient, they don’t speak English,” he said. “Our clients tell us: Parisians are mean.”
For those who are not cooking their own Thanksgiving dinner in Paris, there are always places to eat. Harry’s Bar, for example, which opened on Thanksgiving Day in 1911 (with wines from California) or a communal dinner at The American Church in Paris. The New York-based French Heritage Society is organizing a 200-euro-a-plate fund-raising “dîner de Thanksgiving” at the three-Michelin-star restaurant of the Bristol hotel, with offerings such as pumpkin soup with chestnut made to look like spaghetti and pecan pie flambéed with cognac.
For those who are cooking, there’s the Thanksgiving grocery boutique in the heart of the Marais. Fresh yams, cranberries and pecans; farm-raised turkeys; Libby’s pumpkin; College Inn chicken broth; Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix; Quaker cornmeal, disposable roasting pans; marinade injectors — they are all here. Judith Bluysen, the owner, takes orders of 300 pumpkin and pecan pies, which she bakes herself.