Spring Sunday in Paris

A lovely Sunday morning in Paris, temp in the 20s, a bit muggy, lightly overcast for protection against the sun. Ibegan my day with a café in a café: the garçonette seemed annoyed that I didn't order more. "Fromage? Jambon?" Non, et non. Two Asian guys at the next table, conversing with intensity and gestuculating with cigarettes (the pack says: FUMER TUE: smoking kills--makes me think of the signs that Freud admired on the power lines of italy: touch and you die).

I'm not hip enough to judge business here, but it didn't look great. From the line outside the Pompideau, you'd infer that the dollar is trading at a nickel to the Euro and that everyone is on vacation--but on second look these are all locals, queueing up for some sort of film festival. Further on, you see that the double decker buses are full topside only. In the touristy cafes along the river, the omelettes and salades appear to be flying out of the kitchen, but you can probably get a table if you wait a minute or step next door. As you listen, you realize that an awful lot of them are not speaking English, or at least not flat, hard mid-western American. In the Shakespeare & Co bookshop, American paperbacks sell at a premium of about 50 percent on the home price. The thinking man's equivalent of the Big Mac Index? Anyway, not much of anybody seems to be buying.

We did pick up a bottle of Champagne so Mrs.B can help a buddy celebrate a birthday; later, we'll flatten the cashflow with a free concert at Saint Eustache.