Ce N'est Pas Une Pipe
This little rue St. Denis supermarchÈ probably isn't the best place to shop for salade machÈ.
LA Times travel writer Susan Spano muses that the prostitutes by rue St. Martin and Boulevard Sebastopol are puzzlingly large and fleshy, but she can't manage to work her feeble brain around why that might be!
Still, Paris can surprise me. The other day I was walking from a yoga class in the northern part of the Marais to Art Deco Rex Cinema on the Boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle. (I especially like the intersection of Boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle and Rue Poissoniere, though I can't exactly say why.) Anyway, I veered onto Rue Blondel, a little street that runs east to west between Boulevard Sebastopol and Rue St.-Martin, just like any other really, with storefront shops selling cheap clothes. In almost every doorway was a prostitute talking to a man or silently smoking, in a skin-tight skirt, halter top, high heels, flashy jewelry. Of course I've seen hookers before, but the thing about the ones on Rue Blondel is that they're all gigantic and fleshy, like something out of a Fellini movie. I exchanged a polite bon jour with one of them, trying not to gawk, wondering what to think of her and what she thought of me.
Umm...she was probably wondering if you were staring at her gigantic Adam's apple.
These prositutes are MEN! They're MEN! They're MEN! Note the nearby rue St. Denis -- the homo porn capital of Paris! Look at the "girls'" big, ham-hock-like knuckles! The faint five o'clock shadow under the caked-on foundation! The manly thighs!
How the LA Times can send such a lamebrain to write about Paris is beyond me. (At least this time, she left out the breaking news from inside her refrigerator)!
When you are hot, you are HOT grrl!!!
Loved it.
regina
hrc at September 10, 2004 9:51 AM
My knowledgable friend Mr. Google tells me 2 interesting facts about the R. Blondel:
Fact 1: Henry Miller took AnaÔs Nin to a whorehouse there, in response her rq to "see the seamy side of Paris".
Fact 2: Shirley MacLaine lived there for a while, getting into character as Irma la Douce.
I add fact 3: La Spano is a JOKE.
Stu "El_InglÈs" Harris at September 10, 2004 10:33 AM
The porno there completely rocks too.
Lena, Whore of Paris at September 10, 2004 11:33 AM
not BON JOUR but BONJOUR, Madame Spano
Is your editor en vacance?
Parisienne at September 11, 2004 2:43 PM
To "la Parisienne":
Don't ask too much of La Spano! If she has to remember that the French write "bonjour" (and not 'bon jour'), "bonsoir" (and not 'bon soir'), the poor girl is going to be totally whizzed out when she writes "bonnenuit" in one span (oh!) and you tell her: "Sorry, girl, this time it is "bonne nuit"... But, of course, she already thinks that French is a "funny" language. It was not until she made it so.
Frania W.
Frania W. at September 13, 2004 12:28 AM