PARIS METROPOLITAIN

 TIMELESS BEAUTY CREATED BY HECTOR GUIMARD

Nothing says Paris and Art Nouveau quite like the stylized Metropolitain entrance signs.

Architect Hector Guimard designed the first ones in the early 20th century.

The unsung Guimard also designed a number of highly decorative apartments and houses in Paris.

Most of the Art Nouveau metro entrances are replicas, as the city destroyed many of the originals in an ill-advised move toward a more modern look in the mid 20th century.

L’APPART: THE DELIGHTS AND DISASTERS OF MAKING MY PARIS HOME

DAVID LEBOVITZ’S LATEST BOOK IS A MUST-READ                                (EVEN IF YOU SKIP OVER RECIPES SHARED AT CHAPTER ENDS)

L’Appart has plenty of details, often told in sardonic humor, about life, food, culture, cost and rules of living in the culinary capital.

But it mainly focuses on the never-ending setbacks experienced by a results-oriented American in a city whose laws seem designed specifically to delay closing the deal on buying that perfect apartment…

…then going through endless torture with untrustworthy and (it turns out) incompetent contractors.

We live in Miami, so evil...careless...corrupt...disappearing contractors are actually considered the good ones!

Many here exist only in a circle of hell below corrupt/incompetent.

So we feel Lebovitz’s pain while he endures strings of five figure costs for perpetually delayed, always shoddy work worth less than four figures when the dust clears.

Will our hero live, sans nervous breakdown, to see the completion of his dream Paris kitchen in an apartment that he will own?

Find out at

https://www.amazon.com/LAppart-Delights-Disasters-Making-Paris/dp/0804188408/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&linkCode=sl1&tag=davidleboviswebs&linkId=76c7bc04325a5c6cae423c22cbec67b7&language=en_US

L’APPART: THE DELIGHTS AND DISASTERS OF MAKING MY PARIS HOME

DAVID LEBOVITZ’S LATEST BOOK IS A MUST-READ                                (EVEN IF YOU SKIP OVER RECIPES SHARED AT CHAPTER ENDS)

The author’s DavidLebovitz.com blog shared recipes, as one would expect a cookbook author to do, but it gained popularity has he also shared matter of fact tales of everyday life in a beautiful city that can be rather unforgiving in etiquette, tradition and red tape.

L’Appart (busy Paris contraction for The Apartment) comes with the bonus of recipes from an expert chef who has been featured in: Bon Appétit, Chocolatier, Food+Wine, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Travel and Leisure, The New York Times, People, Saveur and USA Today.

But for those of us who enjoy memoir over a countertop of bowls, mixers and dozens of ingredients -- it's easy to skip over, or speed read them.

My fingers were eagerly flipping pages to keep up with his perfect blend of storytelling spiced/spiked with details about peculiarities of Paris, French bureaucracy and contractors.

L’APPART: THE DELIGHTS AND DISASTERS OF MAKING MY PARIS HOME

DAVID LEBOVITZ’S LATEST BOOK IS A MUST-READ                                (EVEN IF YOU SKIP OVER RECIPES SHARED AT CHAPTER ENDS)

I have just completed L'appart and commend Chef/Blogger/Cookbook Author/ExPat in Paris David Lebovitz for his ease with the language and ability to to season trying tales with good humor.

To me, the kitchen only is a place to store, refrigerate, freeze and re-heat stuff.

So the having recipes part of the book scared me away from buying it for a half year.

Lebovitz began working in restaurants at the age of sixteen and ended up at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, working with the famed Alice Waters and co-owner, Executive Pastry Chef Lindsey Shere, who he credits as his pastry mentor.

He moved to Paris in 1999 and started an early blog to coincide with the release of his first book, Room for Dessert. 

PARIS TO THE MOON

BY LONGTIME NEW YORKER WRITER ADAM GOPNIK

Before our 30^th anniversary (one year belated) two weeks in Paris, I re-read Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik.

Though the book came out nearly two decades ago, based on experiences Gopnik had with this family nearly a quarter century ago, it holds up perfectly.

Paris is timeless.

Here’s the Penguin Random House blurb on the modern classic:

Paris.

The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafés, breathtaking façades around every corner–in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans.

In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light.

Gopnik is a longtime New Yorker writer, and the magazine has sent its writers to Paris for decades–but his was above all a personal pilgrimage to the place that had for so long been the undisputed capital of everything cultural and beautiful.

It was also the opportunity to raise a child who would know what it was to romp in the Luxembourg Gardens, to enjoy a croque monsieur in a Left Bank café–a child (and perhaps a father, too) who would have a grasp of that Parisian sense of style we Americans find so elusive. 

REST IN PEACE ARA GULER

MY LIFE WAS BETTER FOR HAVING MET YOU AND SWAPPED STORIES

I am proud to be the editor of the English language version of PHOTOJOURNALIST: The Life Story of Ara Guler, by the warm, wonderful and talented Nezih Tavlas.

So glad I got up the nerve to approach (the famously cantankerous but infinitely

talented) Ara Guler in Beyoglu during my second visit to Istanbul.

I understand why he thought of himself as a photojournalist.

But he was a great artist.

He was one of the greatest photographers.

I visited Ara Cafe a half dozen times, scouting famous Photo Journalist Guler.

Finally, he was sitting down to some food and tea.

I had bought a rare book of his, haggling at a book fair that was part of Ramazan.

I lugged the heavy book from Taksim to Galatasaray for him to sign.

He was, a most human of human beings.

Frank, honest, humorous.

You cannot capture life they way he does on film, without having a great amount of empathy and love of your fellow brethren on earth.

Less than a month ago, I was in Paris...exploring the stories of Ara Guler from @MagnumPhotos to Salvador Dali to @LeMeurice to the back streets and main

streets of the City of Light.

RIP Ara.

Read the Kindle version of Photojournalist at:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06VT8PN31?pf_rd_p=faa1d3e1-fadf-4279-ac2d-3096206e4690&pf_rd_r=NGRS1YJH5A9JQ2PGRRMQ

Watch the movie on Prime at:

https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Istanbul-Ara-G%C3%BCler/dp/B078HBN2W5/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1540067911&sr=8-5&keywords=ara+guler

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a great Twitter feed at:

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