Pantin

I've been meaning to post about this place since I got here.  I moved to Pantin on September 15th of this year.  It's a suburb right on the northeast corner of Paris, and though it's still not exactly classy, it's definitely a few steps up from the Porte de Clignancourt, where I was living before.  Pantin has the diversity without the dodginess, and there's something I really love about the feel of these neighborhoods. 

On the day that I moved here, while making one of many trips on the tram carrying my life's possessions in suitcases and bags, I wrote this little blurb about the place:

In the bright September sunlight, I realize for the first time that Pantin is something special.  The tram is making its harmless, wide-eyed caterpillar way along the neatly trimmed grassy railway.  The old industrial canal, undoubtedly cleaner now than it used to be, laps along, lined with jogging paths, trees, and endless, ostentatiously modern buildings, some stacked at odd angles like children’s blocks, some tall and resolutely rectangular, either white-washed, copper, plaster, aluminum, brick, or glass, asymmetry inscribed within the symmetry, adorned with the inventiveness of a child.  This building is a hodge-podge façade of squares and rectangles; that one has a grid of interlocking lines like a maze; and that one designed like a little girl’s lunchbox, all yellow and flowery.  

Alongside one stretch of the quiet little tramway, over the fence, the heavier trains thunder by on their crisscrossing network of rails, pounding out of Paris into the suburbs—a highway of industry evolving into a highway of commuters.  Something about the railway wastelands outside of train stations pleases me—especially this one—though I don’t know why.  

Pantin is a very strange but successful species of reinvented factory town.

But of course pictures speak louder than words.  I've selected a few of my favorites, but if you want to see all of  them, they're on my Google+ page here.  

Weird Architecture Exhibit A: The local library

A typical Pantin street (with ubiquitous people on scooters)

Those are actually apartment buildings.

 

Is anyone else thinking of Priscilla Queen of the Desert?

Weird Architecture Exhibit B

The Town Hall

"Have a seat."

"Don't mind if I do...."

Weird Architecture Exhibit C

Tram over the canal

Weird Architecture Exhibit D (and girl writing by the water)

I also live right next to the super-modern Parc de la Villette--but that's just on the other side of the highway, in Paris-proper. 

My wide-eyed caterpillar

And the railway wasteland

I just loved this house.

Weird Architecture Exhibit E

Weird Architecture Exhibit F....

...and here's what it looks like close up.

Don't know who these girls are, but I thought it made a nice picture.

Typical little convenience store

Some old-school Pantin buildings.

You can also see some old-school Pantin here...see the old sign for "Vins - Liqueurs"?

BELGIUM!

BRUSSELS

Liz and I arrived in Brussels the day after Christmas.  We started off in our usual fashion by just wandering around the city until well after dark--past the art museums, through the Christmas market, and into the Grand Place, where just by chance, we happened to be right on time for the start of their epic light show.  The Grand Place is probably the most elegant, impressive square in Brussels (encircled by the City Hall, and many other ornate stone buildings).  The show lit up every building simultaneously, accompanied by dramatic music.  It very easily could’ve been cheesy, but it was actually pretty cool.  Just watching the light play over those ornate facades was awesome, and the music ranged from joyful opera choruses to some trippy, sinister, Tubular Bells kind of stuff. 

Welcome to the Christmas Market!

City Hall

The rest of Grand Place

We also found these rather odd/amusing/blasphemous things:

West Coast Road Trip - Eugene & Portland

On the way up to Portland, Liz and I stopped in Eugene for an evening to visit my friend Sarah.  She and her boyfriend took us out to dinner at Sizzle Pie, a pizza place with grungy decor and surprisingly delicious and creative pizzas.  We sat at the picnic tables outside to eat our food, across the street from a pile of hippies on  a public bench who serenaded all of downtown Eugene with numerous songs played on the same two chords over and over again, including the angriest version of "You Are My Sunshine" that I've ever heard.  (After a while the police came over, along with a couple of grumpy old men, and the impromptu hippie band was disbanded).

DESTINATION #4

Portland was surprising--and not in the ways that I expected.  Anyone who's ever seen Portlandia has images of a hippie-hipster (hippiester) Mecca that's all about green living, radically ridiculous ideas about art and life, and people with weird hair cuts.  But Portland had a surprisingly industrial look.  We were couchsurfing at someone's apartment in the downtown area (right by the river), and we were surrounded on all sides by Steampunk-esque metal bridges, elevated highways, construction projects, and not-quite-sky-scrapers.  You can hear the trains booming and blaring all night.

Our first day there was quite lazy.  We didn't sleep very well (...trains...), so we didn't get up till noon-ish, and, after a little internet research, decided to get brunch at a place called Mother's Bistro and Bar.  Doesn't sound like anything special, right?  Imagine Sherlock-style wallpaper (and furniture upholstered to match), glass chandeliers, mirrors, sleek black cabinets, and waiters who sing along with the music while they dash around taking everyone's orders by memory.  On second thought, I'll spare you the imagining--here are some pictures.  

West Coast Road Trip - Visalia & San Francisco

After leaving LA, my sister and I drove north through thick, rolling hills that looked like they were covered in dark, yellow velvet.  We were headed to the small town of Visalia to visit my friends Alex and Catharine.  When we arrived in the evening, we had a wonderful dinner complete with homemade sangria.  ^_^

The next day we all went downtown to Brewbaker's bar & restaurant to see the final match of the FIFA World Cup: Germany vs. Argentina.  Now, I'm not a soccer person at all.  I played for about three years when I was in elementary school, but I never followed professional soccer.  I've gotta say though, this was really fun--especially since Catharine's brother is a big soccer fan and he was there to get us up to speed on everything that was going on.  It's always so much more fun doing anything when you have an enthusiast present.  :-)

It was a relatively short visit, and later that afternoon we drove on to...

DESTINATION #3

San Francisco: a suburban city, with rows of delicately painted, life-sized doll houses lining street after street, and a seemingly endless parade of dog-owners who don't believe in using leashes.  It was both self-consciously chic and deliberately squalid.  Fancy boutiques share the same block as tie-dyed tattoo parlors; young hippie-hobos and their half-starved dogs walk right by ladies in expensive, skanky fripperie; scruffy bikers without shoes coast down the street, yoga mats strapped to their backs.  SF can be surreal in the extreme.

West Coast Road Trip - LA

DESTINATION #2

From Las Vegas, Liz and I drove straight on to LA where we shifted gears from being tourists to being visitors.  (Hence the relative lack of pictures in this post).  We have a number of cousins and friends out there, and my friend Whitney was kind enough to let us stay at her apartment even though she and her husband would be out of town for most of our stay.  It was a hot day, so we enjoyed a swim in the pool outside where I did my typical Gemini thing by constantly swimming around, doing underwater flips, climbing out and then dive-bombing back in, and my sister did her typical Taurus thing by clinging to the side of the pool and lounging like a starfish.  

Whitney and Daniel had to finish packing for their trip, but that didn't stop me and Whitney from staying up late chatting.  She and her husband left early the next morning, but Liz and I slept in.  Then met up with an old friend of mine for lunch, where she told us all about her latest relationship drama.

This friend has more relationship drama in her life than anyone else I know, and I'm pretty sure it's not because of her personality--it's because she's gay.  She'd just broken up with yet another girlfriend who comes from a severely homophobic family.  My friend is out of the closet but the other girl was not, and the two of them had been dating secretly for almost a year.  My friend later started to think that this girl was cheating on her with a guy they both knew, and as the evidence for this piled up, she eventually ended the relationship.   This is the second time that she's gone through this exact sequence of events.  The last time, her ex-girlfriend ended up getting pregnant by, and later marrying, the guy in question.  

Now, I don't know if those girls just started dating a guy on the side because they actually wanted to, or because they were just desperate to cover up their own homosexuality; but either way, my friend's life would be a lot simpler if she could openly date anyone she wanted--without worrying about their family disowning them when they find out.  Not to mention that her girlfriend wouldn't be able to get away with two-timing so easily if everyone knew that she was already in a relationship with my friend.  It just goes to show that, even though my friend is out of the closet and everyone in her life is very accepting of it, she's still deeply affected by other people's homophobia--even the homophobia of people she's never met. 

Later that evening, Liz and I went to see our cousins Christina and Colleen.  We ate out at M Street Kitchen in Santa Monica (which is an excellent place), and we swapped family stories about our parents, mostly about when the five Duffy siblings were little hoodlums growing up in the 60's, before they became Respectable People.   My personal favorite story, one of which I was previously unaware, involves the time when they apparently all got high and wallpapered their entire basement in tin foil.  (My father denies having been a part of this.)

West Coast Road Trip - VEGAS

PROLOGUE

For some months, my sister and I had been planning to embark on a 5-week, 4,000-mile road trip along the west coast of the United States and Canada.  Due to money restraints (and because we wanted this to be a Real American Road Trip) we decided to be reasonably ridiculous and drive the entire way.  So, on July 6th, 2014, in a beat-up Toyota Corolla named Wong Foo with 150,000 miles on it, we set out from home at the crack of dawn.  The first day of our trip was not terribly exciting because it involved a 15-hour stint from from Chicago to Denver, CO.  On the second day, however, we came to the deserts of eastern Utah, which have some of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen.  

You can just barely see me standing on top!

DESTINATION #1

 

When Liz and I first arrived in Vegas, it was late at night and the city was spread out before us, lit up like a circuit board.  One of the first things we saw as we drove in were three billboards: one for diamonds, one for plastic surgery, and one for a divorce & custody lawyer.  Vegas mores in a nutshell.  
I think my sister summed it up best when she said that the entire point of Vegas is to take everything wrong with America, super-size it, glitz it up, and display it proudly.  Example: the Heart Attack Grill, a restaurant that advertises having the fattiest foods in the world.  (People over 350 lbs eat free!)

Travelogue: Japan (part 3) - Osaka

Next we headed off to Osaka!  More modern that Kyoto, Osaka is still full of plenty of interesting things to see.  We started with a visit to Osaka Castle.

Travelogue: Japan (part 2) - Kyoto & Nara

To start with, here are some more pics I got from Paul of our time in Kyoto.  These are from the performance we saw in the Geisha district of Gion.

Travelogue: Japan (part 1) - Tokyo & Kyoto

I've decided to post a series of my old travelogues from the various countries I've been to.  Here is the first one!  My 11-day trip to Japan in the summer of 2013 with Paul and Elise.  Enjoy!

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Japan was amazing, mysterious, cheesy, kinky, magical, weird, and wonderful.  Pretty much what I would've hoped it to be.  Though I did not see anyone walking around in full otaku costume.  :-P  But there was plenty of other weird clothing to make up for that.  Japan is definitely a land of unique and bizarre fashions.


Also, hilarious signs, logos, and brand names.  Some of my favorites include: