Results tagged “paris”

    

Pounding the pavement like a cop on the beat, waving at shopkeepers, petting a dog, helping an old lady, munching a donut, strolling the sidewalk, protecting the neighborhood...in some Hollywood Shangri-La, maybe, but not in 21st-century urban America, where the cops rarely leave the security of their patrol cars. Kids may play hopscotch on the sidewalks of Madrona or Wedgewood, but not in Belltown, where the sidewalks, for better or worse, have become a full-scale laboratory for transportation engineers and urban planners. Art projects, bus shelters, sidewalk cafés, bike racks, garbage cans, newspaper vending machines, and trees of various ages and diverse species populate the right-of-way, buckling the four-inch concrete and turning the simple business of walking down the block into a hazardous obstacle course.

Kim is off to the Fremont Abbey tonight to catch one of PDX's finest singer-songwriters, Laura Gibson, in action. She will spend the rest of the weekend napping, baking, and watching movies. Sunday night, she'll emerge from her lair for Jenny Owen Youngs at the High Dive.

Another movie about the business of making, selling and drinking wine that gets it all wrong.

The weather, it just gets worse.

Sidewalk table for lunch at Le Pichet: Salade verte, the café's signature green salad with hazelnuts, goat-cheese tartine (on country bread from Tall Grass Bakery) with cornichons on the side, a glass or two of Muscadet. Feels like France, even more so because I've brought along the new memoir by Patricia and Walter Wells, We've Always Had Paris...and Provence.

Lisa Confehr and Kaitie Warren are the co-directors of Balagan Theatre's Romeo & Juliet, and they deserve co-praise for the hectic, breathless pace of this 16-actor-strong production. (Now through March 22nd, Thurs-Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm. Tickets: $15 advance, $20 at the door.)

We can guarantee that when you think of French New Wave cinema, a sultry feeling of cool washes over you. Suddenly, even if you can't name one French New Wave film, you're driven to wander forlornly down moodily lit city streets wondering where your lover has gone while an ultra-cool soundtrack plays in the background and your lover is trapped, desperately trying to reach you.

10 out of 10 Pro Bowl voters agree--the Seahawks have more talent on defense than on offense.

This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook. On Sunday morning, following a trip to a local farmer’s market/major supermarket chain, we will be preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks opponent. Then at halftime we will throw our badly burned hands in the air and make hot dogs.

Well, it's been a month, and that can only mean one thing: time for the next free edgy youth culture documentary, care of Scion. Last time around, the topic was blood diamonds in hip hop; this time it's all about nightclubbing in the late '80s NYC queer community.

Francophiles attending the Beaujolais Nouveau gala in Bellevue Friday will have the chance to bid on more than a dozen travel packages (tickets to Paris? ho-hum...) as well as some rare and valuable works of art. An original lithograph by the French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is likely to draw the most interest.

Towards the very end of last night's People Talking and Singing, as the clock ticked past 10:00 and John Roderick announced he'd play another song and take a few requests from the audience, our butts chimed in: "Hey, this is starting to go on a little long."

Earlier this fall, Laura Dern's baby-daddy Ben Harper released his eighth album, Lifeline, the product of a week-long marathon recording session in Paris. The record's been heralded as Harper's best work in years, due to its casual simplicity and laid-back vintage sound, drawing comparisons to Bill Withers, Otis Redding, and Van Morrison. That's almost enough to get us to ignore the fact that he discovered surfer/"musician" Jack Johnson. In his first ever seated theatre...

is the type of play that gets a regular theatre-goer excited: A clever original script, expertly produced by a small theatre company, with a strong cast of local actors. This is what fringe theatre was supposed to be but rarely managed.

Poor John Vanderslice.

Tuesday night at the Showbox, waiting, watching the crowd. They're a lovely blend of shimmer and shab. A fitting and complimentary mix of well dressed girls and unkempt boys. Some nights you can tell who's here to see which band, but not this night. Seattlest got the impression that much of this crowd was like us: Here for The National, but also excited and curious to see what newcomer St. Vincent brings to the table.

It seems Puget Sound Business Journal writer Jeanne Lang Jones might be a bit upset as she writes, “Now there's a further blow to Seattle fashionistas. The Bellevue Square Nordstrom is getting Prada (designer clothes as part of its remodel; the Seattle flagship store is not).” Jimmy Choo and Neiman Marcus will also be squatting in Bellevue, Jones notes.

We're trying to test Amazon's new MP3 download service because we hate CDs and iTunes and we love DRM-free music files and compensating artists for their work. Hang out with us a minute here while we try this...

So we've developed this routine of biking over to Cafe Presse on Sunday afternoons to read our New Yorker; there's coffee-and-a-croissant involved, usually a soccer game on, and then maybe an afternoon Stella starts to sound good. On a good day, three hours go by like that and we emerge happily over-caffeinated and edified -- or slightly wobbly and rooting for Manchester United.

Just because it's a modest storefront doesn't mean it's a hole in the wall. Au contraire, mes amis. Two new spots in Belltown--both French--forgo pomp in favor of hospitality.

In anticipation of French house DJs Daft Punk's show at WaMu Theatre this Sunday, head to Lower Level at the Capitol Hill Arts Center tonight for a screening of the first film directed by the electro duo:

Summertime lunch (pasta, Frascati) with our Paris Pal, and Seattlest carries on about the failures of Velib as if it were the end of Western Civilization. (Velib is the city's brand new, one-way, hourly bike rental program; see "Paris When it Fizzles" entry on our other blog, Cornichon.) When we pass a Velib "station" near the Arc de Triomphe, we triumphantly demonstrate that American credit cards won't work. Then Paris Pal swipes his Amex...the gates of Paradise swing open and a 3-speed bike is released from its stanchion. Blazer and shoulder bag into the bike's basket, and we're off in the mid-afternoon sun, no helmet (this would never fly in Seattle), down the bone-jarring cobblestones of the Champs Elysées, right at Le Fouquet's, past the George V and the American Cathedral down to the Place de l'Alma and across to the Left Bank, passing directly above the Princess Di crash site.

Jesus, this is embarrassing. Bastille Day celebrates the liberation of a particularly pungent batch of cheese from the dungeons of the old prison in 1789 (along with seven prisoners) on the 14th of July (le Quatorze). Except here -- where as usual we're a day late and a euro short -- the Seattle Bastille Day festivities are being held on Sunday the 15th at the Seattle Center. What fun is that? The ideal would be to get loaded to the gills on Saturday and roll out for a late, late brunch on Sunday.

According to the rental car's dashboard digits, it's 11:11 on 07 07 07, the temperature is 22.2 degrees and we've driven 333.3 kilometers since leaving Paris. What does it all mean? That would be the coincidence of crossing paths with Seattle chef Kerry Sear at the bustling Saturday market in Beaune, of all places.

If kaboom-style fireworks aren't the bang you're looking for, stop in at ACT for the theatrical fireworks of David Hare's Stuff Happens, reviewed here. It's the play about Iraq and the rockets' red glare, the difference between the spark of liberty and the blinding torch of neocon ideology. (The title refers to Donald Rumsfeld's disingenuous retort to questions about U.S. forces' disregard of post-"liberation" lawlessness.) By all accounts, it's a thought-provoking (almost 3-hour) imagining of what it was like being "in the room" as the decisions were being made, and confronts us with the outcome of those decisions, ready or not.

Air France 046 touched down right on schedule Monday--the first-ever nonstop flight from CDG to SEA, water cannons spraying the Airbus A330 in a festive salute, the pilot waving French and American flags from his cockpit window. Champagne toasts and official speeches followed, blessing this long-overdue of the Eiffel Tower and the Space Needle.

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on.