Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [275]
But the best find here are the 24-carat gold-plated accroches-tableau de décoration (picture hooks). These old-fashioned hooks with decorative symbols on the top—such as the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Napoléon, an artist’s palette, and so on—hold the picture up at the top (not from wire strung from the middle of the backing) with the decorative symbol showing above the frame. I just love these, and at a reasonable price of about thirty euros they’re a unique and lightweight souvenir. The original shop is at 3 quai Voltaire in the seventh arrondissement, and there are two other locations: Magasin Sennelier Frères (4 bis rue de la Grande-Chaumière, 6ème) and L’Atelier des Couleurs du Quai (6 rue Hallé, 14ème).
Serge Gainsbourg Wall
The rue de Verneuil, in the seventh, is home to the Serge Gainsbourg wall, at no. 5 bis. Born Lucien Ginsburg in 1928, singer-songwriter Gainsbourg was a French legend who recorded a great number of albums from the 1950s through the 1980s (a good place to start if you’re unfamiliar with his music is the 2006 compilation The Originals). He was also a sensation who made headlines often due to his relationships with Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birken and his sometimes public displays of drunkenness. The “Serge Gainsbourg Wall,” which is covered with graffiti and has been visited since his death in 1991, is the exterior of his former home, now owned by his daughter Charlotte. In an interview with Vanity Fair in 2007, Charlotte revealed that one day about seven years prior she’d discovered that all the graffiti had been covered up with “disgusting yellow” paint. She presumed it had been done by the police, but learned that the neighbors thought the wall was offensive and had organized a paint cover-up one night—“But the great thing was a week later, it was all covered with graffiti again.” Now she is hoping to turn the house into a museum with the help of architect Jean Nouvel. True Gainsbourg fans may also want to visit the newly dedicated Jardin Serge-Gainsbourg, on the northeast edge of the city at Porte des Lilas—where, unlike in the Tuileries, the chairs are permanently affixed to the cement! If the location seems odd, keep in mind that an early hit of Gainsbourg’s was “Le Poinçonneur des Lilas” (The Ticket Puncher at Lilas Station)—the Porte des Lilas Métro station is very nearby.
Photo Credit bm1.18
Les Souvenirs / Shopping
It is next to impossible to find anyone who knows more about shopping—for souvenirs or, well, anything—than Suzy Gershman, author of the bestselling and terrific Born to Shop series (Frommer’s) and the memoir C’est la Vie. Gershman’s shopping guides—which I read cover to cover—are packed with store suggestions for every type of shopper and pocketbook, and include tips that can save you bundles of money. After a number of years in France, with an apartment in Paris and a house in Provence, Gershman moved back to the States, and now lives in Southern California, where she is near her kids. I reached her by phone a few days after she moved back.
Q: When was the first Born to Shop guide published, and how did the idea for the series come about?
A: It all began with a lunch in 1984, just before the start of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. A lot of people felt then that the Games would be a nightmare for L.A.—huge amounts of traffic, etc.,—and at this lunch I learned that all these women had rented their houses out and were leaving town until the Olympics were over. They were going to Venice, Treviso, the South of France, and so on, and everyone was excitedly sharing all their shopping tips for these various destinations. Not highfalutin tips, but everything from cut rate to couture, Monoprix, factory stores—real people shopping as opposed to designer shopping—and the idea was born to put all these tips together in one book. My husband came up with the title and the original concept was for a really big book, but Stephen Birnbaum’s guides were really popular then and statistics showed that travelers would buy a more specialized book rather than