The man on the terrace

So on Saturday afternoon, around 17h, Jean-Baptiste and I decided to go for another one of our aimless Paris walkabouts, this time heading north-west, with a vague destination goal of "good Thai."

Lacing up my Greek sandals that cut off circulation to my feet and offer no arch support whatsoever, but look pretty neat with bermuda shorts or a flouncy dress, we ambled through the wondrous maze of passages that connect the main streets in my quarter to other main streets - or not. Sometimes they connect to dead-ends, but dead-ends that you reach after milling through cobblestone alleys, past bay-windowed store-fronts and artisan workshops shrouded with climbing ivy and night-blooming jasmine or lilac sometimes interspersed.

With no specific terminus in mind, and having pledged not to quibble over who would lead whom where, we allowed the whimsical August Paris to happen to us, and came upon many miniature phenomena. In the 11ème, we discovered: a pastel mosaic of dinosaurs on the facade of a factory building; a manifesto on the right to manifest plastered on a bench, upon which someone had scrawled some choice profanities with which I was hitherto unfamiliar; and an expensive used bookstore whose proprietor jovially greets customers topless, loudly hoisting yellowed Livres de Poche at you as rivulets of sweat meander from the sideburns of his nearly bald head.

But that's not all! After romping through the playgrounds and colorful gardens that dissect Boulevard Richard Lenoir, I was a bit of sweaty joy myself, and desperately hankering for a Ricard. I'm sort of familiar with the République refreshment stand scene, but it was still a little early for table dancing or posing along the Canal St. Martin Chez m'as-tu-vu version bobo, er Prune (besides which, there were no more terrace seats). Jean-Baptiste, ever the master of café bouseux-spotting, pointed out a corner bar across the canal where a few wooden chairs and tables were haphazardly tossed onto the sidewalk. The terrace was deserted except for one client who, we later discerned, must be a fixture at the bar.

Traversing a romantically decrepit arched pedestrian bridge straddling the canal, we plopped onto the uncomfortable chairs positioned a couple of tables away from the singular outside patron. After ordering our Ricard and marveling at the generous drams so rare in the non-Southern bar, we sat back for one of the most outstandingly motley people-watching sessions I've experienced in Paris.

We saw: a grumpy elderly gent bedecked in an ensemble suitable for a sojourn in Siberia, topped off with a beret nonetheless, who griped to anyone who would listen about a moving van parked on the sidewalk; an emaciated alcoholic whose ability to speak was so impaired that the man on the terrace with us grumpily requested that she disappear (this episode was heartbreaking; the woman clearly had reached the stage of alcoholism where liquor replaces solids); many probably-tourists on the new Vélib bikes nearly careening with on-coming traffic, fiercely ignorant to the hostile doigts d'honneur being directed their way; a young woman wearing a billowy red caftan, on a bike, who stopped to inquire of the man on the terrace's mood, while her large pit bull roamed the area without a leash; a young mother pushing her newborn in a stroller, whose tufts of brown frizz lilted in slow motion as she shook her head and audibly tsked the young woman with the unleashed dog; a veritable chain of female visitors, of all ages, shapes and sizes, chatting up the man on the terrace. He doled out his irritation at these interruptions of his meditation with beer in equal batches, and yet, there was such a constant flow of women, it was clear that he could often be found at this particular bar... so why the grouchy reception? Testing his capacity to reject any form of positive attention, as we got up to leave, I said a cordial, "Bonsoir" and he smiled back seriously, nodding his own, "Bonsoir."

We never did find our good Thai grail. Paris is so quiet right now.