5bis rue du Verneuil is the home of Serge Gainsbourg in Paris. This short film peels off the layers of graffiti left on the wall there.
posted by creeky on Nov 22, 2009 - 12 comments

Christopher Moore has been to Paris lately, and has decided to share some of his vacation snaps, and, most amusingly, teach us a bit of French.
posted by markkraft on Aug 26, 2009 - 32 comments

The piece is attached via a network cable to the internet. The needle indicates results.
posted by Fiasco da Gama on Mar 11, 2009 - 15 comments

Sex: wot's the big deal is a sex exhibition for kids currently taking place at the Cité des Sciences in Paris. Pre-teens can learn about love, puberty, making love and making babies, and they can also experiment a little bit. The show is based on Willies: a user's guide (in French: Le zizi sexuel) by Swiss comics creator Zep, and features the rising star of French playgrounds, Titeuf (NSFW unless you're a French preteen)
posted by elgilito on Nov 21, 2008 - 42 comments

Paris under the Occupation, in color. [more inside]
posted by homunculus on Jul 12, 2008 - 42 comments

An interactive audiovisual tour [flash, audio] of the student protests in Paris in May 1968. Part of a larger look at 1968. [Previously]
posted by djgh on Apr 18, 2008 - 4 comments

Deyrolle: The Strangest Shop in All of Paris. "Paris has many unusual shops, but one of the most unusual has to be Deyrolle."
posted by jonson on Jul 1, 2007 - 11 comments

Photos of Paris during the 1910 flood. More. Yet more.
posted by monju_bosatsu on Jan 5, 2007 - 19 comments

In May 1968 a general strike broke out across France. The strike started at the University of Nanterre and spread to the streets as 80,000 students, teachers and workers demanded the fall of Charles de Gaulle's government, and they were joined by many other people protesting the brutality of the police. Timeline. Reports shown in cinemas. An eyewitness account from Solidarity. This revolt also gave rise to some amazing posters, printed by the 'Popular Workshop' at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Also of note was the graffiti sprayed about the city, many taken from Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle and the Situationalist International. 1968, it seems, was an interesting time to be around. Boredom is counterrevolutionary.
posted by Zack_Replica on May 3, 2006 - 17 comments

Joblessness is a major motivating force of these riots, which is why the politicians and the press turn endlessly around the question of job creation in the banlieues. [...] An injection of vigorous enterprise, a big deregulating kick, and racial discrimination would evaporate in the tremendous, creative release of market forces. No race riots in an untrammelled market economy: that’s what Sarkozy really means. It’s an ingenious, high-pressure sales pitch for the ‘Anglo-Saxon model’ – indeed, it’s bordering on blackmail. Jeremy Harding in the London Review of Books goes among the arsonists in Paris and offers some insights on the economic factors and political consequences of the riots.
posted by funambulist on Dec 3, 2005 - 6 comments

Quitting France: French Jews are leaving the country in ever-growing numbers, fleeing a wave of anti-Semitism. They are moving to Israel, the United States, and increasingly, Montreal -- where the mostly English-speaking Jewish community is preparing for its greatest demographic change in decades. An interesting if slightly anecdotal look at the situation for Jewish people in France from Canada's National Post.

Part 1 - Barricaded in Paris, Part 2 - Taking leave of 'the fear', Part 3 tomorrow deals with the impact of the influx of French Jews in Montreal.
posted by loquax on Nov 21, 2005 - 67 comments

Why Paris Is Burning Officially, the French state doesn't recognize minorities, only citizens of France, all of them equal under the law. But that republican ideal has seemed especially hollow over the past week as the children of impoverished, largely Muslim immigrants from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa fought running battles with police throughout the banlieues, or suburbs, to the east and north of the French capital...
posted by Postroad on Nov 5, 2005 - 199 comments

The Theatre du Grand-Guignol was a French theatre that was famous for one thing: bloody awful plays. The theatre produced gory plays that gauged its success by the amount of people that fainted in the audience. unfortunately due to the excessive amount of violence in their plays, they became a parody of themselves. People lost interest and the form of gore theatre was lost. until fairly recently.
posted by joelf on Dec 15, 2004 - 12 comments

Insecula. As the Wiki says:

Insecula: L'encyclopédie des arts et de l'architecture is a French language art website containing images and descriptions of thousands of works of art from major museums and collections in France and elsewhere, including the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Palace of Versailles, the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the MOMA.

But it's not just museums and art. It's got Mayan ruins, Manhattan and Brooklyn, and of course lots of Paris streets. I can't believe plep hasn't posted this already...
posted by languagehat on Apr 10, 2004 - 12 comments

Paris is not actually in Paris according to French archaeologists last month. It appears that the ancient capital of Gaul, named after the Celtic tribe Parissi, is not buried under modern-day Paris but under its unremarkable neighbor Nanterre. "It's an unprecedented attack on the French national identity and the greater glory of Paris by a group of dirty-fingernailed parvenus." Spare the dirty archaeologists and blame it on Julius Caesar who gave inaccurate descriptions of the location, returning from the grave causing fresh Parisian identity consternations.
posted by stbalbach on Mar 15, 2004 - 13 comments

French-fried cars for New Year In Detroit, it has been a custom to fire guns during New Year's celebrations. Perhaps we should put aside our current dislike of the French and borrow this fine way to usher in a brand new year. After all, it is the French who have given us taste, culture, refinement, and the liberty of self-expression.
posted by Postroad on Jan 3, 2004 - 48 comments

The Vertically Inclined Photographer: Shooting Paris, Rome, the French Riviera and the Loire Valley from a low-flying plane is Patrick Durand's photographic obsession. It's an interesting flat alternative to Horst Hamann's [click on "Gallery" and go to "New Verticals"] tall vertical New York. There's something very exciting about looking at familiar sights from an unfamiliar point of view. [Both sites very, perhaps too Flash.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Jul 4, 2003 - 14 comments

You probably remember him best for his famous green devil, tempting you with the esoteric delight of evil absinthe^*, or the familiar image of the jester pushing the pleasures of Bitter Campari. Called by some the "father of the modern poster", and even the "father of advertising", Italian-born Leonetto Cappiello created over 1,000 memorable posters during his 40-year career in belle-epoque and fin-de-siecle Paris, and a quick look at a collection of his work quickly reminds us how enduring both his images and his basic concepts have been. (more...)
posted by taz on Nov 4, 2002 - 15 comments

Parisian Attack Monkeys used by thugs in place of guns. What would Charlton Heston say?
posted by stbalbach on Oct 15, 2000 - 12 comments

Concorde crashes near Paris. Oh, no. Not again...
posted by iceberg273 on Jul 25, 2000 - 19 comments