Butt (previously) interviews Didier Lestrade, former publisher of classic French gay zines and periodicals like Magazine (scanned archives) and Têtu. “Unlike many young fags today, we knew our gay history. We were learning all the time about all kinds of stuff and we were always eager to lean more…. It freaks me out to think how quickly we went from creating our own history to not caring about gay history anymore! It happened so fast. No one has even begun to collect and preserve all the material from the Paradise Garage, the Saint, etc., and now gay people don’t seem to even care.” [more inside]
posted by joeclark on Jan 7, 2011 - 31 comments

A complete archive of French magazine L'Officiel de la Mode, from 1921 to 2008. It's a treasure trove for fans of fashion, photography, advertising and design. [more inside]
posted by jack_mo on Nov 14, 2008 - 16 comments

Agence Eureka is a French language image-blog with hundreds or even thousands of scanned illustrations, mostly from mid-20th century French schoolbooks, educational material, magazines, and ephemera. The current front page is slightly NSFW. Some of the categories include anatomy 1 & 2 (mildly NSFW); chocolate wrappers/trading cards; bricolage; decoupage (cut-outs); math education; playing cards; books and magazines; cars; cinema; orientalisme; sport; mild pin-ups; and many others (scroll all the way down the right to see the tags). [more inside]
posted by Rumple on Dec 4, 2007 - 12 comments

Ce n'est pas une cigarette France is the latest to ban smoking in public, joining Spain, Italy, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Ukraine, and the U.S. among others. This short article from The Atlantic shows the long history of countries attempting to ban smoking, from Pope Urban VIII to Hitler. Somehow I think these bans are here to stay.
posted by papoon on Feb 3, 2007 - 49 comments