If I had a time machine and a date, I'd take it and her to le Café de L'Enfer.



I first heard of this place a few years ago when I was living in Philadelphia with Ben and he knocked on my bedroom door one evening to show me the below photo in the latest National Geographic. (I just found the writeup in their website archives here.) It's good to have friends who know what you like.


Why, just look at those old-timey fools enjoying a drink in Hell. What I wouldn't give to hang out there. The café was in Montmartre and I had no idea at the time I'd end up living here just a few years later; I'm 99% sure the place was right on the Boulevard de Clichy (edit: it was), which is about fifty paces from my front door. I certainly wish it were still there (and everyone still dressed like that).

Here are some other images I've found from the around the web...





Some joker apparently got the idea to open up another café called Le Ciel (heaven) nextdoor. Tell me, which one looks like more fun to you?



Lastly, here's an amazing photo a friend of mine gave me that I still need to get a frame for. It's beautiful; about 8.5" x 11".

Eric and Bridget visited today! (Eric is my old comic book writing/drawing partner, as I mentioned yesterday). It was a wonderful afternoon; I gave them a long tour through Montmartre and Pigalle, and they bought me lunch at one of my favorite cafes near Place des Abbesses. As we wandered up a quiet street around the corner from Van Gogh's apartment, we noticed that someone had hung a handmade cardboard sign on a lamppost that said "Attention au vampire!" — "Beware of the vampire!" Eric took a picture of me standing next to the sign, and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be the vampire or a guy looking out for the vampire. They'll send me the pic as soon as they get back to America, and I'll post it so you readers can be the judge. Anyhow, it was incredible to reconnect with these great friends after so many years, and I was very sad to see them go. But it turns out Eric's family here own a bookstore in the Marais, so maybe I should stop by and say hi and tell them I'm the American guy(/vampire) Eric told them about. I'm looking forward to exploring a new bookstore. If only I could read.

Last night Alexis and I hung out a nice, quiet, dark bar in our lovely neighborhood of Pigalle to discuss our rock n' roll band, particularly to try and identify the exact sort of style we want to focus on, after several weeks of playing around with tons of songs by Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, et cetera, and while I've been writing a lot of weird original songs and listening to way, way too much Hank Williams (if such a thing is possible). I guess we really do look like a couple of freaks, because while we were pushing through the crowd of smokers outside to get into the bar, someone yelled, "Salut les rockers!" at us, haha. We made our way inside and found a tiny table that was out of the way, and we drank a bunch of absinthe and were probably getting a little bit loud as we got excited about all the ideas we were having for what we want to play what we want to sing about (and what we want to wear! okay, maybe that's just me). After a while, a strange woman approached us; she had overheard a bit of our conversation and wanted to meet us. She was a bit older than we are, and she was clearly from the neighborhood and also very drunk, and she just seemed very odd for some reason; she worried me a bit, and I had no idea why. She sat down way too close to me and asked us lots of questions about what we do and how we know each other and stuff like that, and then Alexis asked her what she did for a living. She said (in French) "Give me your hand." Oh fuck, I thought, she's a fucking fortune teller; great, this is going to get weird and probably very uncomfortable. Alexis, ever the gentleman, gave her his hand, palm up like he knew what was coming. She took his hand but turned it and lifted it up, palm facing her, and then she put her hand up against his, the way you would compare size, you know? She said, "Look." He said, "Okay. And?" She said, "Go like this," and she splayed her fingers apart. "Okay." He did the same. She said, "Look. No, like this." She splayed her fingers further. Her pinky finger was way out to the side, much farther than Alexis could stretch. His eyes lit up.

"T'es pianiste!"

"Voila."

Ha! That was cool, but the lady was so weird we eventually had to make our escape. By the time we left we were silly on absinthe and it was getting pretty late, and we ended up in Montmartre at a Brazilian after hours bar that advertises live jazz every night, but when we went inside some crappy band was covering "Sledgehammer." Ugh. We drank a whiskey because we're cowboys, and I taught Alexis the expression "sausage factory." We wandered back to our neighborhood, picked up some eclairs at Mean Bakery (open 24 hours! and not actually called Mean Bakery), devoured them and called it a night. We still do not have a name for our band.

Wow man, It's about 6pm here and I just got in from the art store with a ton of art stuff (plus a power strip and a lighter with a naked lady on it), and I passed a guy sitting right on the steps at the entrance of my street, shooting smack into the back of his forearm. That's a first. Then I bid good-day to the lovely trans hooker on the corner and slipped into my building to drag my packages up five flights of stairs in unreasonable shoes. I surely do love the feeling of coming home with a giant slab of Bristol board and an arsenal of beautiful new pens. I've got fucking comics to draw, man, and that is a very fine and very serious feeling indeed.

On the way to the art store, I walked through one of my favorite scenes in Paris — there's this overpass that goes over top of the Cimetiere de Montmartre, and you can see hundreds of elaborate tombs and graves sticking up everywhere all over this weirdly-terraced lot. I glanced down though the railing of the bridge and noticed this cat sitting on one of the graves, completely still...




( Two more pics of the cat... )

Spooky, huh? I watched him for about five minutes and then let him be. I'm really glad I remembered to bring my camera today.

Good heavens, the view from my bedroom window is ridiculous. It's been cool and rainy and gray and cloudy since I arrived in Paris last week, and I've been waiting desperately for a little bit of sun so I could take a couple pictures to show you LiveJournalists. It doesn't help that living way up on the hill basically means I live in the clouds. But the sky finally just cleared up a little a few minutes ago, so here you go...





(You can click 'em for bigger versions if you want.) I've got beautiful Montmartre out my back window and sleazy Pigalle out the living room balcony on the other side of the apartment. I'll try to take some pictures of that some night soon.