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21.06.02: Café Insain, rue Parmentier / rue St. Ambroise What can I say about La Fête de la Musique -- I should probably have found a way to enjoy it more. On my very first visit to Paris (June 1995, with Joe after our biketrip in Wales) it was a pretty overwhelming experience: music on every corner, wall-to-wall people on every street, and Joe wooing a girl named Astrid in an impromptu set of singin with a trumpet-banjo duo (she wound up spending the summer in New York with him). Last year I'd followed Sue and Vince to a couple of venues, but ultimately wound up sulking on the steps of the church across from the Bombardier, where some teenage DJs from Australia fêted music. No such angst this year. On my last Friday in Paris I went with the impulse to stop at Serge's office on the way home from somewhere, and got invited to their place for Shabbat, which took care of the "what to do" about this year's festival. So I fêted my decisiveness by settling with a drink to read a book much vaunted by Brian that I'd just picked up, The Flâneur by Edmund White, to see how I stacked up.
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