A petite poupette in Paris

“Well I thought they were beautiful,” I tried to sooth him; it suddenly occurred to me that whilst the rest of Nice had been condemned to provincial small-mindedness, I still had time to prove my avant-garde credentials. I must have succeeded because at the end of the interview he was rather insistent about my attending the opening of his next installation. “It’s in Paris,” he said. Sensing a knowing nod, I replied without hesitating, “Oh, I’m sure I can be there. I’m always in Paris. In fact, I’ll be there next weekend.”

As soon as I put the phone down, I banged out an email to my friend entitled ‘Gay Paris?’ It read: Jazz, we must, asap. Let’s book TGV tickets this week x p.s. I’ve just been interviewing the pig tattooist. I definitely wouldn’t say I was provincial, would you?

Last Thursday, I finally stepped onto the platform at Gare de Lyon and sucked in the cool Parisian air: this petite poupette from the provinces was on a mission to discover the urban and gritty, the edgy and experimental, the radical and underground.

Unfortunately, I had no idea where to begin. I got on the Metro, literally under the ground but not what I had in mind. On previous trips, I’ve always headed straight to Galleries Lafayette or Printemps but I had a feeling that on this occasion these commercial establishments would only tempt me from my chosen path. Lacking alternatives, I went to my friend Mike’s apartment (large cupboard) to brainstorm over an Earl Grey. Mike, a Texan who up until a month ago lived in rural Nice, has just moved into an apartment block around the corner from Nicolas Sarkozy: he’s basically as far removed from avant-garde Paris as one can be.

Fortunately, salvation was not far away (the 20th arrondissement): a rendezvous for the paper with a tres cool French band, born and bred in the country’s capital. They modeled for Karl Lagerfeld. If they couldn’t direct me to the hip hangouts then I was almost certainly lost in provinciality forever.

So there I was, shooting the breeze, musing about making music and art in their home studio, a cup of coffee in hand. Honestly, rock’n’roll Paris wasn’t so hard to pull off. It was, however, a little trickier to broach the subject of where they go at night. It turns out that it isn’t the kind of thing one can slip into an interview without looking like a stalker, or a groupie at the very least.

I was standing up, slowly putting my arms into the sleeves of my jacket, when the keyboard player asked me about my plans for the weekend. My face crumpled with relief. “Oh, I'm not sure yet,” I replied and flicked my hair, attempting nonchalance. “Hey,” I raised the tone of my voice, as if I’d been hit by a stroke of genius, “you guys must know some good places. Where do you hang out?” All eyes turned to the lead singer, who was, within seconds, composing a list of bars and clubs he frequents. On handing the scrap of paper over, I had to resist clutching it to my chest. On exiting the front door, I immediately folded it tightly and hid it in my bra.

I spent the next three days working religiously from the top of the list to the bottom as if it were the Holy Grail. I dragged Jazz and Mike through one red velvet curtain after another, into darkened rooms where rakish models and media darlings would watch on with disdain as we took to the dance floor in the same style that we would a tabletop in Waynes. Routinely sidling up to the bar for "aperos", it soon became clear that my attempt to infiltrate the in-crowd was futile: “You’re from Nice?” they’d screw up their eyes, trying to place the name. An awkward silence would follow.

After trawling across the city in search of its hippest hangouts, it occurred to me that trying to be cool in Paris, when you're not cool and you're not from Paris, isn't much fun. Besides, the razor-sharp cheekbones and skinny jeans brigade may look pretty but they also look pretty miserable, most of the time. And given the choice between smiling and sophistication, I think I'd rather be a country bumpkin from the Côte and laugh until my sides hurt.