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The most magical view of the most beautiful city, for me, is the quiet overlook from the top of Parc de Belleville, below the painted and mosaiced arches. Few things are better than waking up on a clear summerâs day, picking up a coffee and a pain au chocolat, or an Ă©clair, or Paris-Brest, from one of the neighborhood patisseries high up on Rue de Belleville, and strolling along Rue Piat until, by the BelvĂ©dĂšre, the whole of Paris and the day opens shimmering up under you. There are guys selling weed, half-naked people sunning by the fountains. Itâs a good place to have breakfast. Or, for lunch, a carrot salad from the Franprix, or at night some vin rouge.
Jun 15, 2021
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Beautiful park for a walk/ to hang out. So much to see: waterfalls, a suspension bridge, a mini temple, etc. I went in 2020 & since then I think about this park like once a week đ
Feb 10, 2024
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Beautiful restaurant, best bread (lol), romantic n transportative n right across from a lovely lil park.
Mar 1, 2024
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With friends, good music, and a bottle of wine.
Feb 5, 2024
Top Recs from @dean-kissick
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A new version of an old song; an old song, âLâAmour Toujoursâ by Gigi DâAgostino, made slower and more lethargic by a teenage Lithuanian DJ. A song about dreams, about the things youâve been waiting for, coming down to you, but only in your mind. A tale as old as time!In London in the Noughties I never went to Italo disco clubs. But my buddy Joel, a fantastic furniture designer, did. He told me the first time he went, as a teenager, he was standing in line outside, hoping to get in, and an elegant lady stepped out of the club wearing a silk gown, smoking, walking a ferret on a leash. Thatâs how he knew he was in the right place.DâAgostino wears a lot of hats. Often he dresses like a pilot. Heâs been a mega Italo disco star since the Eighties, his music gives the feeling of driving around Tuscany at sunset in a sports car. His âBitter Sweet Symphonyâ is sublime. The sound of Italy and England in perfect romantic harmony; Byron swimming to Shelley across the Bay of Poets.
Jun 15, 2021
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The Blue Flower, a short perfect novel by Penelope Fitzgerald, was published in London in 1995 when she was 78 years old. Itâs a dramatization of Friedrich von Hardenbergâs years as a struggling writer and student, from 1790 to 1797, before he made a name for himself as romantic symbolist poet Novalis, and tells the story of his infatuation with the very ordinary, childish 12-year-old Sophie von KĂŒhn. He meets her when heâs 22 and falls in mystical love at first sight with her. Like many powerful novels, itâs a book of longing. What von Hardenberg really longs for however isnât Sophie, but the âblue flowerâ heâs writing about. Some lines from the story he reads aloud:âI have no craving to be rich, but I long to see the blue flower. It lies incessantly at my heart, and I can imagine and think about nothing else. Never did I feel like this before. It is as if until now I had been dreaming, or as if sleep had carried me into another world.âThe blue flower is what heâs been searching for his entire life but cannot find, will never find.What it represents is not explained. It might be understood as a perfect moment of transcendental joy; or the Great Beauty, or the writing that gives meaning to life, the hope, which destroys us, the trembling, skipping longing for the infinite. The flower is different for all of us. The blue has never been seen. We could do with more vaulting romanticism I feel.âThe universe, after all,â thinks Friedrich, âis within us.â
Jun 15, 2021
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New World Mall is amazing. Particularly the food court in the basement, with its 26 or so regional Chinese and East Asian food stalls. The best dish Iâve had here is Chong Qing Xiao Mianâs (look for stall 19) braised rib noodle soup with peanuts. It lights a gemlike vermilion flame inside you. Mala red and torn-coriander green. It makes your whole body tingle.On your way home from New Earth, pick up a brown sugar pearl milk from Tiger Sugarâs stand by the subway. Tiger Sugar represents the bleeding edge of third-wave Taiwanese boba shops. They claim to have invented pearl milk: delicious, painterly cups of warm tapioca pearls, caramelized syrup and sweet cream. So much sugar it gives you a real body high, it spins you out.
Jun 15, 2021