Feelin' French for Bastille Day (+ video)

My wife and I both have a mantra that we often have to repeat not only to ourselves, but to others: "I'm not an expat, I'm an immigrant."

While technically speaking there may not be much of a difference, we often find a mentality gap between those who consider themselves "expats" and those who'll admit (so to speak) they're an "immigrant." Socially, the term "expat" often implies white collar work or wealth, that someone has moved to another country other than theirs at their own volition and stays on their leisure. "Immigrant" is often perceived to mean someone who moved out of necessity or to forge a more livable life.

Though we're most definitely white collar and came to France purely of our own volition, we definitely put ourselves in the latter category. We're actively trying to integrate into the culture while fiercely holding on to what we like about our own, as all immigrants should. We're most definitely not living some fabulous life of luxury. In fact, almost every day is a struggle.

A month doesn't go by where we don't worry about making enough money, visa statuses, sending enough money home, better mastering the language, figuring out new ways to make ends meet... Anyone back in the US who thinks immigrants come in (anywhere) to live a fat, lazy life is an asshole.

Yes, we do travel, and yes, we do some fabulous or frivolous things, and you see those things on the internet because those are the memories we're trying to forge. I don't bother photographing or writing about the weeks we have to spend stretching one sack of beans, four vegetables, and 200 grams of meat into five meals for two people. (I'm saving that for the book, which will help pay 2% of our rent next year, of course...)

All that aside, after about two and a half years here, things are gelling. We've already felt Paris has been our "home" for quite some time now, but things are really kicking in. I complain as much as any natural-born Parisian (of which there are maybe 6). I curse the government and pray for revolution as much as any 68'er. I will declare something "merde" or an "arnaque" immediately upon hearing about it. I coo at the first sight of babies or puppies.

Ok, so I was always like that.

But there are little everyday things that make us feel more in our skin now than ever before. Nary a day goes by when we don't see someone we know in the street, at a shop, getting coffee, etc. Alannah now feels more comfortable speaking French with strangers. And just the other morning at 5 a.m. I called the cops (!?) to complain about noise from a huge fight down the street, and not only did I not have to repeat or awkwardly re-explain anything in broken French, but... They actually showed up and took care of it!

Furthermore, our local know-how is getting better and better. On the eve of the Fête Nationale, we turned up at the Bal des Pompiers (the fireman's ball to celebrate Bastille Day) at the Rousseau fire station in the 1st arrondissement just early enough to spend two minutes (as opposed to two hours) in line, but just late enough for it to be lively inside – where, of course we ran into some familiar faces from around town.  For the 14th of July itself, we dispensed with the picnic amongst 1,000,000 people on the Champ de Mars (mostly because it pissed early on in the day) and instead watched the fireworks from a more serene locale on the river. For probably the 90th time since the weather got nice this year, we very economically popped open a bottle of wine and watched the Seine flow underneath us...

It's a long process, but we're figuring out the system and almost fitting in. We don't shun the anglophone community entirely: You gotta stay true to your roots, you can't discriminate who your friends are, and there are some cool expats who aren't on the same immigrant wavelength that we love nonetheless. And we know we'll never really be French (maybe on paper, someday...). But as much as we miss American work ethic (no, really), California cuisine, and Mexican drunk food, we feel very lucky – and dare I say proud – to be here.

Now enjoy the fireworks.



(Sorry 'bout the video quality. It was taken with a mobile phone from a distance.)

Bastille Day Pt. III: Best. Fireworks. EVER.

I apologize for some of the garbled audio during the transitions... I'm still trying to reconcile audio codecs between the Sony Cybershot camera's MPEG format and iMovie's DV format after demuxing.

You probably don't care what any of that means.

All that matters is that these fireworks were SO worth camping out five hours for.



It cost 400,000€ (USD $634,000) to put on. And it was worth every god damn penny. (Or centime.) And worth all 10-minutes of video time. And worth not being able to get on the metro and walking home at nearly 2 in the morning after getting up at 6:30 the previous morning.

Bastille Day Pt. II: Nuls on Parade

nul - (pej.) hopeless; useless

We got up reallyfuckingearly, on the advice of numerous web sites that purported to have the best info on getting a good spot for the Bastille Day military parade down the Champs Élysées. We were aided in our wake-up efforts by the fact that, by virtue of being three blocks from the staging area for the parade, the sound of tank treads crunching down the street filled our apartment at dawn.

Now before my American compatriots go on making jokes about white flags, Maginot lines and "surrender monkeys," remember that the French helped us in the Revolutionary War, still sport the fearsome Foreign Legion, and - oh yeah - haven't gone and started numerous losing war campaigns in the last 50 years.

That said, I really don't care about military dick-swinging of any sort, but by all accounts, this is something you have to see. And living mere moments from the Arc de Triomphe, we thought to ourselves, "Pourquoi pas?"

We grabbed a sweet spot up near the aforementioned Arc, advised by several web "experts" that this is the place to be. It's where the parade route begins, they say, and where the président de la république inspects the troops before they proceed down the Champs Élysées to the Concorde. Granted, I think President Sarkozy can eat a proverbial dick, but it still would be cool to see him in person. There were a ton of personnel carriers, tanks, and other vehicles lined up in front of us. Disappointingly, there were no giant intercontinental ballistic missiles like in the old Soviet May Day parades.

Figuring we were in the most awesome of spots, a cop came over and started shooing people off, telling them to go further up the street if they want to see anything. "This is just parking," he said. "If you want to see the soldiers, the president, or any of the actual parade, you'll have to move down."

Well, gee, thanks Monsieur Gendarme Nul. At least a thousand people have been lined up on this end of the street - behind parade/event barricade - for at least three or four hours before the start of the event. Now, just moments before, you come to tell us we can't see anything from here? Brilliant.

We went up and down the giant avenue, grumbling, until we found a decent spot in one of the 40 or so secured, barricaded areas. By secured, it means they won't let you bring in bottled beverages with a cap on 'em... But take the cap off, and it's absolutely fine! (Note to self: Next year, take extra bottle caps to thumb nose at system.)

I spotted an open park bench on which I could perch and get a good angle to take photos. After all, I've seen people doing this the whole parade route. Not a minute went by before a cop came by and told me to get down. Once the little pen filled with people five minutes later, there were at least a dozen people standing on the bench, the cop's authority apparently intimidated out of him by numbers. (Note to self: Next year, roll with a posse.)

Festivities eventually began, as various companies of various branches of military - including the aforementioned Foreign Legion - stood at attention, held their rifles and bayonets and did general military parade-y things. The biggest applause came for the very hung-over looking Pompiers (many Parisian firefighters are actually part of the military), whom thousands cheered, applauded, and thanked for the previous night's raging firehouse parties.

Then, it happened. I got my opportunity. To shoot Sarkozy.

And I did, unloading all my digital SLR armory. (What did you think I meant!?)



Unfortunately, the little piss-ant sped by on top of a jeep before I could lock a good focus on him. Typical slippery politician...

While seeing tanks and armored vehicles of all stripes (including two whitewashed UN peacekeeping units, as Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon was the guest of honor) was pretty cool and all, I couldn't help but think how traumatizing it must feel for old WWII veterans/survivors who watched and heard the same loud, groaning drone of German tanks rolling into the city. You'd think there'd be some crazy cases of PTSD every 14th of July...

The coolest part, by far though, was the annual flyover by the armée de l'air. As much as I think that air shows are a waste of money, create noise pollution, and use up precious fuel pointlessly... they're still reallyfuckingcool.



Unfortunately, no matter what's going on, the Champs Élysées is a big tourist hellhole. No, wait, make that a big tourist fuckinghellholeIcan'tstandtobearound. Figuring we'd beat the crowd by leaving the parade early, we got trapped for at least 30 minutes in a bottleneck of human traffic. It was like a rugby scrum, only with even uglier, more uncouth people. Walking a typical Paris sidewalk is bad enough. It gets worse when you're on the Champs Élysées. Worse, then, is a crowded metro entrance/exit on the same street. People simply forget to keep right. And when you add a national holiday, people from all over the place, and about five times the usual crowd, what you have is a clusterfuck.

Imagine roughly 800 people trying to get by all at once through one short stretch of sidewalk, blocked by parade barricade on one side, and construction walls on the other. (You know, those big facades that go up when they're remodeling a building...) And then imagine none of these people keeping right. We were jammed in, not moving at all, even the nul cops unable to do anything about the nul tourists, probably for fear that they'd get crushed, too.

Finally, Alannah and I decided, "Fuck it, if it's a rugby scrum, we'll play rugby," and forcibly shoved the crowd 'til it moved. Even once we were past the bottleneck, it was still a clusterfuck by any measure. My temper had been tested long enough, and I was fueled by the testosterone from the artful shoving just moments before. "Fucking idiots!" I yelled out. "Keep right! Tenez la droite! Go! Move! Forward! Allez! Bougez! Avancez! Keep moving and keep right! ¡Andale, cabrones!"

The people comfortably sitting at tables at a nearby café laughed. A number of people behind me said, "Thank god someone said something." But overall, people moved. I'm not a big guy, but I'm pretty scary when I'm pissed off, and I yell loud enough to fill an arena.

And I can do it in 8 languages.

(Note to self: Don't bother coming back next year.)

Bastille Day Pt. I: Playing With Fire

My wife had a French fireman's sausage in her mouth tonight, while I scoped out some hoochied-out hotties.


Ok, ok, ok... umm, that sounds bad. It was a dark brown merguez, which she enjoyed with gusto as I got tipsy with the firefighters and their admirers.

No, she wasn't granting a favor to a north African firefighter, and there was no infidelity involved. We were at the local fire station gorging on 2€ sausage sandwiches and 2€ beers, while the gals were all dolled up trying to get the attention of the men in uniform.

Huh!? Here's the deal. Every year for Bastille Day (or as it's called here, la Fête Nationale, since it definitely lasts for more than a day), many of the local firefighting battalions in Paris put on a huge party. Some do it on the 13th, some do it on the 14th (which is Bastille Day proper), and some - like our neighborhood company - do it on both.

So we decided to hit up the 5th fire battalion's garrison a few blocks from our place to see what's up. For a voluntary donation (or none at all if you're cheap or broke), you get to go to a massive fire station and party with a bunch of men in uniform. I know that sounds supremely gay, but it's a good time.

Like everywhere else in the world, Paris firefighters are good-looking, muscular hunks of beefcake. I know that - again - sounds supremely gay (not that there's anything wrong with it), but I'm getting at something here. If you're a single girl, there is no better place to meet good-looking, muscular hunks of beefcake. With French accents. If you're a single guy, there is no better place to meet the girls that love them. And there are lots of them. And there are only so many pompiers to go around. So eventually, once the beer and champagne have stopped flowing, there will be some hooking up. So if you're single and in Paris around Bastille Day, now you know where to go.

And that concludes the "International Playboy" portion of this piece.

Our neighborhood's pompiers hosted their party in the massive courtyard (actually, two courtyards) of the firehouse at Place Jules Renard, with bars set up at the perimeter of each, a stage for live music in the larger one, and a stage with a DJ in the second. And it was just mad... in a good way.

As what seemed to be the only Americans there, Alannah and I couldn't help but notice the massive differences between an event like this here, and one back in the States. We seemed to start every other sentence with, "If this were in America..."

• the age range of the attendees would've been about 24-35


• the video screens would've been festooned with waving American flags and sooty faces and "FDNY" tributes with the word "hero" splashed on for good measure every 96 frames


• the alcohol would have cost three times as much


• drinking of said alcohol would have been cordoned off to barricaded areas, only enterable with wristbands


• champagne would most certainly not have been served in glass bottles

Instead, we were treated to what felt like a true community celebration, attended by people ranging from 8 months to 85 years of age. But that didn't stop them from showing video clips of a realistic day in the life of a firefighter. From cooking tons of food (again, another universal firehouse thing, which translated well into the barbecue stand where we got our merguez), to daily workouts, to the bloody and sometimes downright gory imagery of pulling people out of fires and wrecks. Sanitized for general audiences, this was not. And neither are the firefighters. They may be partying in uniform, but they're still partying - having drinks, dancing on the bar, and all the while being incredibly cordial, polite hosts.

It was hard for us to believe that a massive, free party in a major city could be so... civilized. To be sure, it's far from a sober affair. Beers are only 2€50, champagne is 5€, the music is pumping, and by midnight, the place is jam packed. Despite all the bottles of champagne going around, none of them are being broken over people's heads. The fact that you can even buy glass bottles of champagne was astounding to us, escapees from Litigious Society.

So we whooped it up with the local firefighters, watched a couple of bands, checked out the sardinesque (my made-up expression for seriously packed) DJ area, and drank champagne.

Oh, and there were midnight fireworks, of course. Curiously set to the theme from Blade Runner. WTF?



The bal des pompiers parties go 'til about 5am, but we called it a night and walked home by 1. We don't want to spend our first Bastille Day nursing wicked hangovers. That'll have to wait until the 15th.

Oh, and for the record - the lady firefighters are hotties, too.