Samedi Soir a Paris

Despite its cozy appearance (and ‘cozy’ may be an understatement), this little French pub is freezing. Paris is the worst kind of cold tonight: windy, hovering just above freezing, and throwing biting little raindrops every which way.

But this tiny corner bar is staffed by a young woman wearing cat-eyed liquid liner and a hoodie. Her boss is exactly the kind of old French man you’re imagining (the version without a mustache). The smoked mirror in front of me reflects the middle-aged trio in the corner, chatting comfortably, and the couple next to me, drinking pale beers out of frosted glasses. The old man, whose face looks a bit like a carved wooden caricature of itself, has just broken a glass, but no real matter—one of the middle-aged trio, a bespectacled man whose baby blue polo shows off his athlete’s body, is back to order another round.

I look farther down the mirror and I can see the green awning outside, flapping vivaciously, as the hearty French smokers—young men, mostly—sit around tiny tables with their petite biers and talk about nothing.

I think talking about nothing is a love language unto itself.

The ceiling is beamed—dried-out wooden beams, rough and split and spotted from where the nails used to be—and going every which way in some attempt to bring symmetry to this wonky little room.

Above the door, behind the awning, a green and gold tinsel garland sparkles, the baubles hanging off of it jiggling in the wind.

The plaster on the unadorned bit of wall is an artful mess of fading and repairs. Influencers would kill to convincingly replicate what only time and the perfect balance of care and neglect can truly achieve. Inexplicably, there’s a huge pulley hanging from a hook on the ceiling, a bucket, so iconically bucket that influencers would kill to have one (your favorite defunct collaborative of musical storytellers had two, identical to this Parisian model), hanging from a rope, nearly but not quite above head height. Next to the bucket—taking up valuable real estate—is a huge, 50s-futuristic street lamp. Aluminum pole, giant clouded globe turning red to green to red. Right above that hangs a wrought-iron lantern with a coat of arms patterned into the glass. It would have been tacky even in Camelot. The effect of the bucket-streetlamp-wrought-iron lantern is exactly as it sounds—incongruence that no concentrated staring can harmonize.

Way above the bar is a clouded glass shelf, 40 cm or so from the ceiling, holding a parade of empty wine bottles, pewter receptacles, and things that probably earn titles like “flagon” and “stein.” Behind all these runs a yellow rope light that perfectly illuminates the thick grime over all of these objects, as well as the shelf itself. The rest of the place is spotless. I wonder how long it’s been since the young woman or the old man even saw the decorative top shelf?

One detail that I somehow overlooked: on the wall behind the bucket is mounted a heavy and ornate candlestick. Out of it sticks a small American flag. Perhaps the old man visited friends over Flag Day, 25 years ago, and brought this back as a souvenir. Perhaps even now suburban dirt clings to it, inside the waxy iron candlestick, nailed to the cracked plaster wall, in this tiny freezing pub in the 6th arrondissement, on a rainy Saturday evening in December, 2024.