(Even more) mobile moments

That's right, folks! It's time for even more shots captured by your favorite Parisian-on-the-go. First off, the view through the twisty iron bars of our building's window frames:
Artfully-executed, colorful park graffiti on boulevard de Choisy (you can't quite tell, but that blob in the middle is a yellow furry anthropomorphic DJ):
The store window of a theatre shop, with some cool plague-style doctor's masques:
Cute little outdoor café in the Odéon area:
Super creepy huge face (it takes up the whole front door of a company in Chinatown), with a well-placed peephole. If Big Brother were Asian and of Ambigiuous Gender, (s)he would look like this:
Keeping with the Asian theme, here's a delicious "pho-to" of homemade chicken and prawn pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) complete with basil and mint from our window box. The key ingredient, we learned, is a fragrant herb known as culantro, or Thai parsley).
A pretty sweet wine bar, with a few of my friends outside. You can borrow their glass bottles to buy wine to "emporter" (take away) for as little as 3.50 a litre:
Oddly sexual Adrian Brody graffiti. Any idea what the explanation is behind this? I'm stumped.
How to take away the sketchy factor of a white, window-less van: paint it with the world. When this van leaves the city, you can't even see it anymore:
Cool graffiti on rue de la Glacière, not far from where I live. It reminded me of Avatar:
A super-cute rhino cheese knife that I got scolded for taking a photo of in BHV (France's high-end department store...somewhat between Macy's and Lord and Taylor):
In French, "tampon" can refer to a stamp, and ink pad, a scouring pad or, of course, the feminine hygiene product dearest to our hearts--or somewhere. "Faux-amis" and homonyms aside--it still makes me cringe to see the word next to steel wool:
Transgender street graffiti left over from the Pride walk a month ago (and some multi-gendered feet):
Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) statue near Tuileries:
The buses have their own traffic lights here:
America has Walmart and France has Tati--the super cheap, buy-everything crap store. However, Tati has something that even Walmart doesn't dare to touch: a wedding section.
Super creepy Evian ad for their "live young" campaign:
A pretty fountain, just outside the free summer outdoor cinema at Parc de la Villette:
After our own difficulties moving our own limited amount of belongings down and up five flights of stairs when we moved, I wondered how real Parisians with larger apartments, furniture, the works managed to do it. The answer: they hire moving companies with cherry picker platforms to hoist everything right up to a top-floor window. Nifty:
Too funny--Noddy, the kid's show, apparently translates to "Oui-Oui" in French:
Magritte-inspired street graffiti:
And to finish her off, ladies and gentleman, I give you the most difficult French word for foreigners to pronounce--"Serr-ur-er-ie" (Locksmith):

Over the rainbow

Last Saturday was Paris' "Marche des Fiertés", or Gay Pride walk. In spite of the heat, it was a joyful, colorful celebration:
Anyone who wants to fight discrimination and intolerance was invited to join the walk, so it was hard to tell at any given point who was gay and who was just accepting. Which is a pretty cool blurring of boundaries. In any case, there were many, MANY marchers (I later read estimates of tens of thousands). The crowd was definitely skewed young, too--I'm not sure if that speaks to my generation's tolerance or just our eagerness to take part in demonstrations, but I'd like to think it's the first one.

(Okay, so I might have overgeneralized...it wasn't ALWAYS difficult to tell who was gay...)

The walk's drag queens were, of course, balanced out by a political presence. This is also where the older walkers tended to congregate--around Amnesty International or other activist groups marching to make a statement.

This group is walking "in memory of deported homosexuals":
Sign translation: "Preacher, imam, rabbi--don't block my way" (note the Scissors Sisters shirt on the right):
Activist bumper stickers abounded. My favorites were stickers modeled after the very prominent labels that come on packs of cigarettes here, although instead of saying "Tobacco tue" (tobacco kills) they said "Homophobie tue" and gave various statistics about suicides, hate crimes and legal inequality.

This was a Uganda political sticker:


One of the groups had a really effective float tactic of using hangmen silhouettes to represent every country where homosexuality is still punishable by death:

Chilling close-up:
Sign translation: "My brother is GAY and I'm proud of it"
Nice shoes:
A group of lesbians that were chanting "Xena! Xena!" and drumming up support for their heroine from the bystanders:
There were a surprising number of women with naught but taped Xs on their chests. (there were also a lot of men with "blow me" or "I'm single" written on their chests, and "entry" written, with a down-pointing arrow, on their backs).
At one point, everyone stopped (and the pumping techno turned off) for three minutes of silence
One of a continual series of gladiator angels on stilts, bearing Mentos banners
Cruella deFabulous
Gothic angels seemed to be the theme of the day.
Translations of the signs: "Love doesn't discriminate: not by gender or by race!" "My liberty ensures yours!"
Wavin' the flag with pride:
I kid you not, the gay motorcycle club of Paris:
Aww. Slash I was totally too afraid to take a picture of this tough and muscled couple from the front:
This roller blade-r was distributing fliers for a gay club--but only to attractive young men:

What would a Pride parade be without a giant inflatable condom? (surrounded by
volunteers passing out lube and condoms of a slightly more manageable size)
After the four epic hours of parade were finally over, the streets were a wreck. The cleaning crews were on the scene immediately, in order to speed up the reopening of the many major roads along the parade route. What a weird and wonderful afternoon in gay ol' Paree!