First, the Top 10 most streamed artists in France are all…French. With apologies to Taylor Swift, who finally has a fanbase here.

Second, the Top 10 is all rap artists. Roll over Serge Gainsbourg, and tell Edith Piaf the news.

Topping the list for the 5th straight year is Jul thanks to new hits such as La Bandite, Oh qu'elle est belle, and older hits like Sous la lune.

How huge is Jul? He was picked to light the Olympic cauldron when the torch arrived in Marseille by boat last summer.

Top 10 most listened-to artists in France for 2024:

1. Jul

2. Werenoi

3. Ninho

4. PLK

5. Tiakola

6. Gazo

7. SDM

8. GIMS

9. Dadju

10. Damso

Rap also dominated the Top 10 most listened-to albums in France

1. PLK - Room 140

2. Werenoi - Pyramid

3. Werenoi - Square

4. Gazo, Tiakola - LA MELO IS GANGX

5. SDM - TO LIFE TO DEATH

6. Werenoi - Telegram

7. Ninho - Destin

8. PNL - Two brothers

9. Tayc - Cold Flower

10. UZI - ON THE WAY

Top 10 most listened-to singles in France

1. Little Genius by Jungeli

2. Imagine by Carbonne

3. SPIDER by GIMS

4. Beautiful Things by Benson Boone

5. Gata Only by FloyyMenor

6. No attachment by KeBlack

7. MAMI WATA by Gazo, Tiakola

8. FLASHBACK by Favé, Gazo

9. Position by Franglish

10. DON'T BE SHY by GIMS

French Exports

Outside of France, the French artists getting the attention is more of a balance between the country’s traditional base of electro-pop and rap. In the former category, as usual, French DJs David Guetta and DJ Snake are in the mix, as well as oldies-but-goodies Daft Punk.

French Artists Most Listened To Around The World:

1. David Guetta

2. DJ Snake

3. Daft Punk

4. GIMS

5. Ofenbach

6. HUGEL

7. Jul

8. M83

9. Manu Chao

10. Indila

In summary, this year we were reminded that France is the world’s second-largest rap market, it has the second-best professional basketball talent, and ranks third globally in fast food consumption.

We can report back with confidence that the Plot to Americanize France is going according to plan. This reminds me: it’s almost time to buy season tickets to the next season of Paris’ professional American football team.

Chris O’Brien

Paris, France

In America, we “break” our “fast” in the morning, typically with a solid meal. In France, this label is reserved for lunch: déjeuner. The word “jeun” refers to an empty stomach. When one goes to have bloodwork done at a lab in the morning in France, we are told to come à jeun, not having eaten anything.

When confronted with the existence of something new, the French turn themselves in pretzels trying to avoid inventing another world to add to the language’s vocabulary. And so, as the nation came around belatedly and grudgingly to acknowledging the existence of a meal-ish before lunch, they dubbed it petit déjeuner, the perfect phrase to certify its second-class status.

For Americans raised on the BREAKFAST IS THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY mantra, the French breakfast is woefully disappointing and unsatisfying. There may be no bigger reality gap than the one that exists between an American’s romantic notion of a French breakfast and the sad reality of this morning meal.

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In the mind of said American, a sumptuous croissant lies at the heart of the French petit déjeuner. Warm, steaming, buttery, just out of the oven, this folded pastry wonder seems to fall apart at the touch and melts instantaneously upon touching your tongue. A nice espresso then follows to momentarily electrify your mouth, before filling the belly with contentment. This mythology is perpetuated by countless Instagrammers, sitting on a hotel terrace with their feet languorously dangling on the rail and next to a dazzling plate of pastries and gazing at the Eiffel Tower in the distance.

The truth is that French breakfast typically consists of a croissant that has been sitting in a large box at the boulangerie for hours before being fished out and stuffed in a paper sack. The slight staleness can’t quite be warmed away by the oven, which only seems to emphasize its sadness. One could write an entire lament about the pathetic state of French coffee but suffice it to say that this is not Italy, and Nespresso has somehow tragically captured this market.

When people ask me what food I miss from the U.S., I simply say: breakfast.

So, when I first learned about a contest called Trophée du Petit Déjeuner, my heart soared. I discovered this competition, alas, just before the pandemic turned our lives upside down in March 2020. And so, after starting to report this, I put the topic aside. But late last year when I heard about the latest edition – now dubbed Meilleur Petit Déjeuner & Brunch de France – I decided to strike while the pancake griddle was still hot.

The annual event is organized by Tables & Auberges, a national association of chefs, hotel owners, and local food producers. Broadly speaking, the goal is to celebrate this nation’s best breakfasts to rescue this orphaned morning meal and give it the gastronomic respect it deserves. Awards are given in 6 categories (see the winners here). Participants are supposed to emphasize local and seasonal products, sustainability, and culinary savoir-faire.

The contest organizers are motivated by a mix of economics and nutrition, according to Stéphanie Martinez, a Tables & Auberges spokesperson. Given that so many members are hotel or B&B owners, they wanted to emphasize how critical breakfast can be for guest satisfaction. Even better: A more sophisticated morning meal gives local producers another place to sell their products.

“The reason for the competition was to showcase the morning meal,” she said. “As it happens, the question of breakfast arose above all in relation to hotels because in many hotels, breakfast is not necessarily promoted as it should be. But breakfast is the last thing guests remember when they leave the establishment. You're more likely to return to a hotel because you've eaten well and it's the last memory you have before leaving.”

Then there is the broader question of elevating the prestige of the meal and encouraging the nation, in general, to take it more seriously. As Tables & Auberges noted in its description of the contest:

“86% of French people consider that it is important to start the day with a good breakfast, but in reality, things are different. With around a quarter of an hour devoted to this meal we cannot afford too much morning fantasy. According to the national nutrition and health plan, breakfast is a meal in its own right and must represent between 20 and 25% of energy intake over the entire day. Today, only 19% of adults and 30% of children eat a full breakfast consisting of a grain food, a dairy product, a fruit, and a hot or cold drink.”

In France, where good eating is at the heart of the national identity, the effort to rally the country around this initiative has become serious enough that the competition is co-sponsored by France’s ministers of agriculture, finance, and economy. Tables & Auberges has just opened the call for nominees for its 7^th annual competition, with an official theme around dairy and cheese products.

Make Breakfast Great Again

In talking to researchers and historians about French and American breakfast habits, I realized that I bring my cultural weight to this topic.

Growing up in the U.S., the whole MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY ethos is drilled into our heads. I remember in the 1970s watching Saturday morning cartoons and being treated to the public service announcement: “The Breakfast Droop” by the National PTA.

“When your mornings lag and you sort of sag and you can't keep up with the group/and you're not in tune ‘till the afternoon, then you got the no breakfast droop./Now there is a way you can start the day so the first part, good is the last make more of the deal of the morning meal./ In other words, chum, break the fast./ So, eat breakfast, don't pass it up.”

This is mostly marketing hokum. In the 1940s, cereal makers in the U.S. started an advertising campaign (“Eat a Good Breakfast—Do a Better Job”) that worked wonders. Over time, studies emerged claiming to confirm that breakfast promoted good health. As it turns out, most of these were flawed and funded by the food industry. There is even an institute called The International Breakfast Research Initiative (financed by the cereal industry).

The French are much more capable of sniffing out the hints of capitalism behind something and resisting its seductive lure. In this sense, a robust breakfast can also be seen as an Anglo thing pushed by large companies, yet another cultural invader to be repelled to protect the essence of French culture. (As we see in other areas, resistance is fading.)

Yet, despite knowing that I have been a lifelong victim of Big Breakfast, the stomach wants what the stomach wants.

When traveling in France, we have often timidly inquired at various lodgings whether it might also be possible to have an egg or cheese, or just really any protein-containing substance with our petit déjeuner. This may typically be met with a raised eyebrow and a look that silently says, “You Americans and your breakfast.” During a visit to my doctor after we had been in France for a couple of years, we were reviewing my eating habits when she stopped, somewhat shocked, to make sure she had heard me correctly: “You have eggs at breakfast…every day? Surely that’s too much protein.”

In some cases, we stumble across the classic British breakfast, a feast that seems even more disappointing for having gotten one’s hopes up only to find a plate swimming in baked bean sauce as it drowns fried eggs that are holding on for dear life to two inexplicably grilled tomatoes as two brown logs pretending to be sausages bobbing along.

Many are the conferences I’ve attended that promised breakfast which turned out to be trays of unsatisfying croissants, and sometimes chocolatines, or what the barbarians in the North of France refer to as pain au chocolat.  

Beyond the lack of tastebud satisfaction, it simply isn’t filling. I’m hungry an hour later and usually am scrounging for snacks. The French are famously not snackers whereas Americans are relentless grazers. The French hold tight until 12:30 p.m. and then take a nice long lunch. It’s impossibly civilized in a world that wants us to constantly be rushing.

Even trying to make our own Real Full American Breakfast at home can be difficult. Bacon as we know it is scarce. If you order bacon at the butcher’s shop, you more likely get something closer to the dreaded Canadian “bacon” with a long stringy strip along the edge that is inedible. Closer to real bacon are lardons which are often sold in cube form and can help make a delicious quiche. Our saving grace in this regard for many years was the Marks & Spencer in the Paris Montparnasse train station which sold frozen bacon such as would be recognizable to the American palette. Alas, Brexit forced Marks & Spencer to abandon the French market.

The Breakfast Trophy

To learn about the breakfast competition, I attended a February 2020 convention in Toulouse for hotel and restaurant owners where the latest edition was being announced. Attendees had to first pass through a demonstration area created by the Tables & Auberges team to spread the word about their breakfast competition. A fruit seller had concocted a dazzling display by sliding assorted berries, melon cubes, and orange slices onto toothpicks and then arranging them on a half-dome as if they were exploding fireworks. The next stand was Latitude Safran, who created a confiture of Safran that is served in gelatinous bubbles. A butcher was slicing dried ham from a pig’s leg for tasting, while a local apple farmer served their apple juice. The obligatory croissants and chocolatines were placed next to the salmon samples.

All the products were made in the Toulouse region, a point of emphasis for Tables & Auberges. Showing off French quality means discovering the best of local producers in a region. This is a way for visitors to truly feel they are experiencing a place by eating regionally produced food. Expanding the breakfast market also potentially creates new opportunities for French farmers who are often struggling these days.

“We call it petit déjeuner du terroir,” Martinez said. “It's really about showcasing the region with regional products.”

While there was agreement among participants in the Tables & Auberges event that breakfast deserves more respect, there didn’t seem to be much agreement on why the French have given it such short shrift. The main answer, repeated by just about everyone I asked, was that there simply wasn’t time in the morning to prepare breakfast. As a parent, I’m certainly sympathetic to the stress during the morning scramble to prepare breakfast for everyone and get the kids out the door to school. Yet we have long awoken early enough to give ourselves time to do so. And this seemed to be the critical difference.

The French are famously not early risers. My wife used to teach a yoga class in Toulouse at 9 a.m. on the weekends. Back in the Bay Area, the culture around hard-core yogis was to get up and practice 6 days a week starting at 6 a.m. So 9 a.m. seemed rather laid-back. But invariably when she would mention that her class was at 9 a.m. on a Saturday, a look of shock would appear on our French friends’ faces, followed by, “That’s so early! Impossible!”

At the restaurant convention, when I suggested that perhaps people get up a bit earlier, this seemed to be the real hurdle. In the ancient human war between eating and sleeping, the French were firmly in the latter’s camp, despite their gastronomic reputation. Magali Buso, who works for the Haute-Garonne department representing local farmers, told me that to expand her breakfast habits, she had to make a major life change. “I now get up a bit earlier each morning,” she conceded.

The 6^th edition of the contest, which was not open to the public or press, was held on November 29, 2023, at L’Ecole de Paris des Métiers de la Table (EPMT). The theme: Fruits and raw or cooked seasonal vegetables. The president of the jury was chef Olivier Bellin (Michelin 2 stars), accompanied by Jean Covillault, who had been a competitor on Top Chef Season 14.

The breakfast competitors didn’t face the kind of pressure seen on that show. Still, cooks had a couple of hours to prepare their meals and then present them to the jury. They were judged on the quality and creativity of the food, but also the presentation.

The winners in each category received €2,000 with €1,000 for second place. There are also gifts of coffee makers, artisanal cutlery, cooking equipment, and gift vouchers.

Martinez said the competition is also a chance to celebrate quality, creativity, and local seasonal products over mass-produced fare.

“The events we organize highlight our members’ savoir-faire,” she said. “There should be no serving packaged butter, no more jams in little jars. But to have real butter, real homemade cakes, rice pudding, really homemade things. This way we can enhance the quality of products on the breakfast table.”

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A Cultural Moment

A few weeks later after the Toulouse convention in 2020, I invited Nadine Barbottin to join me for breakfast. Barbottin is a chef and food consultant for events via her company Mamscook. We met at La Cour de Consuls, an upscale hotel in the city center, in large part because there were pretty minimal choices for places that would serve an actual breakfast on a weekday. Barbottin ordered Eggs Benedict while I chose a ham and cheese omelet.

She had won a prize for best regional breakfast in the 2019 competition, a meal that included plates of Southern favorites like strips of magret de canard on a toasted bread that had been brushed with tomatoes, slices of black ham over white beans on toast, deviled eggs with anchovies, and an older regional specialty called milla that uses cornflower to create a flan-like cake.

People ask me what my favorite French dish is. For me, the beauty of French meals is the pleasure, knowledge, and appreciation people have for food and the whole experience of sharing a meal. For Barbottin, the history is just as important as the recipe. As we ate, she talked about how breakfast barely existed several centuries ago in France and then became a meal for the elite as they embraced imported goods like tea, coffee, and chocolate. As breakfast gradually made an appearance as the country industrialized in the 19^th century, it was still mostly about bread (with coffee in the cities, with soup in the countryside).

“Bread in France is a crazy thing,” she said. “A Frenchman can't eat without bread!”

Whereas the Anglo-Saxon world expanded to eggs and meat, France and much of Europe still leaned on bread and hot drinks. The Brits eventually came to dub this a Continental Breakfast.

Barbottin wants the French to bring the same passion and creativity to the morning meal as they do lunch and dinner. As she put together her menu for the competition, she drew on forgotten dishes of her childhood, and a desire to feel a connection to the food and not consume an industrial product. She knew where every product came from, its connection to the regional culture, and the history of it had evolved over the years.

“I found it very interesting to take part in the competition because I thought it was an important meal,” she said. “Breakfast is a gourmet meal, after all.”

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A New Breakfast Hope

Walking the streets of Paris, one can catch glimpses of restaurants trying to embrace breakfast/brunch, though not always quite getting the full concept. Bagels are a catastrophe here, a bread that has been mistaken as a bun for sandwiches, too light and dry, and served at stores that may not open until after 10:30 a.m. Never order a bagel in France. It will break your heart.

As we’ve traveled over the last couple of years, we have noticed that many of the inns and B&Bs where we stay are starting to serve much more substantial breakfasts. Though, I’m not sure anyone in France can top the Château de Damigny in Normandy. No doubt accustomed to a heavy flux of American visitors coming for the nearby D-Day beaches, the morning breakfast buffet is next-level bonkers, including crepes, bacon, eggs, a basket of croissants, a cheese station, and an array of homemade jams.

In the end, we satisfy our craving for diner-style American breakfast with an annual meal at Breakfast in America. Started almost 20 years ago by ex-pat Craig Carlson, BIA now has 2 locations in Paris. The breakfast is an honest-to-god breakfast. Bacon that is bacon, blueberry pancakes, eggs, and a bottomless cup of coffee. This is decidedly middlebrow stuff. Boxes of Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix line the shelves. It is certainly not the reason anyone moves to France. Yet it scratches the American breakfast itch in just the right way.

Still, the Best Breakfast Competition shows how the French could still win this whole breakfast thing. Plates that demonstrate the artistry and creativity that are possible by cooks ready to embrace the fundamentals of the Anglo-world breakfast but take it further and higher.   

As an American who has been living in France for almost 10 years, this is the cultural revolution of my dreams. If the French are ready to overthrow the established order and man the brunch barricades at long last, I am ready to take up my waffle iron and march alongside them in solidarity.

Chris O’Brien

Le Pecq

What comes to mind when you think of France? That hulking husk of metal looming over the Seine, of course. That fire-ravaged church in Paris. Tourists wearing berets. Artsy fartsy stuff. Smelly cheese. Bread. Strikes. People habitually shrugging their shoulders. Paperwork.

Or, perhaps, as those fellows put it so succinctly in the Book of Mormon musical: “France! Land of pastries and turtlenecks!”

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Whatever images flood your mind when you hear “France,” there is a global obsession with the country and its culture. The Chinese are absolutely Looney Tunes for all things French at the moment. France, pandemics aside, is the most visited country on the planet for tourists. People are compelled to make terrible, cliché-riddled TV shows about life here.

Still, the French government thinks France, as a brand, needs a bit of a refresh. The country, after all, is getting on in years. There is the risk of losing touch with Generation Tiktok. New countries are always coming along with enticing new offers for tourists. (I’m looking at you, Iceland!) So France is taking steps to give itself a marketing makeover to connect with The Youth and other assorted people with cash in their pockets.

There seems to be nothing the current president loves more than hawking his beloved product to anyone and everyone. It is a shared passion among politicians, making it feel sometimes like France is ruled by an elite class of used car salesmen.

In trying to freshen up the French brand, the government turned to marketing experts who were full of ideas. The government hired the branding and marketing firm Mediameeting, which bills itself as the “1ère Voice Business Company française,” a slogan that neatly straddles that classic no-man’s land between French and English a place where Franglais goes to die.

Naturally, this effort began with creating a new theme song. France now has its own official jingle, the most essential of all advertising elements, a powerful weapon that has convinced people for generations to eat overly processed meats wrapped in plastic and guzzle sugary drinks with no nutritional value. The industry that wanted to “Buy The World A Coke” and posed the existential peer-pressure puzzler, “I’m a Pepper, He’s a Pepper, She’s a Pepper, Wouldn’t You Like To Be A Pepper, too?” has a solution to sharpen France’s image.

The government rationalized the need for an audio identity because audio is 4.75 times more memorable than other types of messaging. So finally, people will have no trouble remembering France!

The government revealed the jingle in a solemn hype video:

As the video explains, the tune is an electro version of the Marseillaise dubbed “FR.AIR”.

"It's a tune that makes us vibrate from the fields of our countryside to the Champs-Élysées,” says the narrator. “A tune that we sing in chorus united as one, all in a trance, from the Vélodrome to the Stade de France. A tune that makes us inspired by uniting against the worst and for the best.”

Vibrate away, people.

As national anthems go, the Marseillaise is pretty badass. It’s the R-rated, red-band-trailer, horror show of patriotic hymns. There are bloody banners being raised, soldiers rushing in to slit the throats of children, and the impure blood of foreigners watering the fields. By comparison, the Star Spangled Banner is a PG-13 song, with vague “bombs bursting in air” and “rockets red glare” that seem tame and sanitized. Francis Scott Key couldn’t be bothered to give us a few bombs blowing off heads or cannonballs severing limbs to spice things up, so the U.S. is stuck with its timid hymn.

But now, as envisioned by the electro-trance jingle version of the Marseillaise, the France of the future is a moody teenager, very sensitive and emotional, with dyed black hair and skinny jeans, swaying in the corner with their eyes closed and being sad about their latest breakup. Perhaps a branding opportunity was missed by not calling the tune Ennui?

FR.AIR comes in 3 versions: 52 seconds, 4 seconds, and 2.2 seconds which are supposed to be affixed to all official audio and video presentations. Here is the extended version for your listening pleasure.

No doubt it will shock you to your core to learn that this new tune did not elicit unanimous praise. As one Frenchie wrote on Twitter: “Je ne voudrais surtout pas avoir l’air rabat-joie mais ça nous a coûté combien, cette merde? (I don't want to sound like a killjoy, but how much did this shit cost us?)”

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Next up: Marianne, the female symbol of the Republic’s values: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. Her image is affixed to every official building and written document in France:

Mary got an update for the nation’s stamps in 2018 (left). Now she’s gotten another for 2023 (right).

“After Marianne the Engaged, it is a Marianne of the future who will adorn the stamps in common use from November 13,” the government announced. “This Marianne with long hair blending into a green decor, her face resolutely turned towards the future, symbolizes the ecological transition. It was designed by graphic designer Olivier Balez, author and illustrator of press, children's literature, and comic strips, and chosen by the President of the Republic from among projects carried out by fifteen artists.”

But wait, there’s more!

France has also launched a new marketing campaign with the slogan: MAKE IT ICONIC. Choose France / MARQUEZ LES ESPRITS. Choisir la France. The campaign is targeting five countries (Germany, Canada, UAE, US, and India) and “aims to further amplify the influence and attractiveness of France on an international scale.” (Sorry in advance if you are one of those 5).

Now, per the Franglais Death Valley reference above, if you can explain what the grammatically tortured “Make It Iconic” actually means, or wants you to do, then please do drop me a letter using the Marianne stamp.

“It aims to bring out the audacity and spirit of innovation characteristic of France by being embodied, every day, in its economic dynamism, its know-how, its cultural and artistic vitality, its gastronomy, and its tourist wealth,” read the government announcement. “It will be carried throughout the world by the diplomatic network and state operators.”

The campaign features images of celebrities and things from sports and business and stuff that may or may not be recognizable to people outside of France, but trust us they are Iconic! For the truly curious, check out the official site for their names and bios.

Why stop there? The government is on a roll, and so they’re also seeking proposals on how to improve the image of French cuisine around the world. Because I guess now that everyone is eating Five Guys burgers and Krispy Kreme donuts in Paris, people think of France as the global fast food capital?

In any case, Prez Macron announced in September 2023 a national strategy to promote French haute cuisine “aimed at preserving, promoting and disseminating the exceptional culinary heritage of France, and one of the main axes of which is to promote the access to haute cuisine for everyone.”

So the nation’s tourism agency, Atout France, put out a call for initiatives for proposals that create events that make “French gastronomic excellence accessible to as many people as possible.” Amuse bouche for the people!

With the marketing winds at his back, Bruno Le Maire, France’s economic minister and writer of soft-core porn, traveled to New York City recently for Operation Seduce Wall Street. Step right up:

He spent several days meeting with members of the financial community to convince them to invest in, um, that one country that’s…oh darn, it’s on the tip of my tongue…Next to Germany, south of the UK…Starts with an F…

Oh wait, what’s that sound?

Ah yes, I remember now. It’s France!

Chris O’Brien

Le Pecq

I have developed a (probably unhealthy) obsession with the advertisements that are wrapped around buildings in Paris undergoing major renovations. At some point in the near future, I’m going to write more about this strange brew of commerce, art, and preservation and share some of my favorites.

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In the meantime, a group of artists not only apparently shares my fascination but took it to another level by transforming the façade of the Paris Opera - Palais Garnier to produce “Chiroptéra”, a ballet created by choreographer Damien Jalet with music by Thomas Bengalter (one half of Daft Punk), and a fresco created by enigmatic street artist JR.

Normally, the plaza side of Palais Garnier looks like this:

Starting in October 2022, workers began erecting scaffolding as the first step of a €7.2 million restoration project. The exterior needed a thorough cleaning to remove the soot caused by Paris’ severe pollution, plus the wear and tear from weather that had weakened some elements of the structure. The work is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.

In the meantime, Opera officials invited JR to create a public work to temporarily cover the scaffolding. Back in September, he revealed a giant fresco that he called “Acte I – L’entrée de la caverne” (The Entrance of the Cave) which was displayed for 3 weeks:

This month, JR unveiled Part II: Retour à la Caverne (Return to the Cave). To mark the debut, dancers performed the ballet "Chiroptera" by Jalet and Bangalter. Despite the drizzle and cold, I managed to elbow my way into the audience to watch the 20-minute spectacle.

Speaking before the show, JR addressed the crowd to explain the theme:

“It's about light and darkness,” he said. "In September, we invited you to come out of the cave and explore. This time, we invite you to enter the cave. So why light and dark? It speaks to us so much now because over the last few weeks we've had so much darkness around us that our public artists, the dancers, we paused for a moment, saying to ourselves ‘What's the point in dancing? What's the point of creating? What's the point of putting up a work when in a month's time we'll be seeing everything that's going on in the world?’ And we said, ‘Now, our role is to always bring people to the light, always move towards the light.’ You don't chase darkness with darkness. You drive out darkness with an infinite number of lights. And tonight, we're all here together to enter the cavern.”

The ballet began with a solo dance by Amandine Albisson, one of the Opera’s most renowned ballerinas, dressed in black. A bright light projected her shadow onto the fresco.

The middle section of the fresco then rose to reveal 153 dancers standing across the scaffolding, wearing large capes that were black on one side and white on the other. They then began to twirl to the soundtrack that blended electronica and acoustic music. As they spun, they created different patterns, eventually spelling out the phrase: “Darkness holds the grace of the light.”

The performance at times was eerie, enchanting, vibrant, and uplifting. The crowd was hypnotized and then burst into loud cheers and applause when it was all done. It was a generous gift, and certainly a most welcome one that, at least for a brief moment, created a sense of unity among those who were on hand to witness it.

Chris O’Brien

Le Pecq

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The French language is back in the news, though it is never far from it. The mother tongue of France is constantly under assault from threats foreign and domestic. The fight to preserve and purify it, and perhaps even restore a glimmer of its former glory on the global stage, remains as fierce as ever.

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Last month, the French government filed complaints against the European Union for using English too much for job applicants, according to Politico:

Brussels is currently hiring new officials in fields such as space, defense and economics, using a selection process involving some tests that are only given in English. Paris contends that those criteria favor anglophone candidates over their rivals, and has filed two complaints before the EU’s top court; one of them was made public on Monday.

The linguistic legal sparring comes just as France took the wraps off la Cité internationale de la langue française, a new museum in the North of France dedicated to the French language. Now, other countries may have built museums to their languages, but I couldn’t find any. Some dude is trying to pull one off in the UK, but it doesn’t look like the idea has taken off. So, France stands alone. (If I’m wrong, scream at me in the comments.)

At the inauguration last month, President Macron gave a wide-ranging speech that covered the history of the €209 million (woof!) restoration of the Château de Villers-Cotterêts in the Aisne department that is now home to the museum. (Read his blabla all in French here, if you dare.) This shack was where François the First signed the edict in 1539 that made French the official language over Latin.

Decidedly not in attendance at the ceremony were the majority of stuffed shirts known as the L’Académie française, the institution created in 1635 to officially define and protect the French language. It’s an organization that frequently falls on the wrong side of the self-parody line, moaning about the French using English words and whatnot. The Academy is presided over by members who are humbly called “the Immortals,” and each one looks like they responded to a casting call for actors to play the most extreme caricatures of stuffy, conservative, and reactionary French elites and intellectuals.

Can you even imagine such a thing in the U.S.? Some 130-year-old pointy-headed snob sitting in a Washington DC office and telling people in Alabama that “y’all” wasn’t proper English? It just ain’t gonna happen.

Anyhoo, Academy members pretty much hate everything about the modern world, including now the whole language museum thing, which is 100% on-brand for them. The first salvo was launched by author Jean-Marie Rouart, 80, who began publishing in 1974 and barfed out a book a year until 2009. Rouart wrote a column in the conservative Le Figaro newspaper in which he denounced Macron for committing treason against the French language.

"You have to look far into the history of France to find a political leader who has done so much harm to it,” Rouart wrote. “A failure all the more surprising given that this mission was self-evident. Isn't it dizzying to have accessed the supreme office of a country which has the fabulous originality of having been built by its writers and whose language has always been the admiration of people and intellectual elites around the world?”

What’s his beef? Rouart said the mission of the museum is unclear. And worse, because it acknowledges and accepts the idea of the French language being spoken and evolving in other countries, and therefore condones absorbing non-French words, he accuses it of not stopping “the gangrene of Franglais but instead encouraging it.” He also finds Macron guilty of using…gasp!… English at times in official settings, such as when he organized the “One Planet Summit” in Paris or proclaimed that he wanted to “Make our planet great again”* or held the “Choose France” business summit at Versailles or said he wanted to make France “une start-up nation.” (*This was a missed branding opportunity because if Macron had just said “Make Earth Great Again,” then it would be “MEGA” and he could have sold t-shirts and hats with that logo: MEGA vs MAGA. Oh well).

Rouart called Macron the “tartuffe de la langue française.” The word tartuffe can mean imposter or hypocrite, but it is also the name of a play by Moliere. So Rouart is dunking on Macron while trying to show off his big brain.

This call to arms was soon joined by other humorless academy members who whined that protecting the French language is supposed to be their turf, and they don’t like the Prez walking on their lawn. As one anonymous member told a French newspaper, “He will have done more harm to the French language in two 5-year terms than his predecessors did in sixty years!”

Macron, no stranger to showing off his big brain, made more historical citations in his museum speech than you’d find in the average PhD dissertation. At the inauguration, he acknowledged the elitist hullabaloo, even mentioning tartuffe and Molière and noted that there is “sulking at the Academy.” To the Immortals, he said, “Suck it,” though in French and with much more nuance.

“Language has always been a controversial subject, and that there are heated debates about the French language is a sign of good health,” he insisted. “Few countries have such heated debates over their language.” Um, yes, there is a lesson in there somewhere, I’m sure, but perhaps not the one Macron thinks.

Macron insisted that the French language remains central to maintaining the French cultural identity. Indeed, forcing the disparate tribes of the regions outside of Paris to speak French over the centuries rather than their local barbaric tongues was crucial to forging the identity and concept of a French nation.

“The French language builds the unity of the nation because the French language is a language of freedom and universalism,” Macron said. “And these two reasons, in the moment we live in, are enough to justify the importance of this project and the moment we share. Our unity first, at a time when divisions are returning, when hatred is resurfacing…the French language is a glue. It explains our relationship to both the nation and the Republic.”

During his 2017 campaign, Macron became known (and was mocked) for using the expression en même temps (at the same time). As he tried to carve out a centralist image, he would try to reconcile various seemingly contradictory policies by saying en même temps. Like, I’m going to blow up a building en même temps I am going to build new buildings. We are going to reform labor laws to make it easier for French employers to fire your lazy ass en même temps we will increase training and the social safety net.

At the museum inauguration, he totally en même temps-ed the French language (though he did not utter the phrase). While embracing tradition and the language’s conservative history, Macron also said the language should be a symbol of diversity by accepting the variety of accents and new words. He said it can exist comfortably alongside the 72 regional languages in France. (cue conservatives losing their minds!)

But the Prez did throw the rightwingers a verbal bone by rejecting the movement known as Écriture Inclusive.

What is Écriture Inclusive? I’m so glad you asked…

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I’m Okay, You’re Okay

Macron has been getting hammered by conservatives since his first presidential campaign in 2017 for sprinkling in English words, or even at times giving entire speeches in English.

Amid this backlash, a radical proposal dubbed Écriture Inclusive was gaining momentum. This idea dared to rethink one of the core principles of the French language: gender. Écriture Inclusive calls out the French language for being inherently sexist because it favors masculine usage. Proponents have outlined a complex, if awkward, remedy that its adherents argue is essential for correcting the subtle ways the French language creates stereotypes that are biased toward men over women.

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When studying for my French citizenship interview, I had to be familiar with all of the major symbols of the Republic. La Marseillaise. Marianne. The Gallic rooster. Phrygian cap. One could even throw in the Fleur-de-lis. Or the Eiffel Tower.

No matter which list I studied, however, they all overlooked the most important cultural icon: the Bic 4-Color Pen.

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I’m not sure how I didn’t know that Bic was a French company until I moved to France in my mid-40s. Growing up in Kansas, Bic products were so ubiquitous that I never bothered to consider it wasn’t an American company. Bic razors. Bic ballpoint pens. Bic lighters. Bic Bic Bic everywhere. Today, it is one of the largest consumer goods companies in the world. Based in the Paris suburb of Clichy, the company had revenues of €2.39 billion in 2022.

Bic was co-founded by two Frenchmen, Marcel Bich (born in Italy but naturalized after his parents immigrated) and Edouard Buffard, who bought a factory in 1944 to make pens. Bich eventually became intrigued by an early version of a ballpoint pen developed by Hungarian Laszlo Biro and acquired the patent.

It took the Bic team two years to refine the ideal ink and find the right fit between ball and ink. The company acquired high-precision machines from the Swiss watchmaking industry to produce the pens.

The result: the BIC Cristal pen.

Launched in 1950, this is the omnipresent ballpoint pen with a blue cap and transparent body that lets you see the ink inside. Everyone on the planet knows this pen and probably finds at least 10 of them every time they lift the sofa cushions to clean. Producing it was considered a remarkable engineering feat at the time, the world’s first high-quality ballpoint pen but sold at an affordable price. It was light and long-lasting, allowing someone to write up to 3km.

Bic’s marketing campaign made it a worldwide phenomenon. The company became a testament to France’s entrepreneurial and creative spirit.

In a 1973 letter to shareholders, not long after the company had been listed on the Paris Stock Exchange, Bich explained his business philosophy: “These principles of management have been developed over the past 20 years since I founded the company and then managed it. They were not shaped by formal education in a French or American business school, but are the result of the tough school of business which I entered at the age of 18… The first principle is that development is based on risks. Potential gains increase in proportion to risks taken. The more you risk, the bigger your chances of winning…or losing.”

The 4-Color Marvel

In 1970, Bic introduced a new twist to its ballpoint pen empire: The 4-color pen. Red-Green-Blue-Black. I was born in 1968, and as an American attending school in the 70s and 80s, the Bic 4-color pen was a part of my school supplies from elementary to high school. The clicking clicking clicking to change colors offered a fun and convenient distraction.

Eventually, the Bic 4-color pen became one of those things that an American of my generation remembers as a nostalgic signpost of youth, a dated companion to things like the Trapper Keeper. While visiting the American Embassy in Paris a couple of years ago to renew our children’s passports, we were shocked, after years of banging our heads on the desk of dour French civil servants, to encounter a cheery, apple-cheeked, joke-making member of the U.S. diplomatic core handling our applications. After handing us some final forms to sign, he broke into a huge Mid-Western grin when he saw us pull out a Bic 4-Color Pen to sign some documents. “I remember those from when I was a kid!” he exclaimed and then chuckled.

In France, however, the great 4-color entrepreneurial wonder that Marcel Bich gave to his compatriots remains a centerpiece of daily life.

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An Educational Tool

My obsession with the Big 4-Color began right after we arrived in France.

One of our first tasks was to enroll our children in school. This took a fair bit of wrangling at the office that welcomes foreign students. After several visits, our son was placed in a middle school to begin an immersive French-language program alongside other kids who didn’t speak French, with the goal that they eventually move into mainstream classes.

A few days later, my wife and I arrived with our son at his new middle school (Collège Émile Zola) for a meeting with the teacher of the French program. Middle school here is called “collège”, which required us to never again refer to our own university education as “college.” Otherwise, confusion reigned. (“You met your wife in college? That’s amazing.” No, I would clarify, we did not meet when we were 10 years old.) In any case, as we entered Collège Émile Zola, we had no idea what the official point of this meeting was, a theme that would be a recurring part of our lives here. We just knew that we had been summoned.

On this day, we had a fairly awkward conversation with the teacher that occurred in a no man’s land between French and English. And then, to our surprise, she announced that our son would now go with her class. We were a bit taken aback by the abruptness of this, but even as the teacher stood up, she seemed to make a disturbing discovery of her own. “Where are his school supplies?” she asked with a hint of alarm.

My wife and I looked at each other and telepathically wondered, “School supplies?” Already racking up a large number of gaffs in just two weeks in France, we sheepishly said we did not have any. “Perhaps since it’s after 2 o’clock and it’s his first day, he could borrow some paper and a pen and come with supplies tomorrow?” we asked like naïve fools. “This is not possible,” the teacher explained. “He must have all his school supplies before he can enter class.”

She then handed us a double-sided piece of paper that contained some 150 items that every student should have. The buying of school supplies is an exercise that every American parent will recognize, pushing a shopping cart through the aisles of Target in search of No. 2 pencils and lined papers and erasers and glue and scissors. Even so, the French have taken the buying of school supplies to fetishistic extremes.

In just our former Toulouse neighborhood, there were about a dozen papeteries where an astonishing array of school supplies could be bought. The list is so detailed and precise that typically one just hands the list and a cart to an employee who proceeds to hunt down the supplies. Math requires a notebook 24 cm by 32 cm in size, with 96 pages of paper that have small squares on them. French, on the other hand, demanded a similar-sized notebook but 48 pages and large squares. Some classes require notebooks with hard covers, while others want transparent covers. Doing math with paper that has big squares is not possible. French education demands precision.

Armed with this list, my wife and I dashed down the street and into a supermarket, a sub-optimal choice given its limited selection of office and school products. But we figured it was our best shot at doing this in a reasonable amount of time. We stood in front of the school supply section trying to match the strange words on the list to the tags on the shelves. What is a “copie double”? (A larger sheet of paper folded in half to create four pages, with perforated edges, with a choice of big or small squares. We needed both kinds.) After a panicked few minutes of grabbing as much as we could, we rushed back to the school and handed the teacher an over-stuffed plastic bag of supplies, which seemed to satisfy her and grant our son access to the classroom.

As it turned out, the most critical tool we purchased that day was the Bic 4-Color pen.

Of all the school supplies, this was the ultimate key to unlocking the French educational system. Classes at this level were still taught in an extremely traditional manner. The teacher lectured nearly the whole period and wrote much of the information on the chalkboard. The students were then instructed to copy those notes using different colors according to their importance. The color red indicated which phrases must be memorized in their entirety because they would be on the exam. Other notes were to be written in various other colors corresponding to their relative importance. Students periodically handed in their notebooks to teachers who graded them on their orderliness and their adherence to various instructions for taking notes and gluing in worksheets.

Since those first few days, we have accumulated an astonishing number of these 4-color pens that fill a jar, and then some.

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A Pop Culture Phenomenon

During our August vacation, we were reminded of the 4-Color pen’s cultural sway in France while watching “Burger Kidz,” a sort of jokey game show. The host, holding the famous pen, posed the question: Do you know what purpose the little ball on top of the pen serves?

The answer was C: Someone could use it to turn the dial on old rotary phones. When I was chatting recently with Bic spokeswoman Astrid Canevet, she also explained that Bic later added a hole to the little ball because they are extremely popular with medical professionals and this allowed them to wear the pens on a chain around their neck.

Canevet confirmed my instinct about the pen’s enduring popularity in France. Bic produces 300,000 units a day at its factory in Marne-la-Vallée (just east of Paris) and France remains its number 1 market.

“It's a product that still exists in the US, but I don't think it's as present in the mind of consumers,” she said.

Bic controls the entire manufacturing process in France, including making all of the parts and the ink to ensure quality, she said. Production is incredibly precise. Making just the ballpoint takes nine days. The complex process includes molding the ball using diamond powder and putting it in an oven for 24 hours.

“It's the combination of the ballpoint, which is kind of floating but it has to move freely within that structure,” she said. “And then the ink has to have the right density and flow with the right speed to have consistent writing.”

Over the first several decades of the pen’s existence, Bic found ways to improve the materials, make it lighter and more durable, use less plastic, and increase the lifespan of the ink. They later made the ink cartridges replaceable because of course everyone was using up the blue ink first and throwing them away. It’s a winning combination of convenience and design for the French, but less so for Americans.

“The concept that we're using here to explain the product to consumers, to have four pens in one, that doesn't really seem to resonate that well with American consumers,” Canevet said. “Americans don't really see the advantage of switching colors without switching pens. They’re like, ‘We’ll just have four pens. What’s the big deal?’”

Meanwhile, the pen’s popularity continues to soar in France thanks to the decision in 2010 to introduce different designs to celebrate its 40th anniversary. These started with some fun pastel iterations and then continued to expand rapidly as consumers snapped up new versions.

The pen’s status as a pop culture icon has been reinforced by some high-profile collaborations with artists and designers in recent years. These include special editions designed by the artist Saâdane Afif, cartoonist Blaise Guinin making the pen the hero of a graphic novel called “Quatre Couleurs,”’ and the fashion label "Proêmes de Paris" featuring it on prints for its Summer 2016 collection.

For the true fans, jeweler Mathieu Tournaire partnered with the artist Richard Orlinski to create three limited-edition pens: gold-plated bronze, white palladium-plated bronze, and rose gold-plated bronze. Only 999 of each were created and sold for €390.

And, of course, there is a special edition for the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

“Bic is a very iconic brand here in France,” Canevet said. “It has a special place in the heart of the French consumers. There is a real sense of national pride.”

Chris O’Brien

Le Pecq

All the cool kids may be doing it. California. New Zealand. Heck, even Germany is preparing to legalize weed.

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Alas, French President Emmanuel has given this matter some thought and decided that it’s hip to be square. According to Macron, the biggest problem with weed in France is that…law enforcement is not collecting enough fines from this nation of potheads.

In an interview on Monday, Macron noted that only 35% of fines levied for cannabis are actually collected. So he has a plan: Create a system where scofflaws can pay their fines on the spot!

The government plans to distribute 5,000 remote payment terminals to the coppers. So if you get pinched carrying or smoking or whatever, you can just swipe a credit card and pay a fine that could range from €150 to €450.

"We can't deplore drug trafficking if we have users,” Macron said in an interview. “People who have the means to use drugs because they find it recreational, they have to understand that they nurture networks and that they have a de facto complicity."

In other words, pot is a gateway drug to all sorts of hedonism and rule-breaking and listening to rock-n-roll music and god only knows what else is the result of all this reefer madness!

This news is, like, a total bummer to many French. As The Local notes, the French have the highest cannabis consumption rate in Europe: “with an estimated 5 million annual users and 900,000 daily smokers. In 2016, 41 percent of French people aged 15 to 64 said that they had used the drug at least once – compared to the European average of 18.9 percent.”

That despite the fact that France has some of the harshest drug laws in Europe. Before he ran for president in 2017, Macron seemed to be open to the idea of legalization. He suggested legalization might be a way to reduce its link to associated criminal activity and should at least be considered. Also, enforcement often left police and the judicial system overwhelmed.

“Today, cannabis poses a problem in terms of security, the link with delinquency in difficult neighborhoods, and the financing of hidden networks,” Macron said in 2016.
”So it's clear that the legalization of cannabis has its advantages in this respect, and is effective in some way. From this point of view, the subject is open and should be considered.”

In 2021, the National Assembly agreed. After a wide-ranging consultation, lawmakers issued a report calling for legalization as a way to push traffickers out of the picture while improving the health of young people. It emphasized that the hard-line policy was wasting police money and resources while likely making the problem worse.

Meanwhile, in January, the mayor of Bègles, a commune in the Bordeaux region, was inspired by a report about “supervised legalization.” In a tweet, he proposed making his town "the first experimental territory for the cultivation, sale and supervised consumption of recreational cannabis." He has officially written to Macron asking for permission to launch this project.

But President Macron and many in his government are no longer down for such reforms.

Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne recently stated that legalizing MJ was not the “right path.” Adding: “The drug traffic in our country, despite the work of law enforcement, is a big subject of preoccupation.”

Earlier this month, the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM) banned the consumption and sale of hexahydrocannabinol (HHC), a molecule derived from cannabis. In a statement, ANSM officials wrote that HHC "presents a risk of abuse and dependence equivalent to that of cannabis." This left CBD shops across the nation scrambling to remove any products containing HHC from their shelves.

So for now, France will remain hostile legal territory for marijuana. Liberalization or legalization will have to wait for another day. Or president.

Update!

Wemby, the 19-year-old French basketball phenom, was drafted No. 1 by the San Antonio Spurs, a team that excels at drafting big men and French players. Of which Wemby is both.

In case you missed it the first time, I got to see Wemby play his final home game of the regular season. He is indeed impressive. But every time someone mentions his potential, there is always the caveat: If he stays healthy! He has spent a lifetime preparing for this moment, so hopefully he’ll be read for the NBA meat grinder.

Here was my story from that game and the press conference:

Chris O’Brien

Le Peq

Our introduction to the French economy and its traditions and peculiarities began even before we arrived in August 2014.

Not long after my wife had been accepted into a post-doctorate program in Toulouse, we flew there from our home in Oakland, California, for a week in July 2014 to search for an apartment and to begin running the French administrative gauntlet. Though we had a relocation agent to help us look for a place, my wife had spotted online a listing for a 4-bedroom apartment in the city center and so we passed by for a visit.

It was a lovely but antiquated apartment of about 200 square meters, making it about twice the size of our house in Oakland. The location was a dream, just 5 minutes by foot from the Marché des Carmes, one of the city’s main covered markets, and located in the Ozenne neighborhood that looked pretty much like it had been ordered straight out of some Hollywood director’s script about a quaint, old French town. Lined with the classic brick buildings that give Toulouse its nickname, “The Pink City” (La Ville Rose), the street passed a fountain with a statue of the goddess Diana and led to the medieval St. Etienne Cathedral whose bells would ring in our mornings for the years that followed.

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Most of this is interesting. Some of it is not. Most people in this tech world think they are going to change the world. Most will not. Every technology is promoted as a revolutionary game-changer disruptive machine thingy. Almost none are.

Almost. But of course, some technology and some entrepreneurs do change the world. It’s hard to know which ones fall into this category in the early days, no matter what anyone tells you. That’s what has kept it intriguing for me as a journalist.

I thought about all of this again while attending an event called Paris Blockchain Week. This isn’t a tech newsletter, so I’m not going to bore you with a blockchain explainer. But what I found interesting is that large sections of the exhibit space were dedicated to digital works of art.

Again, blockchain and its best-known application, cryptocurrency (Bitcoin!), have generated waves of optimism and skepticism. It’s all facing a pretty hefty backlash at the moment about whether there is really a there there, or whether it’s all just speculative nonsense.

But, there is a related element that brings us back to the subject of art. Another application for blockchain technology is something called a “non-fungible token,” or NFT. Basically, according to Wikipedia, “it’s a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify ownership and authenticity.”

What that means practically is this: Someone can now create a digital piece of content (an image, a film, music, anything), put it online, and the NFT that is attached will confirm that this single version is the “genuine” version as well as the identity of the person who made it or who “owns” it.

That, in turn, has unleashed a new wave of creativity around digital arts, in part out of sheer inspiration, but also because there is now a method for these artists/creators to protect their work from endless copying and to be compensated for it. People who know they are buying the single, “genuine” version of a work, are, of course, willing to pay more.

It was this explosion of digital creation that was being celebrated at the Blockchain conference. These digitally-generated images, some still, some moving, were shown on large screens that looked otherwise like frames hanging on the wall in a gallery.

As I viewed some of these works, I also found that they presented a fundamental and timeless challenge: Did I see these works as “art”? What does that mean? And does it even matter? Is it still art if it’s on a screen rather than a canvas? If it’s pixels rather than oil?

Indeed, what does “genuine” even mean? Or “own”, for that matter. I bought a poster of Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” to hang in my first-year dorm room. (Yeah, I was that guy.) When I saw the original in a museum several years later, was it that much more affecting because it was “genuine”?

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How Much Is That NFT In The Window?

These questions are at the very heart of a new exhibit that opened today at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, called: “NFT: The Poetics of the Immaterial
from Certification to Blockchain.” The exhibit runs through January 2024.

Of course, it seems appropriate that Paris would be at the center of a movement that challenges everything we think about art. In the first half of the 20th century, Paris was the mecca of avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Abstraction. Before that, in the 19th century, it was the Impressionists.

Different forms, but they shared the idea of breaking the norms, or rules such as they existed, and being heavily criticized at the time for not being real art. Only to be recognized eventually as revolutionary and today being celebrated as masterpieces.

So to the degree that digital art has its skeptics, that’s part of the game.

The museum says it is the “very first institution dedicated to modern and contemporary art to acquire a group of works dealing with the relations between blockchain and artistic creation, including its first NFTs.”

In a discussion published between Marcella Lista and Philippe Bettinelli, the museum’s curators of the video, audio, and new media collection, the pair try to get to the meaning of this brave new art world.

“Part of the success of NFTs can be explained by the fact that digital artists can now dispense with the traditional intermediaries of the art world, such as galleries and contemporary art fairs. They're in direct contact with their communities,” Bettinelli says.

“This community currently embodies some of the most stimulating artistic debates of the contemporary world,” Lista says. “The idea was not to be the first but to bring together a meaningful collection that could testify to the critical and creative appropriation of a new technology by artists, and how that disrupts and shifts the art ecosystem.

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These are tough times for much of France’s traditional wine and spirits industry. First, despite their global image as wine-guzzling maniacs, the French are actually drinking far less wine than they did once upon a time.

According to The Guardian: “A survey last November found the consumption of red wine had plunged by 32% in 10 years, mainly in the 18-35 age group. The poll found the decline’s main causes were people eating less red meat, fewer families dining together, and an increase in households with single parents who did not drink alone.”

As such, domestic sales are so bad that winegrowers are asking for extra financial support from the government while threatening to destroy parts of their fields as well as unsold stocks of some vintages to lower production, increase prices, and make room for new vintages. (Supply and demand, ftw!)

However, not all hope is lost. The French have belatedly gotten on board the artisanal spirits bandwagon. Across the country, independent distilleries are popping up making a range of gins, rums, vodkas, and whiskies that are surprisingly good.

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The internet can be a glorious wonderland of cat videos and Wikipedia and free shipping from Amazon. But the French government is also trying to remind its citizens that going online can be a voyage into humanity’s Digital Heart Of Darkness.

And so, the government has announced aggressive actions to protect its citizens from cyberspace’s most pernicious elements: Porn, Hackers, and perhaps worst of all, Influencers!

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The following is an excerpt from a book project about life in modern France. This week, I’m going to publish in 5 parts a chapter I had written about my encounters with Emmanuel Macron and his 2017 campaign for president. Most of this is based on stories I wrote for VentureBeat and the Los Angeles Times. Some of the writing has been recycled elsewhere, so you may recognize snippets. But with the first round of the French elections approaching this Sunday, it felt like a good time to look back at the last campaign that transformed Macron from an obscure figure to an unlikely president who continues to confound the French.

The second time I visited Paris came in December 2014 and only served to deepen my antipathy toward a city that every other human on the planet loved unconditionally. I had been invited to attend LeWeb, a tech conference that had been influential for many years but was now about to draw its last breath. Unfortunately, Paris in early December turned out to be an intolerable combination of freezing rain and early sunsets that created a sensation of perpetual darkness and frustrated mobs of people elbowing their way along the sidewalk.

The Metro offered no respite. Even after 8 years in France, there is nothing I have come to dread as much as descending into the byzantine bowels of this monstrosity. At least once on each trip to Paris from our home in Toulouse, I still got lost in the Metro, following endless sortie signs only to find myself exasperated, trying to escape a mall six stories underground. The footsteps the city has painted in some of the more tortuous Metro stations were often little help. It is such a labyrinth that I wouldn’t be the least surprised if one day I turned a corner and found a minotaur blocking my way. I might briefly weigh the benefits of a quick death by bestial clubbing versus the pain of turning madly in circles underground.

Admittedly, I also made a series of rookie errors when planning this trip. The conference was being held at Les Docks, a venue just north of the périphérique, the highway that encircles Paris like a sphincter. Everything outside this demarcation feels so different and distant from what one actually thinks of as Paris that it might as well be in London. Not knowing this, I booked an Airbnb to the north of Les Docks after carefully consulting Google Maps which led me to believe that it didn’t seem far from the venue. It was far. In the age of Google Maps and smartphones, it amazes me that I’m still able to so often misjudge geography by such a large margin. It turned out I was staying in the less-than-reputable town of Saint-Denis, outside of the City of Lights. When I met my host, I told him this was my first visit to Paris in many years. “Ah,” he said. “But here, you are not in Paris. You are in Saint-Denis.” The time I spent trudging through dodgy neighborhoods at night and in the early mornings would drive home this distinction in the coming days.

It would take a long time for me to come around to grudgingly acknowledging the occasional charms of this capital city. Each visit seemed designed to offer up some form of torture, typically in the form of ceaseless rain. Paris averages as many days of rain as Seattle but seems to suffer none of the latter’s grey reputation. Judging from Instagram, Paris is a perpetually sunny paradise populated exclusively by people eating pastries on a hotel terrace overlooking the Eiffel Tower. Certainly, none of this gloom ever seemed to make it into all those hagiographic films about Paris. In the Woody Allen film “Midnight in Paris,” Wilson Owen plays a frustrated writer bursting with love for Paris: “Can you picture how drop-dead gorgeous this city is in the rain?” I have longed nursed a grudge against Owen for this bit of dialogue and yearn to stumble across him one day in the middle of this capital city during a torrential downpour and punch him in the face. Paris has that effect on me.

Most of this trip, however, was dedicated to work and the conference. And to that end, it was successful. Silicon Valley didn’t think much of France, but I watched for years as entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and corporate chieftains debarked in early December to Paris for LeWeb. Those glory days were behind the conference the year I attended. But it was still meaningful enough that I was able to conduct some lively interviews on stage and connect with a number of people that week who would remain essential parts of my personal and professional life in the years to come. In terms of the conference’s content, it was interesting though largely devoid of any big news moments. With one notable exception.

The conference organizers had scored a minor coup by booking the country’s new Minister of the Economy, a young and energetic fellow named Emmanuel Macron.

Being just off the boat in France, I hadn’t really had time to begin following the country’s political scene yet. I knew the president was François Hollande of the Socialist Party who had defeated conservative incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy of Les Republicans in 2012. For all of Americans’ notions of France being a rabid hive of left-wing radicals, the country has tended to elect presidents from the conservative party. Hollande was the first Socialist Party candidate to win since François Mitterrand in the mid-90s. His vow to raise taxes on the rich, spend generously on social benefits, and put the banks in their place had temporarily galvanized just enough people on the left to win the election.

From what I could see from a distance, Hollande seemed like an amiable, bespectacled fellow. When my wife and I visited Toulouse in July 2014 to look for an apartment, Hollande was primarily making headlines for his love life, thanks to a tabloid catching him sneaking out of the presidential palace for a rendezvous with a beautiful actress. A scandal, as it seemed Hollande was cheating on the beautiful journalist he had been dating. Both seemed improbable to me because whenever I saw the bespectacled Hollande speak on TV, the word that most often came to mind was “doughy.” As it turned out, that word could also describe his politics.

Two years into his term, Hollande was suffering from the traditional gutter-scraping approval ratings that the French inflict on their presidents. Unemployment hadn’t budged. A sense of malaise still hung in the air. Hollande had announced earlier in 2014 that he was going to rethink his economic policies and tack toward the center, but he was still surrounded by Social Party cabinet members who took to squabbling about this course correction. So, Hollande reshuffled his cabinet, including naming Digital Minister and French Tech founder Fleur Pellerin to be Minister of Culture and Communications and picking Axelle Lemaire to replace here. In August 2014, Hollande selected Macron, 36, to be his new Economy Minister.

All most people at the time seemed to know about Macron was the shorthand by which the press used to summarize his life: “former investment banker.” In France, “investment banker” is a loaded phrase, saying all that needs to be said about a person and their values in the same way that one could whisper “Voldemort”, and everyone would know you were referencing evil incarnate. Macron had actually been in various government positions for about four years, before taking a gig at Rothschild & Co bank where he stayed for four years. About two years into that stint, he began advising Hollande on economic matters and then joined his government to play a similar role as deputy secretary-general of the Élysée and press the case for a more pro-business posture. A money-grubbing, pro-business, investment banker who spoke English but was in a Social Party government were just the beginning of the things that confounded people about Macron.

Now here he was on stage four months later at LeWeb, essentially his coming out party to the international tech world. Looking eager and wearing the red rooster pin that symbolizes La French Tech, Macron was being interviewed by Loïc Le Meur, a Frenchmen who had co-founded the conference with his wife, Geraldine. Like any good French entrepreneur, Le Meur had left France years ago for Silicon Valley where some investments had made him a tidy sum. Nobody badmouths France or the French quite like a French ex-pat, and Le Meur’s view of his homeland’s attitude toward business and entrepreneurs was dim at best.

To emphasize that point, Le Meur opened the interview by showing a quote from Macron’s predecessor, leftist economy minister Arnaud Montebourg. Poor Montebourg had achieved a special kind of notoriety in Silicon Valley circles for his role in blocking a deal for Yahoo (or, as it was officially called, Yahoo!) to acquire a controlling stake in DailyMotion, the YouTube of France, for $300 million. The deal involved buying DailyMotion shares from the partially state-owned France Telecom. Montebourg reportedly resisted the idea of an American poacher taking control of a “rare French Internet success story” and blocked DailyMotion’s executives from selling in April 2013. Whatever the actual details of the episode, it sent Silicon Valley into a French-bashing tizzy, appalled that anyone would possibly think that government should play a role in technology and innovation.

Later that year, appearing at LeWeb, Montebourg also faced off against Le Meur and two other French ex-pats to defend what he saw as a balanced approach to disruption, and a need to proceed with “caution” when an upstart could potentially overthrow an existing business.  Naturally, his words were bastardized by the good users of Twitter who decided that what he really said was: “We need to slow innovation to protect the old businesses.” It not being accurate was no defense in the age of social media, and particularly not when it feeds into the stereotype of France as a future-hating, protectionist island in a sea of globalization. By the time of Macron’s appearance, Le Meur had at the ready the fictionalized Montebourg quote which had passed into legend, emblematic of all that free-market-loving-government-fearing Silicon Valley knew was wrong about France and its regulatory zeal.

In response, Macron smiled at the plate of red meat he had just been handed. “To be clear about the French momentum, we are accelerating,” Macron said. “The key question for us is how to accelerate, and how to help create new businesses…My job is to be sure that in the coming years we create thousands of new businesses to replace the old ones…My job is to protect people and allow them to be innovative and take risks. France is a lot more innovative than people think. Even many French people.”

He made clear that it was not his role to tell executives how to run their businesses or stand in the way of exits that could eventually create more jobs and returns for those who had invested in the acquired startup. “Everywhere in this country, I see young people very happy but so willing to innovate, to create. The key is to help them,” he said. “We have to speak more highly of success. And I want to stop with the French bashing, it’s stupid.”

Beyond reforming laws, he wanted to celebrate successful entrepreneurs, put them on pedestals as models, and get government ministers and big CEOs to pay more attention to “start-uppers.” One could see Le Meur wanting to believe, but he was still caught short when Macron asked what it would take to get him to move back to France. “I love my country,” Le Meur said. “My passport is French. I am very proud of it. But I think there are a lot of things that need to change to make that happen…Apart from promises, I don’t really see things changing,” he said, no matter which government was running the country.

Curiously, after briefly noting that San Francisco still felt like the center of the tech world, Le Meur spent about as much time explaining the miserable side of life there. Taxes are still high. The cost of living is insane. “I won’t even get into the health care system,” he said. And then he lamented that with three boys, he was looking at a bill for college on average of about $65,000 per year for each kid: “It’s extremely high.” As a former Bay Area resident, I could have added run-away housing prices, woefully underfunded public schools, and an increasingly creaky public transportation system.

Undeterred, Macron went for the hard sell. “My purpose is to have these entrepreneurs, these people, to become the majority in this country. I don’t want to see them as a silent minority…They don’t want to be helped by the government; they want to succeed by themselves…We have to change the country now. We want to create a cultural revolution.”

As mission statements go, the message was unmistakable. Having spent 15 years in Silicon Valley, listening to this youthful minister talk about innovation and entrepreneurship seemed wholly unremarkable. But in hindsight, that’s what made the appearance so remarkable. And it turned out the country’s tech community and entrepreneurs were hearing this message and lapping it up.

By the time Macron was almost done, the spell was cast. Le Meur, smiling said, “I will help you, if you want me to help, I will be happy to help you. But for me as a French citizen, how I can help?”

Email me your ideas, Macron responded, giving out his personal email: emmanuelmacron3@gmail.com

Before he could get off stage, one audience member grabbed a microphone, insisting he wanted to hear Macron extol the virtues of succeeding and wealth. “I would like you to say, ‘Frenchmen, get rich.’”

Macron was happy to oblige: “Frenchmen, succeed and get rich.”

PS: Here’s me interviewing Naren Sham, founder of GoEuro, on stage at LeWeb. I had just bought my first pair of obligatory red EuroDude pants. Sham subsequently changed the name of the company to Omio and it’s now valued at $1.2 billion. I still have the pants. Photo courtesy of LeWeb.

Visitors to Paris can soak up the past. But now they can step into the future.

Digital entertainment company Ymagis has opened in Paris the first of what it expects to be a network of virtual reality adventure parks. Dubbed Illucity, the facility offers four different immersive experiences.: Hyper Reality Experience, VR Escape Game, VR Arcade, and VR Film.

HYPERREALITY EXPERIENCE
A team game in a 100m2 space that vibrates and has heat sensors. Games include After Humanity and TOYLAND: Crazy Monkey.

VR ESCAPE GAME
Several players work to solve a puzzle as part of unraveling a mysterious plot.
Games include Assassin’s Creed: Escape The Lost Pyramid, The Pirate’s Curse, Eclipse, and Incarna.

VR ARCADE
Using equipment like haptic gloves, a connected sword, or a steering wheel, players can choose from: The Raft, APE-X, KnightFall, Arizona Sunshine, Space Pirate Trainer, Cars 2, Beat Saber, Far Reach, and Space Flight.

VR FILM
Viewers plunge into a film by using a VR headset and sitting in a connected chair. They can watch: Construct, Asteroids, Invasion, Tara, or Out Of The Blue.

Ymagis has invested more than €1.5 million in Illucity, which is located in Paris' Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, at the entrance of the Parc de La Villette (19th arrondissement).