Stories du Moment
Smoking bans, a river revived, road etiquette, femtech $$ & quick links
I’m back from one of the most meaningful and inspiring weeks I’ve had since I cut myself off from internet and cell service in 2018 and spent every day observing wildlife in Botswana. This time, and much closer to home, it was a stay in the Luberon with La Gonette to engage in deep reading and discuss writing with brilliant minds including
, Alice Nelson, Stephanie Bishop, and the Pulitzer-winner Michael Cunningham, who led our literary sessions each morning. But beyond that, it was a profound bonding experience with a group I haven’t stopped thinking about since I’ve returned. It also, notably, brought me back in touch with my focus. Shall we call it a homecoming?Everything about the week, from the short stories we pored over to the conversations we had around the lunch and dinner tables, reaffirmed the urgent need for artists and deep thinkers in turbulent and uncertain times. We will always find reason to delay the work or question the utility of our crafts but as C.S. Lewis believed (as explored in this essay by
), we “must never give into the temptation to consider our work as trivial or worthless in comparison, or worse still to put off our work in expectation of more favourable conditions in the future.” The conditions will never be favorable, for one, and the creative and intellectual output is almost a moral responsibility when the future is so fragile.Anyway, despite having the ideal conditions to fully disconnect, I wasn’t entirely cut off from newsy stories circulating during my time down south (I think I’d need a second week to retrain my brain). Here are some of the topics that caught my attention.
FRANCE EXTENDS ANTI-SMOKING POLICY (BUT EXCLUDES CAFE TERRACES)
To every American who has bemoaned the cigarette smoke in Paris (and may not remember how much worse it was before the city banned it in public buildings in 2007), fret not: it may become less of a bother. Beginning July 1, smoking will be verboten in most public spaces throughout the country, including beaches, parks, bus stops, sports venues, and outside of schools. It does not apply to e-cigarettes nor, most notably, café terraces—much to the dismay of the anti-smoking brigade (👋).
"We're concentrating on places where there are a lot of children. We're not here to give lessons in morality, but to do prevention," said Health Minister Catherine Vautrin in an interview with Ouest-France. And yet, there is public support for a broader ban. In a recent opinion survey, six out of ten French people are in favor of kicking the habit to the curb— literally.
Critics of the idea to extend the ban cite an infringement on personal liberties which I can’t help but find amusing given the wide-ranging harms of secondhand smoke. “What's the next step, only one beer allowed?” asked Franck Delvau, President of the Ile-de-France branch of the Union des métiers et des industries de l'hôtellerie (Umih), in an interview with Le Parisien, denouncing “a world of prohibition”. I have to put on my American hat on this one and give one big eye roll.
A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT: REBIRTH OF LA BIEVRE
In my podcast conversation with Messy Nessy’s Vanessa Grall (see below), she shared the backstory of the street her boutique sits on: rue de Bièvre. (Read more here.)
A tributary of the Seine, beginning at Guyancourt in the Yvelines and flowing into Paris near the Gare d'Austerlitz, it was covered over 90 years ago. Today, it’s one major stretch of the Paris sewage system. A first hundred-meter section is due to see the light of day again in the Parc Kellermann, 13ème arrondissement, by 2028.
TIME TO TACKLE ROAD RAGE?
The discourse from anti-car activists in the 70s was « La bagnole, ça pue, ça pollue et ça rend con »— it smells, it pollutes, and it makes you stupid. Today, the perspective, according to Thibaut Chardey of Lyon’s La Ville à Vélo, is there are just as many idiots on bikes as there are behind the wheel of a car. Aggression and disregard for rules has been noticeable in the last few years. I bought a used bike during the pandemic when city streets were mostly empty and largely free from the usual crush of tourists. It felt liberating to zigzag across the city, the less-polluted air whipping across my face. I was cautious—I always wore a helmet—but not afraid.
The return to normalcy was actually something altogether new for the city— significantly more bike lanes, a surge in bike parking stations, and a massive surge in bad behavior. Cyclists who run red lights, spar with drivers, ride in the wrong direction, or talk on the phone as they pedal. Then there are drivers who behave, wilfully or negligently, as if the bike lines and the cyclists using them are invisible barriers to their navigation. I have friends who have been hit by drivers who turn or enter traffic before checking for oncoming cyclists. There have been fatal accidents and deliberate collisions between drivers and cyclists, and that’s saying nothing of the tourists who hop on a Lime bike without even knowing the basic rules of the road, here (la priorité à droite, for one).
All that to say, it’s been a year since I’ve gotten on my bike. I’d like that to change! Like everyone, I’d feel a lot more confident if the rules were actually enforced. According to Le Monde, the risk of a cyclist being killed in a road accident is three times greater than that of a pedestrian, four times greater than that of a car driver and seven times less than that of a motorized two-wheeler rider. Still, enforcement alone may not be the only change needed to make the city safer:
The pacification of our streets comes up against the perception of mobility as a "latent class struggle,"says Emmanuel Barbe, the Inspector General tasked by the Minister of Transport with proposing measures to ease tensions on the road. "Identifying each user with his or her means of locomotion" particularly affects cyclists, seen as privileged inner-city bobos, some of whom behave as if the use of an ecologically virtuous mode of transport gives them every right. The rise in conflicts between road users reflects both the exacerbation of social and geographical divisions, and tensions surrounding measures to combat climate change. As such, it is an important political phenomenon. (Le Monde)
A LA TÉLÉ
I went back on France24 to talk about The Eater Guide to Paris! Have to love SEO headlines. Watch the clip below:
ADULT LEARNING IN PARIS
I didn’t realize how much I missed a classroom until I discovered Off Campus in late March and attended a class on Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey in early May. There are no exams, wine is available, and the seats are plush. I spoke to the co-founder Siham Jabril in the newest episode of The New Paris Podcast about the project and why it’s resonating.
OTHER READS & NEWS
An enduring dilemma for travel (and, I’d argue, food & culture) writers: share or gatekeep? Pico Iyer explores the question. (New York Times)
At Vivatech 2025 last week, it was announced that the Ile-de-France region would roll out a FemTech fund, beginning with $5M for ten women’s health projects that combine AI, biotechnologies and medical devices around four key issues: endometriosis, fertility, menopause and female cardiology. Venture capital in digital health devotes barely 5% to FemTech, even though the market is expected to triple to $29 billion by 2032. (Les Echos)
You know that person who jumps to their feet to disembark the second the plane touches the ground or the train slows to a stop in a station, immediately clogging the aisles? Le Monde has coined a term for these individuals afflicted with an inexplicable sense of urgency to go nowhere: l’optidébarqueur.
The line is blurring between remote workers/digital nomads and tourists. How can cities turn them into integrated, permanent residents? This is an issue I’ve followed with great interest, particularly after seeing cities such as Barcelona and Lisbon become overrun and its residents economically strained by digital nomads. (Bloomberg)
In my last newsletter, I mentioned that the French are the second biggest consumers of pizza in the world after Americans. Then, in reading the latest investigation from
for The New Yorker, I learned that French are the world’s largest consumers of Nutella, and more of it is produced in Ferrero’s factories near Rouen than anywhere else. Wild! Read on to learn how a different hazelnut spread has become a political sticking point in Franco-Algerian relations.What did Sarah Andelman keep as mementos after closing Colette? My friend Amy peeked into her basement storage. (Family Style)
Leave Paris in the morning, arrive in one of these five spots by lunch. I shared a few escapes for Bloomberg. (That’s a gift link!)
And a bonus:
“For as long as Paris has existed, a group of people known by many names—derelicts; lollygaggers; scammers; bums—have sought to pass time there at no cost to themselves. Once, some 2,000 years ago, so many such personages (then known as barbarians) came to Paris simultaneously that the city was destroyed. Today, their descendants are politely called writers.” — Caity Weaver’s debut as a new staff writer at The Atlantic is a riotous one. She documents her trip to Paris following in the footsteps of Mark Twain for his 1869 travel book, The Innocents Abroad.
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What a disappointment that they excepted cafe terraces! I was so looking forward to finally being able to sit outside at a Parisian cafe.
l’optidébarqueur - amazing 😂