Letter from Paris
I've always loved our sports department, but especially now, as in my hour of need tennis writer Charles Bricker, in Paris early for the French Open, has sent his impressions on being back in the City of Light for the first time in a year:
"It was the sign I thought I'd never see in Paris.
Of course I knew before I arrived here Sunday afternoon that smoking was no longer permitted inside French restaurants, but it was still a bit startling to glance to my right and see the distinctive and universally understandable sign on a pillar.
Defense de Fumer! And there was a lit cigaret with a red line through it, connecting to points of a red circle. What was even better was my waiter, who a few seconds later leaned over the table next to mine and told a young American teenager, "No cellphones, please."
I don't want to hear anything more about the lack of civility in Paris. It's a sham, the big lie that has been too long perpetuated. It's very simple. Act like a boor in someone else's country, get treated like a boor.
This is my 14th trip to Paris, almost all of them combined with a work assignment to cover the French Open, which begins the final Sunday in May. But I always come early to spend time in France and decided this year to take a week in Paris before training to Antibes for a week and then taking a few days to hike in the Pyrenees before reporting to work. My philosophy? Damn the exchange rate. Repeat the good stuff and add something new every year, and I expect the Pyrenees to be a fine new experience.
I'm using a book called Paris Walks this week, which is written by a travel writer for the London Telegraph and, while it could use some refining, I'm seeing things I've never seen before. Spent Monday doing "Secret Gardens and Great Mansions," kicking off from the intersections of rue de Sevres and rue de Babylone, which is where you'll find Au Bon Marche', which easily outscores Harrad's food section for quality. The walk took five hours and a couple of foot massages, but there was the wonderful hour spent sunning, munching and reading in the little known Jardin de Catherine Laboure.
Tuesday it was up to Montmartre, but this time rather than just roaming, using the book. Began at Abbesses, took the funicular up to the Sacre Coeur, then left the turistas in the dust by circling around the back of this great church to the Montmartre neighborhoods. Three hours in Montmartre and another two at my go-to, largely unpublicized park -- parc de Butte Chaumont, just east of Montmartre.
Broke up the afternoon with a stop at a favorite small bar/restaurant, where I had a glass of bordeaux and a plate of cholesterol for 10 Euros. I won't eat cheese again until I've had five Lipitors. Seven years ago, 10 Euros was about $8.50. It's now about $15 and, even when you're damning the torpedos and the exchange rate, you think about it. Because there are so many small hotels in this city, because the Metro is so inexpensive and because you can spend as little or as much as you like to dine, I'd never considered Paris an expensive city. The exchange rate has altered that. But. . .
It's still Paris, The parks and the sidewalks are free, the weather is in the 80s and where else would you rather be?"
Comments
Thanks for making me homesick! :-). Glad to read something positive about Paris for once!
Posted by: Leonie | May 7, 2008 11:02 PM
gotta love a man who loves paris!!
Posted by: kim | May 11, 2008 9:59 AM
Weather in the 80's??? It was stiull in the 40's two weeks ago. Have you tried the "Velib"s by any chance? Another great way to see Paris on the cheap!
Posted by: Jean-Pierre | May 11, 2008 10:39 PM
Re: the TOTM last month. I contemplated telling David then, but then decided not to because (a) I didn’t want to cause a stir, especially right before DT, and (b) I figured it wasn’t my place to tell. Margaret also told me that David and a couple of others asked her about it in Ve, and that she just said that changes were coming. She’s really not being coy… she’s just being discrete about some potential wrong-doings by members. That’s usually her way, and it’s one of the things I like about her. So, please keep these details between us.
I try to keep an eye on the site as best I can to detect chicanery and nip it in the bud if possible. You’d be surprised… even headed off a couple of attempts to hack into the site in the past few months. As I watch, every now and then, especially toward the end of a TOTM polling period, I notice a pattern in logins, IP addresses, and new registrations that signifies potential trouble. You might call it voting fraud. Or you might call it plain ol’ cheating. It mainly involves TOTM entrants or their friends registering additional accounts, then using them to vote again for a certain entry. When I see it, I let the owners know and they can decide how to handle it. It’s usually small and doesn’t affect the end result, and it’s handled quietly, with no resulting uproar. But on one occasion some months ago, the same sort of activity became blatant, threatening to change the end result. Well, we can’t have cheaters winning, now can we? You may recall that Gary closed a TOTM poll early, stating only that there were some “irregularities” in voting (the true winner won BTW). Last month, the same blatant pattern emerged again. I let the owners know. We watched. After a few days, they sent a PM to the member who was “tied” with David, gently reminding her of the TOTM rules (OK… you know I wrote it, but Margaret sent it). She replied to the PM with what was actually a plausible explanation. Still, there was no way to know if she was being honest or just came up with a good story… I have only data to look at. For my part, I’d like to think she was telling the truth. But no matter… the owners (me too FWIW) felt that regardless of the explanation—true or not—the types of votes we were seeing were not in the spirit of the TOTM. The extra votes stopped. David won, as he legitimately should have.
The last time this happened, we started a discussion about what we might be able to do to prevent this sort of thing in the future. Well, we never really did anything about it back then. But this incident pointed to a greater need to do something, so we sort of picked that discussion up where it had left off. As usual, I had one or two suggestions (you know, I’m never shy about offering opinions and suggestions, especially when asked). Ironically, Margaret and Gary had already tried to implement one goal, even before this happened. They did it last month, before voting began. We wanted to do something to help the voting be more about the cars and photos, and less about the person who entered any given photo (i.e., vote for the photo, not the person). You may have noticed last month that the photo submission thread disappeared before voting began, and didn’t come back until after the poll closed. Margret did that. I pointed out that even so, people who were paying attention would see who submitted each photo while submissions were taking place. Hence, the “email the photo” procedure was born this month. But there’s more to it of course.
The whole strategy pretty much boils down to two things:
(1) A desire to see people vote for the photo that they truly like the best, regardless of who submitted it, and regardless of where it stands in the results so far.
(2) Finding ways to discourage people from registering fake accounts in order to stuff the ballot box.
Anonymous entries and hiding the results until after the poll closes (hard to do, by the way) should help with #1. Hiding the results may also help with #2… i.e., if you don’t know where you stand, or whether you’re even in close running for a win, then there’s less reason to stuff the box. Of course, some people might do it anyway, “just to be sure.” So… more to come… My next goal is to figure out an automated way to prevent accounts (old or new) from voting in polls until they’ve reached certain criteria (e.g., X number of posts and Y days of membership). That will hopefully put a big damper on the fake accounts… at least for the purpose of cheating in TOTM polls.
So, there you have it… another long-winded email from me.
Cheers,
Kevin
Posted by: Kevin | October 14, 2008 12:00 AM