The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 71

nam, BROOKLYN EAGLE MAGAZINE, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1929. ID The ARIS IFE IGHT Two Classes of Apaches, Young Traveler Discovers; Comic Opera Variety to Qive Tourists a Thrill and Real Tough Quy By Mathilde Kingsley THE difference between London and Paris is that in London the poor tourist can sleep. He may walk his legs off all day from London Tower to Westminster Abbey, but when night comes he is ready to curl up under his little blanket and go to rest. Not so in France's capital. True, he may walk as far, from MoEtparnasse to Montmartre; he may see as much from the Eiffel Tower to the Sacre Coeur, but when he is done walking and seeing there is still dinner to be eaten (two hours), a liqueur to be drunk (half an hour) and countless "joints," making up the so-called night life of Paris, that must be visited.

It's a hard life. Our first search after darkness has set In is for apaches. After an evening spent In this pursuit we are ready to say snootily to the. first person who mentions apaches in our presence: "My dear, have you ever been to Paris? Of course, there are no apaches like they have in the movies except in places fixed up particularly for tourists. And we wouldn't go to any of those on a bet." As a matter of fact, there are only two classes of apaches In Paris, if various informers have not deceived lis.

One is the comic opera apache, who is paid royally to give American thrill seekers what they think an apache thrill should be, and the other is the real honest-to-god tough whose dive it is not safe to enter without the escort of a plain-clothes man from the Prefecture nf Pnlire. But there are lust as real, if not such pic- Our exploration of further night life in Paris is likely to be curtailed by our fondness for this place. One night, of course, we must go to the Foliea Bergere. Fortunately, theater tickets are not as costly here as in New York, though top prices are about the same. But for about seventy cents (and.

these are not the cheapest seats) we get seats corresponding to first balcony in a New York theater. In both theaters and the opera here there are no seats from which nothing can be seen. If one has good eyes and ears, even the cheapest seats are wholly satisfactory. The Folies is the most lavish production we hare ever seen, Ziegfeld and Shubert to the contrary notwithstanding. There is more dancing than we expected and less to bother us by our inability to understand what is being said on the stage.

The opera, also, is not inaccessible to les pauvres. The worst seats, not anywhere nearly as bad as the top of the Metropolitan, are sixteen cents or a little over. We pay sixty cents and find ourselves in a minor diamond horseshoe, or so it seems by comparison. But in all French theaters, as In the English, the printed program must be paid for and the usher tipped. Nor Is this tipping process voluntary.

If the usher does not get her franc for showing you to your seat she does not hesitate to tell you about it. She hasn't enough to eat and her children are unclothed. If you express incredulity and only give her fifty centimes you are glad afterward that you do not understand French, so vindictive are the recriminations she hurls at you so that every one in the surrounding stalls may hear. When, however, you realize that she probably gets no salary at all and depends wholly for her living on her pourboires, you do not grudge her this four-cent tip. And when they are well tipped, ushers, waiters and cab drivers can make you feel like the King of T.r,.;TTni.

Our main pastime in the evenings until it is late enough to go somewhere else is eating. Eating is not a physiological function here but a social ceremony. Waiters are in no hurry. If you are, you are out of luck. Food is marvelous and wine may be had for as low as ten cents a bottle.

If one eats at a little table along the street he is expected to have the table for the' rest of the night if he wants it. When we want to splurge we go to the Rotisserie de la Retoe Pedauque, where for a dollar and a half we can get the meal of our lifetime. Hors d'oeuvres: potato salad, tomato salad, green-pea salad, cucumber salad, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, anchovies, roe, cold tongue, salami, pate, Spanish rice, olives and stuffed peppers. Chicken, cooked with cabbage and little sausages. A carafe of white wine.

Ice cream stuffed with citrons and cherries and covered with whipped cream. If we weren't doing so much running around we'd gain in weight. The rest of the time we spend walking along the boulevards watchins the Parisians n.ike love. It's great sport. tnrpsnnp.

nmr.hes to be found in various cafes in the Montmartre. At La Boule Noire we found a real apache orchestra, the piece de resistance of which is always the accordion. Here the power of music is measured Dy its velocity, the rhythms running to the two extremes of 'speed. Either the fox trot is so slow that it is almost osculation. In the cafes, on the street corners, or while walking along the sidewalk the French man or woman thinks nothing of stopping to kiss his or her companion.

And after watching for a while we begin to think nothing of it ourselves. This is bad. If there is anything we hate it is Americans who have lived in Paris a month or over and have "gone' Parisian." They are not. to be seen so much in the Montmartre but they swarm through the Montpamasse, or Latin Quarter.with their mustaches and canes and berets like so many trained monkeys. Here is the Dome and the Rotonde, two centers of cafe life on Montparnasse.

At these cafes, where, as in all such places, one may sit for two or three hours over one five-franc drink, the whole life of the Latin Quarter centers. Have you an acquaintance who came to Paris five years ago to study painting or sculpturing and you have no idea where he is to be found? Go to the Dome. will be along in a little while. But these people somehow are not as real as the lower-class to be found in the Montmartre. They express affectation in almost every degree, from Christlike beards to nose rings.

It is hard to think of them as having any importance in any civilization. Our favorite cafe in Paris not rightly called a cafe either, since the small drink one buys is the least of the attractions is Les Caveaux des Oubliettes Rouges. Here was discovered not so long ago, underneath the Church cf St. Julian le Pauvre, an ancient oubliette, the tiny stone cells still containing the bones of the unfortunates incarcerated and forgotten there. The smaller of the cells and passageways have been preserved as show places, the largest part of the dungeon has been fitted with tables, a small platform and an old clavichord.

Here, where perhaps fifty people can get in the room at one sitting, the waiters and proprietors, dressed in medieval costume, sing old songs of early France and the customers Join heartily in the chorus, accompanied by a guitar, the clavichord and other old instruments. Impossible to keep one's balance and keep moving, or else the waltzes make one dizzy with their fifteen-mile- an-hour whirls. Here, as everywhere else, American jazz has taken the place of the native woodnotes wild, and, as a special favor to us, whom he spots to be Amesicans, i.t, of fho nrr-hpstra aims in his best Enzlish "I w- 3 ran' v( vmi annvsinz but lov, bebe." Outside of ourselves, however, there are no Amer-ans in the place, though every French shoe clerk and 'his girl and truck driver and his girl and waiter and 'his girl must be present So, though no one tried to 'stab us and though flirtations from passing dancers are 'most innocuous, we feel as though we are seeing a really 'representative Parisian "joint." After midnight Montmartre Is teeming wun me. The small, narrow streets are crowded with not so much pleasure seekers as merely strollers. Arm in arm the 'men and women walk about and walk about or sit at 'little tables outside of cafes and sip one drink endlessly.

1 Alter two nighis La Paris one is used to seeing public.