France

And so it comes to pass that perhaps Europe's most self-indulgent culture mimics New York and bans smoking in most public places and private businesses. The French smoking ban took effect today.

It's our world. The French only live in it.

The housing market slump in the U.S. has spread to Europe, according to this morning's Wall Street Journal. It's the same story over there as here: higher interest rates, tighter lending standards and wavering confidence.

France in the third quarter had its first quarterly home-price decline in almost a decade, and the Celtic Tiger, Ireland, saw home prices in August nearly 2 percent lower than the same month the year before. In Spain, the average home price has fallen since July.

The housing market slowdown could impact these countries' economies, much as it has in the United States.

The young blond Frenchman, dressed all in black down to his leather wristband, drinks champagne with  read more »

The young blond Frenchman, dressed all in black down to his leather wristband, drinks champagne with  read more »

Grégoire Bouillier is a writer from Paris, and on Monday, Oct.  read more »

The Frenchman was urgent.  read more »

It’s World Cup time, and soccer is coming of age in New York.

Sort of.  read more »

A friend invited me to row up the Hudson yesterday and I met Rob and his mates at Croton Point—very pretty, and dominated by a massive landfill now covered in grass, with a plant to burn off the methane.

A few miles brought us to Indian Point, the nuke plant.

With dogs, girls, and cameras, we looked like Greenpeace, and stayed well outside the 300-yard perimeter so the chase boats wouldn't go after us. It's hard to be antinuke these days. Not when France gets 80 percent of its electricity that way. Still, the problem is the waste. How are we to live with the stuff?

We made a campground off Fishkill Creek by 5. Rob pointed out how campers had despoiled a nearby trench by making it a sewage facility, then proselytized me on the need to preserve the Hudson by carrying one's waste out of the woods.

The latest method is to lay out a newspaper, perform/accomplish etc., wrap it up into a "burrito," pack that in a ziplock bag, then drop the burrito in the toilet when you get home. Don't flush till the newspaper starts coming apart. Easy as pie. Kayakers figured it out, Rob says. I wish they would get on the nuke plant problem.  read more »

Hard on the heels of Memling’s Portraits, surely one of the finest exhibitions in the city wit  read more »

Hard on the heels of Memling’s Portraits, surely one of the finest exhibitions in the city within  read more »

Richard Loncraine’s Firewall, from a screenplay by Joe Forte, has raised the provocative quest  read more »

Richard Loncraine’s Firewall, from a screenplay by Joe Forte, has raised the provocative question  read more »

The editorial staff of the alternative weekly New York Press walked out today, en masse, after the paper's publishers backed down from printing the Danish cartoons that have become the center of a global free-speech fight.

Editor-in-Chief Harry Siegel emails, on behalf of the editorial staff:

New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization. Having been ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons from an issue dedicated to them, the editorial group—consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editorJonathan Leaf and one-man city hall bureau Azi Paybarah, chose instead to resign our positions.

We have no desire to be free speech martyrs, but it would have been nakedly hypocritical to avoid the same cartoons we'd criticized others for not running, cartoons that however absurdly have inspired arson, kidnapping and murder and forced cartoonists in at least two continents to go into hiding. Editors have already been forced to leave papers in Jordan and France for having run these cartoons. We have no illusions about the power of the Press (NY Press, we mean), but even on the far margins of the world-historical stage, we are not willing to side with the enemies of the values we hold dear, a free press not least among them.

This was not an easy decision. I've been reading the Press since 1988 and have dreamed of running it for nearly as long. The paper's editorial staff has worked impossibly hard hours and has come quite a ways in only a few months towards restoring the paper's tarnished editorial reputation and credibility. I'm proud of the work we've done, and wish we'd had time to finish the job. I wish the Press all the best, and hope that under new ownership and leadership it can again be an invaluable read for all good Gothamites.

The Disoriented Democrats  read more »

The Disoriented Democrats  read more »

The Disoriented Democrats    read more »

Americans should not take unseemly unsatisfaction from the spectacle of France’s riots.  read more »

Americans should not take unseemly unsatisfaction from the spectacle of France’s riots.  read more »

Politicians have, by now, all figured out Google Ads. The traditional thing, as Mike has done, is to purchase the ad next to your name and your opponents name.

But over in France, the ambitious interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy has taken this to a near, er, level in response to the riots that have spread across the country.  read more »

Parisist follows some French blogs in noting: Try "Voitures brûlées" (Burned cars), "Racaille" (slang for youngsters from the suburbs) or "emeutes" (riots) in google and you will be confronted with a single ad: "Riots in the Suburbs: Help Nicolas Sarkozy Fight Crime" followed by a link to Sarkozy's political group. And there will be a special prize for whoever finds a rough translation of chutzpah into French.

On Wednesday evening, Sept.  read more »

It’s odd now to recall a time when the word “decorative,” as applied to the paintings of Matis  read more »

It’s odd now to recall a time when the word “decorative,” as applied to the painti  read more »

The French painter Jean Hélion (1904-1987), whose work is the focus of a compelling exhibition at t  read more »

Now last we'd checked, Leo was playing a crucial and high-profile role in Freddy's campaign as his top national fundraiser.

Now this, from Bloomberg News, of all places:

Leo Hindery, Wall Street Racer, Captures Le Mans Flag

June 20 (Bloomberg) -- Leo Hindery Jr., who left his job as chief executive officer of Yankees Entertainment & Sports Network in April 2004 to pursue his racing hobby, won the GT2 category at France's Le Mans 24-hour race yesterday.

Hindery, 57, was at the wheel of the Alex Job team's Porsche 911 GT3 RSR when the BAM!-sponsored outfit from Tavares, Florida, edged defending champion White Lightning Racing by a single lap at the racetrack in northwestern France.

"This means everything,'' Hindery said in an e-mail just after completing his four-year quest to capture the top prize.  read more »

At a May lunch at his usual table at New York's Four Seasons restaurant, Hindery promised that this year would be his last attempt to win the world's premier sports car endurance test. ``Four Le Mans outings and I'm still walking,'' he laughed. "The bones are starting to hurt, just a little bit.'' The restaurant is one of the sponsors of the three-man Alex Job team.

Make sure you read to the end of the story, where you can learn about Hindery's next challenge. Read the whole thing. Really.

On a recent afternoon, the French celebrity philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy strolled around Manhatta  read more »

Some artists are destined to endure the hazards of "interesting times," and Max Ernst (1891-1976) wa  read more »

"Get comfortable talking about your faith," Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, the only Democrat in t  read more »

Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America’s Disastrous Relationship with France, by John J.  read more »

Ramping It Up WithWild Farmhouse Cuisine  read more »

William Scott (1913-1989), whose paintings are the subject of an immensely appealing exhibition at D  read more »

Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Bon Voyage , from a screenplay by Mr.  read more »

David Burke Knows HowTo Play With His Food  read more »

Black Diamond or Fungus?Soho's Ode to the Truffle"What exactly is a truffle?" asked my teenage son d  read more »

In what could be seen as a gesture of poignant irony, Jean-Jacques Rachou, the longtime chef and own  read more »

James Ivory's Le Divorce , produced by Ishmail Merchant and Michael Schiffer and adapted by Ruth Pra  read more »

Once more unto the breach, my friends-and this is some breach.  read more »

There's a special purgatory reserved for those who would be New York's master builders.  read more »

During the Terror War, Jew-hating floated to the surface like a dead fish.  read more »

For weeks now, the concerned e-mails have been rolling in, between the penis-enlargement spams and t  read more »

In the Flatiron District, A DoseOf Peace and Tranquillity  read more »

Not quite one year ago, I spent a pleasant evening at the Pierre Hotel tasting the world's best bott  read more »

Making the Case,And Taking Heed  read more »

Attention, Francophiles-and anyone with a more than casual interest in the art, culture and politics  read more »

Jill Clayburgh was a big feminist actress in the late 1970's and early 80's, but then she got marrie  read more »

"When you're named at the head of a business, small or large, you know you're expendable ad nutum -m  read more »

The Sexual Life of Catherine M. , by Catherine Millet.  read more »

Art Lover: A Biography of Peggy Guggenheim , by Anton Gill.  read more »

"The lesser of two evils" is suddenly a cliché with deep meaning for the voters (and non-voters) of  read more »

Three things to take away from Vivendi Universal's March 5 press conference: The company posted a hu  read more »

Nanni Moretti's The Son's Room ( La Stanza del Figlio ) takes up the subject of a son's death, treat  read more »