PARIS 1976-1980: WHEN LIBERTY RAN RAMPANT

If you have visited Paris, dreamed of Paris, and been enthralled by more than the grandeur of its history and architecture, streets and bridges, museums and galleries, restaurants and cafes, its glorious facade, you know that is not everything. Beneath the façade there are real experiences. Some good and some not so good. And, as its art, literature and music attests, a great city only comes alive in the human experiences it elicits. Paris conversations is an excavation of such experiences. A cultural archaeology.

The Dishwasher Dialogues is an ‘experiential dig’ into the Paris of the nineteen seventies. In a series of lively exchanges between two young expat artist/writer-dishwashers, it reveals a city at the end of an era. When the trains had wooden doors, and the streets had public toilets. There were no computers, credit cards or copying machines. Most apartments had no phones, heating, or indoor toilets.

Each week a new ‘dishwasher dialogue’ will recount their extraordinary experience, and the events that emerged from the legendary soul food restaurant Chez Haynes hidden away on the edge of the red-light district of Paris. Like many young expats of the day, the restaurant staff were dreamers, writers, painters, actors, dancers and photographers. The clientele was a mix of American and French célèbre - James Baldwin, Memphis slim, Paloma Picasso, Johnny Halliday. We all survived and thrived thanks to the legendary African American Leroy Haynes, who knew everybody from the mayor to the call girls deluxe.

It was an intoxicating time. There were the big spenders in sable coats and Ferragamo shoes, the daily scolding from waiters in bistros and shopkeepers, and the clochards dying of the cold at the closed metro gates. But freedom beckoned everywhere. The cops left you alone, the authorities looked the other way, and the metro (plus a cheap carte orange) took you to every nook and cranny of the city. There may not have been much equality or fraternity, but liberty ran rampant. And so did we.

Every week we offer a new dialogue in the series. Plus, additional material in response to reasonable comments, questions or ideas it evokes.

Welcome. Join the dig.