Postcards from Paris: {The Piano Man Crêperie}

There is a red façade crêperie on one of the cobblestone hillsides at the top of Montmartre, and a piano man who plays nightly. I don't know how often this can be expected, but last night he was accompanied by a singer dressed in all black; a man with quintessential French features, a pointed nose and eyes that smile. He sang songs by Edith Piaf and Charles Azanour, and took breaks sitting in a red velvet booth, sipping on Belgian beer. Covering the walls and ceiling are scraps of paper. There are hundreds of passport photographs, metro ticket stubs, loose-hand sketches and scribbled pleas on recipts like, "I don't ever want to leave Paris." and "Je ne veux pas travailler demain." There is a buried layer of scraps that have been stained by cigarette smoke, most likel from the era when smoking was still legal indoors. I noticed one particular brown-yellow stained receipt that read: Pastis, Pastis, Pastis, Chocolat Chaud, and I wondered who the people were, what kind of evening they were having, which one was the person who decided to be different by ordering a drink of chocolate. Or could it had just been one man who had a sweeth-tooth after his Pastis. Stories can be conjured up with each single scrap. The varying seasons, occasions, people from all over. So many potential stories, a single night wouldn't be enough to imagine all of the possibilities. The personalized wallpaper from the varying patrons felt like the main attraction, with food as a second thought and the music merely to entertain the search.
We did eat our crepes, traditional ones, nothing fancy or daring by any means. We had the piano man for that. Our contribution was a few quick doodles done by in black ink on torn out moleskin pages. It was enjoyable and simple on the slopes of Montmartre.
Bisous,
Reba