We were young and we would sit all night milking a glass of cheap red wine, chain-smoking Gauloises or rolling our own cigarettes with cheap tobacco and talk about how our generation of hippies and free love would revolutionize the world. “Look at the mess the older generations had made of the world,” we said; and we vowed that we wouldn’t make the same mistakes; ….that our generation would be different.

As I said, things change, yet they remain the same. Le Who’s Bar is still the one with music, still the place that is just a little more expensive, but a place to go when you want to dance, or when other places are closing.

Polly Maggoo on the other hand was always packed, everyone knew everyone and you could always squeeze one or two more people inside on cold winter evenings, or take up residence on the sidewalk in the summer.

No longer in the same location, no longer the ambiance of baba cool when legendary rock stars would stop by on any given night. The new Polly Maggoo is but a few feet away in its new location trying to recapture the magic of the past….and perhaps with time it will.

A little further up the street was my favorite, Le Cloître. Quieter than the other two, here was a more philosophical crowd; the intellectuals who liked to play a game of chess while sipping a glass of wine. A few months back I was on the Rue Saint Jacques and I passed by, and it was just as it was in my day with young people crowding the entrances and I wondered, are they too talking about the mess that my generation has made of the world? Are they vowing to not make the same mistakes; ….that their generation will be different?

Probably so, I thought, probably so.

Photo Credit: Flickr

Post from: The Paris Traveler