Viva la B.D.!

Our previously mentioned trip to France became MY trip to France due to insurmountable challenges from the Canadian passport agency. So armed with a less than elementary command of the language and a devalued dollar, I went prepared to take Paris by storm as an empowered female tourist. Or something like that.

Apprehensive and nervous, but rested after a six hour nap, I ventured out of the hotel in the Latin Quarter my first night. I had no agenda, no idea how the neighborhood was laid out, and was in desperate need of food. So began my trek down an unmarked side street. I saw a neat painted door and swooped in for a closer look. Much to my delight and surprise it was a comic book shop! Around the corner from my hotel! Filled with cute old men pouring over Golden and Silver age books. This encounter was a signpost for adventure that soon followed.



The comic book shop and the book shop selling comics is very much alive in Paris. I really wasn't sure what to expect, but my suspicion that the French, being a cultured society, would have at least some discernible amount of love for the "B.D." In my naivety, I thought that if nothing else, at least L'Association brought cool indie books to the French and English speaking world (think about David B. and what the world would be like without Epileptic - depressing, right?).

Boy was I wrong. They don't love the B.D. They LOVE the B.D. Like shouting from the rooftops love. Like taking it behind the middle school and...well, you get where I am going.

Maybe it was just because I was staying in the student-centric Latin Quarter, but in the ten minute walk from the Notre Dame to my hotel, I encountered FIVE comic book shops. And not just little shops. Big multi-level shops. Big multi-level shops crammed full of young and old, male and female, nerdy and not. It would've brought a overwhelmed with joy tear to my eye had I not suspected everyone laughing at my wretched French.

So I am back in Seattle with a nice array of back issues and a Jim Woodring book in French that is thankfully text free, an even higher opinion of the French, and a sad feeling that the frenzy I witnessed on that Saturday afternoon at Album on Blvd St Germain would never EVER happen here.