Martin

24 Bd du Temple, 75011 Paris, France

Recently, though I didn’t know it before hand, I went to Martin to buy a pair of rubber slides and a tee shirt with writing on it from my dear friend Jack stating “They fucked my wife at Martin and all I got was this lousy tee shirt.” Many years ago another friend of mine, Natalie, worked here when she first moved to Paris and attributes to it the expediency with which she learned French. She had to host, serve, cook a bit, and wash the dishes. The first night back in Paris on this trip I had a conversation with friends, local and foreign, about whether to refer to it as a restaurant or a bar.  It does of course serve food, though in Paris that is not particularly rare, and it has a range of wines, beer and hard alcohol and past kitchen hours is most certainly exercised as a bar. Friday night we tried unsuccessfully to finish all of their orange wine on tap and I was stuck with a bill so high they felt obligated to take off a couple bottles.

I find myself here now in a bit of a state of travel fatigue. I am solo and not yet ready to leave for Greece and stopped in thinking perhaps a familiar occurrence would occur again. That is running into a New Yorker I didn’t expect to see in town. Being solo for once affords me a different perspective on the evening. There are copious amount of conversation around me; as if all persons are talking at once. Inside the bar counter is packed with people and topped with restaurant supplies so you have to come around the side nearly behind the bar to order as if you work here and need to sneak a mid shift shot. I asked one of the owners for the sandals I saw displayed on the wall, baring their name, and whilst purchasing felt maybe the price tag would include me needing to wash a few plates. It isn’t so different from many other places but has been decided upon as being special by all in attendance. The exterior wall is all windows so it opens up to the world so that the bar is the restaurant is the sidewalk is the street. The street we are on is wider than most and further from a tabac than I would like. There are at least as many people standing outside outside as there are sitting in the interior or in between. No prevailing dress code other than to say “people in their thirties who pay rent” and the dominant tongue is French.

When I first visited Paris, years ago, we managed to get a reservation, or maybe we just came early, and we had dinner. Small plates to share and we were straight forwards about the affair; didn’t linger, ate, paid, and left. I am reminded of Jack’s girlfriend Thelma stating (through Jack’s paraphrasial) how she does not like sharing plates. “I want my own food.” I remember there being deep fried duck parts I quite liked. In a comically French way they have a cocktail on menu called a spicy gin and tonic as if no one this side of the world knows what tequila is, let alone mescal. The line between smoking outside and smoking inside is a satire of bureaucratic proportions. I see a few faces I recognize and start to wonder what other places there are that act like this. In my neighborhood, I have Clandestino, for instance, but I know there are other bars and people and communities and neighborhoods in other zones or boroughs even. Surely some other bar is someone else’s Martin because I know for a fact there are more than 30 people in Paris. It has a different quality of requirement however. Clandestino I chose, but Martin is chosen for me. Is there a liquor committee that designates bars per area per person per type per place? Like the city mandate that a baguette never cost more than €2, is there another deciding I should have affiliations here? I dont even live here. There is a bus stop directly in front but no one that gets off even seems to acknowledge Martin’s existence. The demographic has a standard deviation less than what I am used to in New York but matched in its quasi uniformity by it’s countenance. I can’t imagine someone getting kicked out of here. It closes at 2:00 am and isn’t too far from a late night bar called Le Connetable where I can imagine and have seen people kicked out of; last night at 3:00 am for instance. I have text alerted all pertinent parties as to my where abouts and if luck would favor me one of them might join but until then I’ll be staring into the middle distance smoking a pack of Marlboro Reds I bought from a alimentation for 15€ because I thought he said 10€ and I didn’t know the brand yet and I was being a dummy.

Ps - Martin is pronounced Mar-ton

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