la rive gauche (post from the past)

Found in my Palm Pilot:

On the same day that The Economist arrived with a story about semiemployed cafe culture in Boston, I am sitting in the Diesel - the place on this side of the river that most exemplifies the culture in question. But among the laptops the article describes as ubiquitous, I can only see one person really working - and she is writing in longhand, with a dip pen.

Perhaps it's not just the coffee that connects us to fin-de-siecle Paris.