Paris Night Life: The Streets Are Alive in Summer

PARIS — A man on a motorcycle raced into the intersection of five Left Bank streets near Paris’ Latin Quarter on a weekend night. His motor roared while his tape deck played: “Hi dee hi dee hi dee ho . . . . “

Cab Calloway sang out clearly enough to amuse the nighttime cafe sitters, terrace diners and strollers in the narrow lanes. “Hi dee hi dee . . . . “ And the motorcycle roared away.

Paris was enjoying its traditional summer night life, the season when Parisians and tourists usually move into the streets to fill them with vibrancy: music, lights, songs, laughter, shouts and screeching brakes.

Every neighborhood has its popular cafes, restaurants and clubs. Some close at 1 a.m., but many stay open until dawn on weekends. A few stay open all night, catching the first rays of sunlight. Some have acquired city-wide fame and lure the young, fun-loving and chic in the wee hours.

Most places that glitter in the Paris nights are on the beaten paths, in the narrow streets of the enduringly popular Left Bank, in the newly glamorous Les Halles area, or near the graceful sweep of the Champs-Elysees.

The Left Bank and Les Halles clubs are so close together that you can easily walk between the two areas via the bridge over the Seine in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. You can walk in safety even after the Metros close down at about 12:30 a.m. Earlier in the evening you can wave to passengers on the bateaux mouches (sightseeing boats) that make the Seine sparkle in the dark.

Best Piano Bar in Town

Some people call Les Trois Maillets, 56 Rue Galande on the Left Bank, a block from Notre Dame, the best piano bar in town. At night, tables and chairs are set in a pool of light on the terrace. Inside, a pianist plays pop music on the street level.

This club literally has a nearly bottomless pit. You go down a flight of stone steps to the jazz club in a cave on Level One. Another flight down, you find a disco. (Paris is filled with clubs in caves, which were used as social clubs and jails. Les Trois Maillets is said to have been a social club in the 12th Century.)

Good contemporary jazz groups play every night until about 4 a.m. American Cynthia McPherson sometimes shows up to sing. A tall, stylishly dressed woman, she sings with a big voice and infectious swing. Afterwards she often goes out on the town herself.

“Paris nightlife is fun: it’s improvisational,” she says, summing up the scene she chose to live and work in three years ago, when she came to France for a vacation. Quickly she started working in some of the same cave-clubs where American jazz musicians captivated French audiences in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. (The movie “Round Midnight” shows replicas of these clubs.)

When McPherson isn’t working at the Trois Maillets she sometimes goes there for entertainment. Or she goes to Le Montana, 28 Rue Benoit, across the street from the Drugstore at St. Germain de Pres.

Le Montana features a big selection of champagnes. It’s a convivial, informal jazz club, where small groups play streamlined be-bop on a raised bandstand. Crowds-in-the-know arrive at 10:30 for the music, which continues until the wee hours.

The Friendly French

At Le Montana the French let their hair down, joke with each other and strike up conversations with strangers. Even the woman who sells flowers got kissed on the cheeks, French-style, by the regulars. Drinks cost about $10, the usual price in Paris nightclubs that don’t charge admission fees. In such clubs the second drink usually costs less than the first.

Across the street at 3 Rue Benoit, Bilboquet, the tri-level club, features larger groups, often starring the polished American singer Martial Battlefield, well-known in Paris. Bilboquet charges high prices for all drinks instead of a cover charge in its sunken living room, actually a cave, just below the bandstand. You can also dine on the street-level terrace, in the inside dining room or on the balcony.

In fine weather, with its doors and windows open, Bilboquet becomes an airy, romantic bistro, so well-upholstered that you would never guess it was originally a simple cave.

From Rue Benoit it’s a short walk up Boulevard St. Germain to Rue de Buci. Turn left into this narrow canyon always filled with tourists and diners on summer nights. Keep walking to Rue d’Ancienne Comedie and turn right. In the middle of the block you’ll find Pub St. Germain, once a popular jazz club where “Paris Blues,” starring Paul Newman with Duke Ellington’s music, was filmed. Now the club features taped rock music, countless varieties of beer, and food until the wee hours. Reasonable prices attract hordes of young people.

Or you can keep walking straight up Rue de Buci to the Place St. Andre des Arts; turn left and cross the Seine by the bridge in front of Notre Dame until you reach Les Halles, the trendy warren of malls with boutiques, bistros and clubs that was once a vegetable market.

Down to Another Cave

There you’ll find the Sunset Club at 60 Rue des Lombards, a pedestrian mall. You go downstairs to another cave that you won’t recognize as such because it’s airy, lined with tiles and possibly even good for your health.

Paris publicity says that the New Morning Club, 7-9 Rue de Petites Ecuries near Montmartre, is the best jazz club in town. Musicians with international reputations play there, where audiences pay for admission and drinks. But the Sunset has the chic decor and relaxed ambiance you would hope to find in a small Paris club. And it is open very late.

Drinks at the Sunset cost about $10 until 2 a.m., when the price is cut in half. Closed Sundays, the Sunset changes performers on Wednesdays, as most Paris clubs do.

Facing the Sunset is Les Trottoirs des Buenos Aires, a street-level club with Argentine music, highlighting tangos, from the cocktail hour until 1 a.m. nightly except Sunday. The house group is smooth, not fiery, and soothing to dine to.

A few paces away is a large square called, ironically, Places des Innocents, with a sprinkling of seedy characters day and night. Find the police station on one corner. Then look to your right for the Magnetic Terrace, mid-block at 12 Rue de la Cossonnerie, facing La Place.

This street-level and downstairs music club features a variety of music--rock, jazz, folk, pop--until the wee hours on weekends, earlier on weekdays. And a striking white piano has been played by such masterful players as American Hank Jones and Spaniard Tete Monteliu.

sh Traditional Night Life

If you prefer traditional Paris night life with the ambiance that Hemingway’s generation loved, you can skip Les Halles and, from St. Germain-des-Pres, head straight up Rue de Rennes to Montparnasse.

There you’ll find La Cupole, with Swing-era music for dancing and dining from early evening until 1 a.m. Politicians, entertainers, writers and social figures of Paris frequent this landmark Art Deco, barn-like place at 102 Boulevard Montparnasse to see and be seen.

Behind La Cupole, at 11 Rue Delambre, you’ll find the fashionable singles haven, Rosebud, well-known for its economical chili and high-priced wines by the bottle and glass. If you speak even a little French, you can make pleasant social connections there.

Hotel bars are essentially morts (dead) at night, even at the fashionable Plaza Athenee, the Ritz and George V. The only exception is the bar at L’Hotel, 6th arrondisement, a short walk from Bilboquet. There, to make conversation at the dinner and cocktail tables and the bar, you may need to know two or three languages to keep up with your companions. Phone 45-25-27-23 to make a reservation.

But on the Rue de Berri, which crosses the Champs-Elysees near the George V Metro stop, two new clubs attract lively crowds speaking a lot of English. The Chicago Pizza Pie Factory, 5 Rue de Berri, has a huge basement space with some English-speaking staffers and English management. It’s open until 1 a.m. every night, except for a month-long July closing.

And City Rock, 13 Rue de Berri, has Paris in the palm of its hand for decor and novelty. At the door a pink-colored Chevrolet is upended as statuary. American license plates from the Southwest and pictures of Marilyn Monroe dominate the landscape of this sprawling room. An upside-down black and white plaster cow hangs from the ceiling.

Drinks are mixtures of fruit drinks with names such as Muscle Beach. Drinks without alcohol begin at about $4.50. And the barmaids look like exceptionally pretty, blonde, California types, though they’re usually French and bilingual.

For the Footloose

City Rock is a good place for young, footloose Americans to meet the young, footloose French tantalized by Hollywood and showing off their English.

Videos continuously play rock films. This juice bar, with delicious drinks, stays open till dawn every night.

Also in the neighborhood are discos for sophisticates. Keur Samba, 79 Rue de la Boetie, parallel to Rue de Berri, has an ochre-colored, black and gold-decorated door and wall murals of fanciful jungle scenes painted on glass inside. At midnight some of the best-dressed people in the world show up. Drinks begin at about $10.

You can buy a bottle of whiskey or brandy for hundreds of francs and leave it for repeat visits, a good arrangement if you’ll be in town for a while. All discos make the same offer; none sell beer or wine.

For its wealthy international clientele, Keur Samba has American rock with dashes of reggae and African rock on tapes. The disco stays open late.

Across the Champs-Elysees, Atmosphere, at 45 Rue Francois Premier, is a tasteful, romantic-looking disco in a basement (cave) with shiny black tables and soft pink lights. The dress is informal.

One of the few clubs that offers floor shows until dawn every night, the Pussy Cat near the Arc de Triomphe has been going strong for years. Ask any taxi driver to take you to the door.

Of if you simply want to watch the world go by at night, stop at Maison d’Alsace, 39 Champs-Elysees, with Alsace-Lorraine cuisine and slightly sweet, light wines. Maison d’Alsace has three all-night branches in other parts of Paris, including one near the Opera.

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Here is a list of Paris Clubs, with districts and Metro stops: Les Trois Maillets, 5th district (arrondisement), Metro St. Michel. Le Montana, 6th district, Metro St.-Germain-des-Pres. Bilboquet, 6th district, Metro St.-Germain-des-Pres.

New Morning Club, 10th district, Metro Chateau d’Eau. Sunset, 1st district, Metro Chatelet. Trottoirs de Buenos Aires, 1st district, Metro Chatelet. Magnetic Terrace, 1st district, Metro Chatelet or Etienne Marcel.

La Cupole, 14th district, Metro Vavin. Rosebud, 14th district, Metro Vavin. Chicago Pizza Pie Factory, 8th district, Metro George V. City Rock, 8th district, Metro George V.

Keur Samba, 8th district, Metro George V or Clemenceau. Atmosphere, 8th district, Metro George V or Clemenceau. Maison d’Alsace, 8th district, Metro George V or Clemenceau.