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French NYC

The Statue of Liberty and ballet are French. Bastille Day on 60th St is New York City’s big New York celebration. Mardi Gras is our big international celebration. FIAF is NYC’s French cultural center and biggest French library.

The concept of “Latin America” is French. New York Latin Culture Magazine started publishing as Tango Beat® in Paris, France in 2009. Lingerie is French and so is modern pornography. English is just French badly pronounced. Oh là là.

French Archive

French Festivals in NYC

New York City’s big French fesivals are Bastille Day on 60th St produced by FIAF, and the Rendez-vous with French Cinema film festival at Film at Lincoln Center.

French New York City

The Statue of Liberty, the icon of New York City and the United States, is a gift of the French people. The French Consulate/Embassy is in the Upper East Side.

  • Albertine is a French bookstore in Manhattan.
  • Barbès is an underground nightclub run by a French American in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
  • Chanel is a French luxury goods house with a flagship store on 57th Street in Midtown.
  • FIAF, French Institute Alliance Française, is NYC’s French cultural center and biggest French library.
  • Givenchy is a French luxury goods house on Madison Avenue in the Upper East Side.
  • Hermès is the luxury goods house of the French elite. It has a flagship store in the Upper East Side.
  • International Academy is a French and Spanish immersion grade school in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.
  • Le District is a French food court in Battery Park City.
  • Louis Vuitton is a French luxury goods house with a flagship store in Midtown.
  • Lycée Français is a French grade school in the Upper East Side.
  • Met Cloisters is the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s medieval museum in Fort Tryon Park.
  • PSG NY is a Paris Saint-Germain soccer supporter’s club.
  • Rendez-vous with French Cinema is a French film festival at Film at Lincoln Center.

Manhattan’s French community is in the Upper East Side around FIAF and the Lycée Français. Brooklyn’s French community is in Carroll Gardens around the International Academy and in Greenpoint.

Hermès

UPPER EAST SIDE, NYC MEATPACKING, NYC FINANCIAL DISTRICT, NYC The brand of the French establishment is getting down with the next generation

Continue Reading Hermès

Barbès

PARK SLOPE, Brooklyn ~ This eclectic French-owned underground night club that regularly books Latin artists was also the original home of Peruvian psychedelic cumbia band Chicha Libre

Continue Reading Barbès

French New Yorkers

The Statue of Liberty is French.

French of the World

French Culture

Paris was the world capital before New York, “Oh là là.”

Ballet

Ballet is an Italian court dance that was developed in France.

Champagne

France is famous for its wine and champagne.

Circus

Cirque Nouveau (as in Cirque du Soleil) is French-Canadian, but its mime circus culture is very French.

The Slave Plantation Model

France colonized much of West Africa and ran a major slave trade from there. In the Americas, French controlled the waterways. French pirates took over the western part of the island of Hispaniola from the Spanish. It must have been a real paradise, because the French always chose the best land.

The French sugar colony of Saint-Domingue (1625-1804, now Haiti) practiced the cruelest form of industrial slavery. It was the richest French colony and the richest Caribbean colony. It became a business model with a highly developed literature and guidebooks you could use to run your plantation. It was sort of a Farmer’s Almanac.

Because it was so profitable, the French slaving model was copied around the Caribbean. The French slaving model was also carried by French plantation owners, including those who settled in Spanish Trinidad. It also went with the diaspora from Saint-Domingue during the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804).

The British eventually copied the model from the Bahamas, and used it as the model for slavery in the United States. That highly structured business model became the foundation of American business.

There are French footprints everywhere in the Caribbean, even in places that aren’t French. The first family of bomba, the Puerto Rican folk music and dance, says their family tradition comes from a French plantation in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.

The Caribbean Carnival Model

Caribbean Carnival is indirectly French. It developed in Trinidad in response to French masquerade balls on Mardi Gras. It went really wild after abolition. The term “mas” for a Carnival group comes the French “masquerade.”

Voodoo and Vodou

Voodoo and Vodou are Orisha faiths based on the Indigenous faiths of West Africa.

There is nothing bad or scary about any of this. These are beautiful folk faiths based on nature. Colonizers demonized everything African and made up a bunch of nonsense stories that people still associate with Voodoo and Vodou today.

The modern country of Benin is the home of Vodun. The old Dahomey capital Porto-Novo was a major slave port. The French called it the “côte des esclaves” (the Slave Coast) and brought Africans from there to Saint-Domingue and other parts of the French Caribbean.

In Haiti, Vodun faith was syncretized (blended) with French Catholicism into Voodoo and in New Orleans into Vodou. We get interesting blends like “Bondyé,” the Voodoo supreme God. The name derives from the French, “Bon Dieu” (Good God).

Jazz

Jazz isn’t directly French, but there are some roots. Jazz is from New Orleans, before that the Caribbean, and before that Africa. The Saint-Domingue/Haitian Diaspora brought a stronger level of syncopation to Cuba and New Orleans.

For a time Africans were allowed to have a market and sing and dance at Place Congo (Congo Square) in New Orleans. Jazz and African American culture both begin in Congo Square.

Pornography

Pornography is universal, but modern pornography begins with French postcards with pictures of prostitutes.

High Heel Shoes

High heel shoes come from the boots of Turkish cavalry. They are like cowboy boots. The heel prevents the rider’s foot from falling through the stirrup which can be deadly.

This style was copied by European courts when the Turks were one of the great military powers. For a time both sexes wore high heels. Red soles were a mark of royalty. Christian Louboutin copied that.

Eventually men’s clothing changed to be easier to work in. French postcard makers put high heels on the prostitutes they photographed. That sexualized the heels and they’ve been with us ever since.

French culture was long considered the world’s high class culture. It remains with us in many ways that are just not well taught in the United States. Vive la France!

France

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