La Redorte: vide-greniers

A €2 Plastic Bertrand pink vinyl LP is found at a stand amongst many other crappy stands and sold by a gypsy woman whose wide, tanned and rough hands say a lot about an itinerant lifestyle more than likely stripped of basic comfort.
The gypsy settlements outside of the local villages, never too close to other habitations, remind the passer-by of the long history of a shunned community.

As a child, in my grand-parents village, right behind a big maison bourgeoise and next to the edge of a vast vineyard, stood a trailer that was the object of my curiosity. I was told by the other kids to be wary of the gypsies living there. That's my oldest memory of being brainwashed. We wandered several times around that trailer trying to catch a glimpse of a different people, a different lifestyle. I saw two of them once, and while feeling both exultation and fear, i left the scene taking something away with me: the guilty pleasure of having gotten close to something i was supposed to stay away from, and the fertile imagery of an unknown and mysterious world.

Olonzac: vide-greniers (the organized garage sale)

the 1€ stack of 70's cocktail cards.




The one euro Dallas 45 rpm.
I found the soundtrack (french version) to Dallas, in the smallest village in the south of France.
Dallas, one of the many american t.v series that played on french televison. Also the only t.v series translated into french, on moroccan televison in 1979; the one that i would go check out at my girlfriends' when i was 8 years old. My two girlfriends and i played grown ups (my mama's high heels did a lot of back and forth to the candy store) and we'd name ourselves after the texan characters.
When he was a little boy, my friend Patrice got denied his "Dallas" night out at his friend's for having been naughty. He had a fit in his backyard, wearing only his underpants. So gay.
The american soap opera pop culture has left an indelible print on the french mentality; a lot of the later shows such as Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place and Sex and the City have inspired lower middle class french housewives in the naming of their offspring. The names of some of today's teenagers are the scarlet letters of their mother's addiction.
If you meet a girl named Sarah or Jennifer while visiting France, there's a chance her mother was watching t.v between 1 and 3pm.