When you meet a couple of people who don’t know what they want to do because their trip is an unplanned last minute decision, it’s best to place them into your prefigured market segments and find out how they make their living. Having not done that, we proceeded with a little introduction. I told them what I do and what I thought we would do. They said that they were up for anything. The husband said he was interested in ecology. My mind was racing because I wanted it to be good. I wanted to impress from the start, without having done much in the way of prep work. I didn’t know if it was going to be two hours or twelve but I tend to seek the thrill which doesn’t present itself. You have to go out and make it happen. But you also have to chill. You know the place. You need to be that rock. What can you do to that end? There are methods that you can follow, but you need to have some decision making matrix. Without implementing my prefigured one, I went with the amount of light on a January day and the most impressive neighborhoods to match that light. I may have made a mistake.

After starting out with the history of Paris I leisurely stopped and started with a heavy-handed dose. It’s a lot of story. We were heading to Strasbourg St. Denis and then to Montmartre, but they didn’t tell me where they had been and I ended up coming out of a couple hotels and hotel bars, a little bit of history, and not heading up Arts and Metiers to see the Gaite Lyrique. When you meet at 4pm in Paris on Saturday, even, there may be cocktail bars open but they are empty. The light in January is shining but it won’t be for long. If you don’t go to a poorer area in the light of day it becomes another beast in streetlight. So we went to the Northern Marais and then the Canal Saint Martin and when we came in and out of some spots the husband said something that got us moving to the area where I have an office in Menilmontant. We stopped after the third bar in the best wine spot I know with some air to breathe. The Cave de Belleville. Drank a bottle, talked life, ate, and walked away to catch a view of the city a night. Dropped into Menilmontant, hung out at the music venue where I work. Listened to a couple of tunes and then headed down the street to Le Perchoir. No matter if the place is has-been, it’s a rooftop in Paris. We drank another bottle before heading down Oberkampf and then Saint Maur. Truth be told I was a bit shaky in getting us down the most animated streets for this time in the evening. Connecting the 10th to the 20th in between Pont Saint Louis is tricky. Another thing that’s tricky is wanting to head to music venues when the coolest among them are a bit spread out.

Check this list: Espace B, Trabendo, Trianon, Maroquinerie, Flesh D’Or, Bellevilloise, Point Ephemere, Divan du Monde, La Cigale, Cafe de la Danse, Badaboum, Bataclan, Nouveau Casino, Batofar, Zenith, Pop-Up du Label.

We walked by or into three of these on the evening but we did not stick around to get the spirit of them. Why? Because of our stop at my office. Everybody’s been in an office. What makes the office something special is when there’s an aperitif at the office. What resurges the blood is when you look at the young creatives you have with you and listen to the urgings of the wife and make an effort to get out of the potential and into the certain. What I mean is that we needed to commit to some activities. I should have had juice on my phone. It was dead and I was happily without a lifeline but the problem was that I couldn’t coordinate variables in the night. Go tos. That is what the night needs. The day and the city in the day has a system of variables but the night needs to take advantage of those as well. There are multiple good stops with the live music industry. You have to stick to a district, though, and square meter for square meter needs, perhaps, dictate that you give a code to each potential area for the day and for the night. We know these intuitively. We need to stay sober. Whatever the case, sober, sick and somewhat tired, we landed at about 10pm on a restaurant that whet our whistle for the night. Having sought out more of the wonder and walking on the emptier streets of the hour, we settled into Aux Trois Passages and were very happy with our order. 35 euros a person is decent. Some of us ate the entire meal with a spoon. The server brought this to our attention. Any opportunity you have to go a little deeper into the display of culture, you do it. Just make use of it. Keep it together.

We roll out of this place at about midnight and proceed to once again lead ourselves into the deeper depth of lucidity. It’s okay to call for reinforcements. Facts, figures, the ideas, people. We need feedback when we are doing this. We want to be able to make good decisions with people and for people. In the end of the night when you see three roads and say, take one of them, having passed through Voltaire and explained every connection that you have to everything, you should realize that you are talking too much, explaining too much. Some just want to be stimulated more than others. Less stimulation, however, is not the answer. It is not to make people feel as if they are missing out. First-timers will forgive what they are not seeing so long as they are able to get a balance. They think they want the unconventional and edgy but they want it all. We all do. That’s not unique. What’s unique is how you are able to deliver making big distinct choices. Next time: 3rd to 10th to 18th instead of 3rd to 10th to 20th. But next time is this time and the time after when the streetruns could be shorter than 12 hours. Maybe the rule is every four hours there must be a distinct variable. We exercised that, but the variable must also be of the human kind, not a substance.