The Nigerian Bracelet Scam

It's called gay Pah-ree. As such I expected it to be teeming with overt, or at the least, latent homosexuality. Not so. Paris is a beautiful city filled with lots of interesting heterosexual people just like you and me. And tales of the French being rude? Over exaggerated. As it turns out, you can?t tell if someone is being rude if you don?t understand a single goddamned thing they are saying. Seriously.


So tell me if you?ve heard this one before. You?re standing on the steps of the Sacre Coer, a beautiful cathedral high on a hill that overlooks the entire city of Paris, and a man approaches you and asks you to hold out your finger. He is, of course, heterosexual. You tell him you?re not interested but he pushes and prods, following you up the steps until he roughly grabs your arm and loops a piece of colorful string around your finger. Before you know it he is expertly weaving a beautiful multi-hued bracelet with your finger as the hook. He?s from Nigeria and this is a mystical, magical Nigerian bracelet that will be imbued with a wish of your choice. It is, of course, free of charge. Before I know it he?s done and it is wrapped around my wrist and knotted off. It was a cool bracelet. Now, as I said, the bracelet was free but the knot apparently costs seven euro. That?s the scam. Though not surprised, I declined to pay. He asked what I thought it was worth, getting agitated, and I told him it was worth nothing since I had not wanted it. I offered to have it cut from my wrist and he hemmed and hawed until he saw I would not budge. Dismissed with a sneer, I walked away with a free Nigerian wishing bracelet from a con man on my first day in Paris. It?s a week later and I?m still wearing it.



The rest of Paris was also a joy. I did a big city walk like London to hit all the major sites. It?s amazing how much you can accomplish in a day on foot. I saw Notre Dame (yet another big cathedral), the Latin Quarter (pretty touristy, didn?t hear a lick of Latin), walked along the river, ate some pastries, saw the plaza housing the entrance to the Lourve (the museum itself was closed), contemplated the controversial pyramid entrance and its likelihood of housing the Grail, walked the Champs D? Elysees to the Arc D? Triumph, collapsed for an hour, ate some more pastries, then walked the seedy streets of Montmarte.



On my second day Paris was apparently closed. I hopped a metro to the edge of town so I could get on a train for Versailles but they were on strike. No, not the train, the entire Palace of Versailles was on strike. Not deterred I rode another couple of metros to find the catacombs of Paris, a labyrinth of underground tunnels filled with the bones of tens of thousands of Parisians from centuries past. Though it took me a lordly length of time to find it, it too was closed. Till June. For renovations. How you renovate piles of bones is beyond me, maybe they bleach them. Disappointed but determined to see dead people I headed over to the massive cemetery known as Pere Lachaise. This cemetery is so massive that it has its own named streets and a map that rivals that of Paris itself in terms of complexity. No metro though. Those who truly know me best might know why I would visit such a place. After forty minutes of twisted and confusing cobblestone streets I found what I was looking for. Though many famous people are buried here only one tomb is gated off and lorded over by guards. There, surround by visitors throwing flowers, whiskey, CDs, sunglasses, and whatever else they could find was the grave of Jim Morrison. Actually, the grave itself was quite simple. And the graffiti, bust of Jim, and etchings on the surrounding tombs had all been sanded down and washed away. Nevertheless, it was an interesting site and a good end to my two and a half day trip to Paris.