Point G aka DJ Gregory: A Local's Guide to Paris
This week we have a succinct yet masterfully crafted guide to the city of lights by the Parisian native and house music master Point G aka DJ Gregory. We hope you enjoy his insightful tips on Paris. Also, make sure to check out his latest 3 part remix compilation titled Remixed By on his label Point G; all parts out now.
Record Shops
HeartBeat Vinyl (26 Rue Godefroy Cavaignac)
Photo by Quentin Crestinu
Melik’s own HeartBeat record shop is the perfect spot if you’re looking hard to find jazz, funk, house, techno and lots more. Lately he’s very much into vintage Japanese delights and he’s always wiling to help you, he’s been a dope ass DJ in the scene since day one and recently produced the Funk/Disco band Cotonete. On the Gossip side I can tell you that I took Peggy Gou there on a Sunday, he kindly opened the shop for us and she had a blast or let’s say a Gou time.
Syncrophone (4-6 Rue des Taillandiers)
Photo by Quentin Crestinu
There’s quite a few record shops in Paris for current stuff. Synchrophone, if I’m not mistaken, is one of the oldest now but we also had legendary shops in Paris like Bonus Beat which afterwards Became BPM, this was a place you could educate yourself in the early 90’s or Rough Trade in the trip hop days where Ivan Smagghe and Arnaud Rebotini were selling records. All those shops were where the scene evolved, we were kids and record shops were the place we would meet, without noticing and in a way, we made French electronic music. Synchrophone is also a distributor and takes care of a lot of labels in Paris and even overseas labels too, so we go there to check the news and see what’s happening with our labels. There you can find some cuts you wouldn’t find in other places, actually this is pretty much the case of every record store. Tony Curtis in Willy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot 1959 film suddenly passed through my mind for some reason.
Restaurants
Kunitoraya (1 Rue Villedo)
Photo by Quentin Crestinu
I’ve had a thing for Japanese food for a very longtime. Kunitoraya is in the area where you can find many typical Japanese restaurants in town – by going there you can’t go wrong, the food in this place is just perfect. They’re more specialized in Soba but they do have other goodies. You go there at lunch time and you have to queue for a long time but when the food arrives you’re in heaven or transported to Tokyo. The beer on draft here is also likely to be appreciated by the connoisseurs who know real beer.
Restaurant Les Routiers (50 bis rue Marx Dormoy)
Guys, if you’re looking for a restaurant in Paris that has real classic French food you found the right place, the area is raw, the restaurant will put you back in a Marcel Carné Movie from the 30’s. It’s the last real Routier restaurant in Paris, which is a truck driver stop basically, now the food is for eaters, the meals are basic but you find all the real authentic French dishes. It’s cheap, really cheap, a hundred times better than any tourist brasserie where us Parisians don’t go to apart from the real good ones (which are too expensive, because they get you with the wines, always overpriced). In this place, however, you feel like you’re in the countryside in the middle of the city and the wine is cheap, not amazing of course but fits perfectly with that feeling of another era where the French were not drinking water (no kidding) but this wine that they were calling their energy boost, see what I mean? 😉 Man with the Red Face…
Shops
Marche Paul Bert, Serpette, Puces de Saint-Ouen (18 Rue Paul Bert)
If you like vintage furniture like I do Marché Paul Bert is one of the best places to go. It has a variety of shops, it’s a flea market essentially, so only open during the weekend. Here you’ll find all kinds of period treasures to discover, and there’s always a pretty wise selection to choose from. When the masses jumped on the Scandinavian vibe or the early 60’s furniture, some of the shops were proposing some clunky 70’s stuff. The average collector would say that it sucks because it would make them uncomfortable, it’s a bit like music in a way you may not like something and scrap it and a few years later you look back and realize that your mind was narrow. Anyway, when everybody switched to the 70’s it was time for a lot of us to get into the early 90’s, on the furniture side we’re not there yet, it’s still a good time to grab some, cause the connoisseur’s have been buying stuff for at least 4 years now, as you can probably tell I’m pretty obsessed with furniture and can’t recommend this place enough.
Master-wave (14 Rue Victor Massé)
Nowadays everybody is buying music gear online, even for second hand gear. Masterwave is the last shop in Paris where you’ll find second hand gear, synths, drum machines any kind of stuff, it’s in the same area as the music shops that sell brand new gear like guitars or that new monster Moog that we’re all dying to get but let me tell you that Masterwave is a hang out and you may see any of the French producer’s like Air, Zdar, Bangalter, Jean Michel Jarre (we say Jean Michel), or the new school kid’s or the trendy soundtrack composer’s that want to put a bit of fuzz in their vibe there. Manu the host is a sweetheart as long as he feels you, otherwise you’re in & out, literally.
Librairie des Archives (83 Rue Vieille du Temple, 75003 Paris)
Photo by Quentin Crestinu
The best place in Paris to get vintage and collectable books – period. It’s not cheap at all but the selection is great. If you’re much into lifestyle, art any hard to find expo catalogue from the most obscure Japanese painter in 1983, this is how deep the love goes with that store. It’s in La Marais, a cool area, you can walk around a lot of places or go to a Café to hang, the French have a thing about sitting in Café s actually, when the summer pops you may find people going there for breakfast all the way up to the very end around 2 am, eating, drinking and socializing all fucking day and night, in other words, this sums up summer in Paris.
Nightclubs
Le Sacré (142 Rue Montmartre)
Photo by Factory Aménagement
Originally called Social Club it has now become Le Sacré – new team, new music angle, a cozy place with a cool sound system and the DA used to take care of Badaboum club which is now being handled by another crew who has also been around in the scene for a long time. In Paris you really see crews going from one club to another, of course I could have mentioned Rex, Concrete and so many solid ones, I picked Le Sacré because I like the vibe there a lot, some of my friends throw parties and I like to hang there to check some cool underground Dj’s when I’m not playing .
Museums
Le Centre Pompidou (Place Georges-Pompidou)
This is one of the main centers for contemporary art in Paris, they always have great expos and events, the book store is serious, sometimes you kind of queue too much to enter but it’s a great place to visit to wind down your weekend and prepare for the week ahead.
