2009, Parties, Car Burning and Snow ...

Since this is my first blog posting of 2009, let me first send out my best wishes to everyone for 2009. My visitors and I did a bit of partying starting on New Year's Eve and continuing for the next couple of days.

The New Year's Eve party that we went to had so much food left over that it forced a secondary party just to finish off the food. There were many noteworthy scenes that I witnessed, like this photo below.


But each of us has our own way of celebrating the new year. Each new year in France, one of my favorite January 1 rituals is to check how many cars were burnt the preceding night. According to figures from the French Interior Ministry, 1,147 cars went up in smoke on New Year's Eve — a 30% rise on the 879 autos torched the same night in 2007. I'm always stunned by the figure. I've tried to research why this happens and there are all sorts of theories but I don't find any of them completely satisfying. If you want to read more about this annual "event", click HERE to read a Time Magazine article about it.

This week also brought a pretty rare event to Paris ... snow that actually stayed on the ground for a while. I didn't get to shoot much that day but I expect to have some serious snow photos next week.


Some photos of the week:

Paris Street Gang
Parisian Partygoer
Muscle Car On My Street
Frozen Fountain with Rainbow - Palais Royal
One Chief