Gratin
Today I worked from home, and took care of some much delayed errands. Most notable was bringing my wonderful Fuji GA645 (perhaps the perfect travel camera) in for repairs. Its nothing serious, but the focus seems just a touch off, which is an annoying "feature" of rangefinders in general. Going to the store reinforced my general experience that being a photographer is a very expensive proposition in France. The up side is that French people seem to appreciate good photogtraphy more than Americans, but that is hardly surprising! Still, 60 euros just for them to just tell me whats wrong is ridiculous (update: it would cost 500 euros to fix the camera!). Actually, I'm looking at buying its successor, the GA645Zi, since all the pros are dumping their gear on Ebay now.
On the way, I stopped in at a snowboard/skate shop called Speed, and was a little surprised to see that it has gotten sucked into the trajectory of all successful board shops. That is to say that while half the store used to be devoted to actual skateboards and snowboards for you to uh, go snowboarding with, now the boards are relegated to a little corner, and the rest is a fashion shop. I'm not trying to be a crotchety old school guy here; they can get rid off all the remaining 10 snowboards that they stock; I understand where the real money comes from. But how about calling the store "Board Fashion", or "Teenage Fanclub", or even "Poser"? ANYWAY, the best thing I saw there, on my way past the Arnet display case, was a series of decks that had things like "Gratin Dauphinois" in Gothic font. You see, "Gratin Dauphinois" is a speciality of the region, and it seemed like a strange place to see it. It turns out that theres a local board manufacturer with a team and everything! Its so entertainingly french that they would call a signature model the "Gratin Dauphinois"'. There is simply no equivalent in the US.
