Paris nightlife, part 2

My neighborhood has probably more than a dozen gay bars, if you define gay bar as a place that consciously sets out to attract gay people through a cute name, rainbow flag in the window or whatever. And there are also several cafes, standard Parisian-style places that for whatever reason seem to have been adopted by The Gays.

But as far as I can tell, only three places really seem to count.

There is the happy-hour scene at Cafe Cox and Open Cafe, and then there is Raidd, which I wrote about last week.

I pass Cafe Cox every evening on my way home from work and it always seems to have a crowd, every night of the week:


This picture, taken around 7 p.m., actually shows a comparatively light crowd for the place, which tends to peak around 9 p.m. I'm not quite sure why, frankly; it's a bare-bones bar that tends to attract a somewhat hard-bitten, 30s-to-40s crowd.

At the other end of the same block is Open Cafe, which gets crowded at similar hours but is a nicer place and attracts a more diverse crowd, including younger cuties:



Again, this picture was taken relatively early in the evening while it was still light out.

Both Cox and Open are purely social scenes, where people go with their friends for a drink. Not cruisy in the least.

Raidd, which is about a block away from these two places, is more of a cruise scene and tends to peak later. While there were a few people outside when I took this picture, inside it was completely empty; it doesn't start to fill up until about 10:30 but by midnight often has a line outside. Friday night seems to be the busiest, in my so-far limited experience here:


I'm pretty sure no other place in the Marais is packing them in, but I also haven't found the dance scene yet, and there must be one. So stay tuned ...