Does Your Club Need Trinkets?

The café La Corona hosts your club in Paris.

News About the 'Café Metropole Club'

Paris:- Saturday, 8. January 2000:- Now that we are safely settled into our new year - if not our new century - flight of fancy - into our new millennium - boy! - that's something to think about; a new millennium.

Well, well; first things first. Right now in this new year and whatever else it is, what are we going to do with this club?

Meeting the 'Ed' of Metropole Paris in person in Paris - is this enough? Members of the club who have done this might have felt a bit short-changed, because at meetings I am asking members to sign the 'members' booklet. I am taking notes and photographs.

In short, at the club I am working. Somebody has to be its secretary. But you don't come to watch the secretary, do you?

Actually, I wish I were a mere club member, so I could sit around shooting the breeze, eating the club's 'Food of the Week,' drinking the club's 'Drink of the Week,' and telling everybody about my own 'Cities of the Week.'

If the club had its own t-shirts, I could buy one and wear its 'T-shirt of the Week.' I suggested this to a member, and they said it's fine as it is without t-shirts or monogrammed tractor caps.

They said its fine without its own monogrammed backpacks, ballpoint pens, cigarette lighters - nobody smokes anyhow - without its own brand-name coloring books, postcards, memorial yearbooks, autographed photos of 'Ed,' model Paris buses, flags, maps, pins, button holes, shoelaces - without any of the sort of stuff that makes movies profitable.

I certainly agree with this. Can you imagine me having to lug all this stuff into La Corona, plus asking members to sign the 'members' booklet and taking notes and photographs; and collecting money and filling out all the forms for the 'duty-free' business? Not me.

What about I get Eddy and Charlie to come, to pose with members while I take their photos with a Polaroid? Fifty francs a pop. Five for Eddy and Charlie; 45 for me.

No. None of the above. Does anybody have cards? A few hands, with the house getting 10 percent of the pot. What about dice? How is craps played?

Any other ideas?

In spring, I've been thinking that meetings can be 'al fresco,' held outside somewhere like on the Pont des Arts or on one of the quiet quays of the Ile Saint-Louis. Of course these places are more difficult to find and they don't have 'sandwiches of the week.' They don't even have waiters.

No. I can't see the Café Metropole Club without waiters. Without me, but not without waiters.

If you want to know how Los Gatos, California, got to be 'City of the Week' - if it is a city - last Thursday, you should read the unofficial account of last Thursday's weekly Club meeting - even if you have already read it. Hit the hyperlink lightly to see what happened.

If you don't care about Los Gatos, you can read one of the other features in last week's edition of Metropole instead. Nobody will care except everybody in Los Gatos - if it is a city.

Your club in Paris has a membership card because the club does not have an official t-shirt, or hat, or anything else. The only sign of any kind about the club is this card, and it almost isn't real.

When it was first displayed here, I imagined that potential members would simply clip it off their screen. Other members, who may have tried this, have told me it is more sensible to print it instead.