by Jeremy Allen

The dust has settled. The swarms of stiletto-clad individuals have vacated Paris as quickly as they came. It’s back to ballet flats and quotidian black-and-white reserve on the Parisian metro. And yet, the Carrousel du Louvre seemed just a tad too empty last week without the recent mass of fashionistas in perpetual mid-Tweet. Their frenzy and undeniable ferocity seemed so out of context in Parisian two-hour café society.

Needless to say, I was inspired: why not imagine a completely different way to relive the collections, sans Style.com (as comprehensive as it is)? The ticket, if I may, comes courtesy of the RATP (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens): an 8.80 euro metro day pass. Consider the spring-summer 2010 shows as your unexpected, impeccably packaged program for rediscovering Paris in all its glory; with rust-colored leaves sprinkled on the streets and a festive nip in the air (plus a panoply of not-to-be-missed exhibitions), there’s no better time to fall in love with the City of L’Amour.

By now, your eyes are surely starved for more of Alexander McQueen’s kaleidoscopic, zoological prints; a prodigious parallel can be found at the Musée du Luxembourg, where Louis Comfort Tiffany’s eponymous art nouveau lamps and glass mosaics are sure to enchant a new generation of admirers.

Continue your nature kick with a late morning promenade around the Parc de Bagatelle; the profusion of roses will certainly conjure Valentino’s petal-soft cocktail dresses that practically bloomed on the runway. Continue to tickle your romantic fancy with a visit to Pierre Hermé’s legendary patisserie: their delicate macarons in a profusion of rosy reds, champagne pinks, and butter yellows bring to mind Peter Copping’s irresistible pastels at Nina Ricci.

Change gears with a visit to the sprawling Centre Georges Pompidou: its infamous inside-out architecture – a tangle of color-coded pipes and wiring – begs Balenciaga’s urban futurism this season. The Pompidou’s current showing of Surrealist photography and film is the perfect anecdote for those experiencing Galliano withdrawal (the designer’s feverish mélange of influences and fabrics smacked of Man Ray’s photographic collages).

If it was Celine’s brand of razor-sharp chic that most enchanted you, however, your best bet is the Musée d’Orsay, a museum that perfectly mirrors Pheobe Philo’s first collection for the house with its crisp lines and two-toned palette of khaki and lacquered black (be sure to grab tickets for d’Orsay’s upcoming James Ensor retrospective).

Finally, for a quintessential Parisian panorama, head to the top of the Eiffel Tower and relive the vertiginous, graphic drama of Givenchy. And just when you think you’ve paid appropriate homage to the best of the défiles, your eyes will catch the glint of the gilded dome of Les Invalides, home of the Musée d’Armée. Military severity topped with immoderate glitz? Nothing screams “Balmain” more.

A perfect proposition for printemps, non?

First off, let’s get this straight: I am all for American innovation. But I also think that when our dear old forefathers scribbled up the Constitution, akin to a hastily written note left on the kitchen counter, like any parents they had absolutely no idea what kind of crazy stuff their kids would get into. Automobiles, baseball and boy bands: not too bad. Sweatshops, pollution and genetically modified foods?

We would be so grounded.

In a time when people can actually trademark living things (ponder that one morning over your Starbucks TM coffee) Americans seem suspiciously ambivalent. Sustainable, mindful and environmentally conscious doesn’t have quite the same ring as bigger, better, faster, stronger, and scientists, with a generally mute conscience, have been using biotechnology to manipulate foods for decades. Using antibiotic marker genes and mimicking the invasive restructuring of viruses to alter food crops on the most fundamental, genetic level, biotech companies have even been able to create corn that produces its own pesticides. Although these Franken-crops may paint a prettier picture on grocery store shelves, feng shui has overridden health concerns; the FDA requires very little safety testing, if any, and no one seems to want to take responsibility for the complete unpredictability of these manufactured fruits and veggies. The FDA doesn’t require the labeling of GMO foods and so it is almost impossible to track the consuming public’s adverse and potentially devastating reactions to genetically modified products. You’ll be comforted to know that there have been no human trials (unless you consider the millions of Americans who unknowingly consume GMO foods every year) but animal experiments have served up results Mendel would be proud of: in a documented test of Flavr Savr TM tomatoes, many test rats grew erosive lesions in their stomach lining and seven died of “unstated reasons” two weeks after eating the doctored tomatoes.

Genetically modified foods have been slowly replacing naturally produced foods on supermarket shelves, hiding under the cover of anonymity provided by the FDA into juice boxes, packaged foods and enticing consumers with their unnatural plumpness and Day-Glo colors. We can call biotech companies the new green-collar criminals, abusing power and influence to render it even harder to consider yourself a truly educated consumer. One of the cover stories of the June 2009 issue of National Geographic presented an objective view of the future of food, with explanations of both genetically modified foods and sustainable farming. When you peel back the cover, the second page of the magazine is an advertisement for Monsanto, the nation’s most powerful biotechnology company.

The water gets a little murkier when you start asking questions and get caught in the web of red tape swathing the answers. With the help of the Constitution and a delusional Supreme Court ruling, biotech companies can trademark seeds, which then grants them the power to completely monopolize the industry and bully small farmers into compliance. Take this scenario: a gentle breeze blows across a road, catching a few genetically modified seeds and blowing them into a neighboring field. Like seeds tend to do, they grow and cross-pollinate, contaminating the farmer’s crop like undercover agents infiltrating a trusting community of corn plants. The farmer is then sued by the biotech company, run through the ringer of the U.S. justice system and spit out the other end. Sound crazy, a little too conspiracy theory? Ask over a dozen Midwest farmers who have settled out of court with Monsanto, the ruthless czar of biotechnology, silenced like serfs by out of court settlements and the threat of a smear campaign.

Growth, probably the definitive word of the last two hundred years, has been misconstrued and misappropriated: as Americans grow outwards and their ambitions skyrocket upwards, integrity and responsibility have become antiquated terms only dusted off during election time. Maybe the answer to the moral conundrum of American progress can be gleaned from humanity’s first recorded encounter with genetically modified foods, poor Jack and his debacle with the Beanstalk. Whatever anyone says, there is no such thing as “magic beans,” just hard work. Giant beanstalks may be distracting and good fodder for one-upping the neighbors but they always come with equally daunting consequences. Giants, even though they are quite impressive, tend to abuse the undulations of capitalism and monopolize markets; never trust them. Last of all, support your local farmers: by eating local produce, consumers can do their part to make sure Jack never has to pawn his cow in the first place.

It has been four years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast. Teenagers have lived their entire high school lives in that time. The Olympics have happened. A new president was elected.

Yet, in New Orleans, the passage of 1,461 days has made little to no difference for many areas. Houses are still in ruins from flooding; churches and schools have yet to reopen, instead standing as empty buildings that represent lives that will never be the same. Professor Andrew Curtis of the Department of Geography visits New Orleans about every two months. “It’s a shame what’s going on,” Curtis says as he clicks through a slideshow of his most recent trips. The images flashing across the screen are of houses on stilts, windows covered with wood marked with graffiti, and FEMA trailers sitting in the midst of rubble. The scene looks identical to the pictures the nation saw in the weeks after the storm hit. Unfortunately, the situation is not much different now for large sections of New Orleans and the St. Bernard Parish.

As the storm grew stronger over the gulf, those who had the means to evacuate attempted to do so. When the levees broke, however, those left behind were forced to abandon their flooded homes and communities to save their lives. The houses, churches, and schools that were left behind remain empty, as the population is reluctant to come back without infrastructure, and vice versa. Many former residents of New Orleans have not returned because of this lack in both basic services and the social fabric that was so important to the city before the storm. Roads are dotted with dangerous potholes that are not being fixed. The subtropical climate means that many abandoned neighborhoods are drowned for a second time under a sea of vegetation. Many buildings remain broken, their doors and windows missing. Partly because of this blight, crime rates in the city have shot up, the growing presence of gangs fighting over sparsely populated neighborhoods forming yet one more impediment to return. Former residents have settled into new communities and are unlikely to return to the neighborhoods they knew that are now wrought with crime and debris. Even those who have returned have begun to question their decision.

So who is to blame? The poor handling of the situation by the Bush administration is an easy target. However, it has been four years and a new president sits in the White House. The blame is not so easily pinpointed now. “The mayor was blaming the governor, the governor was blaming the president, the people in the city were blaming everyone. The scale was just too huge; it overtook any meaningful response,” Professor Curtis adds.

No one entity was prepared for the disaster that happened in the summer of 2005. As various levels of government scrambled to fix it, the logistics fell through the cracks, which has left New Orleans dotted with tiny FEMA trailers and abandoned homes. The complexity of the situation in terms of social, political, and economic implications has dumbfounded every governing force.

That is why, it seems, the rebirth of New Orleans must happen with the help of non-profit organizations working independently. Brad Pitt’s organization, Make It Right, has been building eco-friendly homes in the Lower 9^th Ward. Their theory that it is better to build in a cluster rather than renovate homes across large spans of space has so far proven successful. Rather than moving back to isolated homes in damaged areas, families have an opportunity to begin again in a neighborhood. In addition, Professor Curtis’ work with Louisiana State University has helped make maps of homes being rebuilt versus abandoned sections so that groups can better understand the vastness of the problem.

However, Professor Curtis laments that overall, for many once thriving neighborhoods little has changed since the storm. Indeed, some areas have worsened, and it seems as though the money and attention are just not there to fix it. This does not mean the people of New Orleans are weak. Curtis writes in his book, GIS, Human Geography, and Disasters, “And yet, through it all, through the incredible hardship and daily suffering we are constantly amazed by their resolve—to never give up. That is why we continue to go back and do all we can.”

And because of this resolve to never give up, we cannot let it continue this way any longer, as it has been four years and counting. We must not forget, because the people of New Orleans will never forget.

I deleted my Facebook account back in December. I’m not exactly sure why I did it, probably to test out my endurance. Perhaps I also did it to feel a sense of pride when saying “Oh, I don’t have a Facebook,” as if I were too cool for the social phenomenon. I still find myself sitting at my computer after having read my e-mails, wondering what it is that I forgot to do. My mouse hovers over the web browser. It usually takes me a couple seconds before I realize that I have nothing else to do on the Internet and my pile of work is waiting for me. I sometimes wish that I still had Facebook to check obsessively to feel like I am procrastinating for a good reason. Sophomore David Mikulka recognizes that Facebook “is a way of wasting time,” but he still believes “it’s useful.”

I have to wonder what it is about Facebook that is so intoxicating and causes people to spend hours upon hours staring at their computer screens. Perhaps it’s the ability to feverishly stalk a crush without them knowing, or feeling significant when getting not one, but two notifications, or maybe it’s even the validity that comes with having a ridiculous amount of ‘friends.’ As I think through these reasons, I question whether a Facebook account is really a healthy thing to have. I deleted my account right when I went home for winter break. I realized that the people who I considered to be my friends were people that I kept in contact with outside of Facebook. I suppose I didn’t want to deal with people writing on my wall saying “We should hang out soon!” when they could have just as easily called and made a real effort to see me. In essence, Facebook just keeps up the façade of a friendship, and I was tired of keeping up the charade. I used to find myself writing on people’s walls just to feel like I had made an attempt to keep in contact, when in reality, I probably would never see them outside of this cyber world.

This is an aspect that junior Alanna Peterson enjoys.

“There are some people I’ll never see again and I kind of love being able to see what’s going on in their lives.”

I too remember the excitement of finding friends from elementary school, but that soon wore off when the wall-to-wall conversations I had were stilted and awkward. How far can you go past the “HOW ARE YOU?!?!” and “OMG! I LOVE THAT MOVIE TOO!!!” with a person you haven’t seen in ten years. Not very far. I would actually friend someone from my past, see what they looked like, what they were into, and then defriend them. Lame, I know, but that was all I was interested in. I mean, when you friend someone from elementary school or even pre-school, is it because you really want to reconnect or is it because you just want to see if that one kid who picked his nose all the time is still a weirdo? I’m guessing the latter…

Maybe I am being pretentious and reading into the whole psyche of Facebook far too much, but as fellow Facebook Account Deleter Schaeffer Nelson put it, “I got off of Facebook because it was giving my soul a rash.”

That just so happens to be the best explanation I have heard.

Wednesday night, Seattle. After catching a late night showing of a children’s movie (target demographic: between 2 and 6 years old) we were determined to give our night a rating higher than PG. After two days spent with Jeremy’s grandparents, we had to remind ourselves that we were college kids who had sexier concerns than their cholesterol.

Let’s party it up tonight,” Gary suggested, trying his best to sound smolderingly dangerous. After all, we had spent the previous evenings watching movies at home (a flimsy excuse to stuff our eager faces with pie) and sharing knitting tips with Jeremy’s grandma. We needed to be dangerous in order to maintain a sense of college normalcy. On the agenda: going to a cool underground bar, befriending Seattle’s it-people, and dancing the night away. It didn’t really matter if it was only a Wednesday night, if Gary was under 21, if our dance moves could be mistaken for muscular spasms, or if we didn’t drink... right?

Wrong.

The streets were dark and deserted, and it was getting harder by the minute to maintain our stance of nonchalant sexiness as we shivered uncontrollably in the violent wind. We ran up to every neon-lit bar we saw, our faces flushed with hope, only to be turned away with a gruff, “Sorry kid, 21 and over.” Dammit. Jeremy had just turned 21, but Gary was only 19, and the only underage college student still without a fake ID. “I refuse to pay $200 for something I was allowed to do when I was 2 in my country!” Gary would say firmly, feeling his French patriotism kick-in.

I’m so sorry, but my boyfriend forgot his passport—he’s from Paris,” Jeremy murmured seductively to the bartender, hoping that this would make us sound somehow exotic and exciting. “You know, the one with the Eiffel Tower and all...” he added with a wink.

No luck.

After getting rejected from a couple hundred bars in a one-mile radius, we felt outraged. Surely, it was unfair to deprive us of the freedom to mingle with other young adults! This feeling of injustice grew stronger as we realized that alcohol, the little bastard, was the one thing preventing us from meeting our new best friends. We could just imagine two pints of Guinness laughing at our expense while blocking the entrance to the friendly Irish pub on the corner, leaving two college kids stuck out in the cold. The irony of the situation was that we really had no desire to drink, but just wanted to make some friends.

It’s not that we didn’t drink alcohol because of some religious principle, or moral objection. No, we had no philosophical anecdote to recite or even a Men’s Health article we could quote as support for our restraint. We were Alcobores, a strange breed of people who found that we had more fun sober.

Actually, it was NOT drinking that brought the two of us together in the first place. “What are you drinking?” Jeremy asked upon introduction to Gary, trying desperately to demonstrate a sense of creativity by talking about something other than the weather. “Um... milk,” responded Gary, knowing that this was a defining moment. “I totally love milk!” Jeremy exclaimed as he took a bite of his chocolate chip cookie, confirming his membership in this clandestine society that defies the social norms surrounding drinking.

But there was no denying it: the “Minors Prohibited” signs continued to glare at us from every windowpane. We felt reduced, exposed—as if the tough shell of responsibility that we had so carefully cultivated in our transition to adulthood was suddenly and forcibly stripped away. “At the end of the day, you’re just kids,” the sign seemed to say. And at the root of this exposure was alcohol—a substance that we didn’t even care to partake in that evening. We just wanted a chance to meet some friendly faces. And where else were we to meet these new faces but in these very bars?

And then, in the distance, renewed hope—a group of ragged-looking twenty-somethings, holding each other up as they swayed from side to side. “Um ... hello!” Gary stammered in greeting, waving cheerily. “Do you know where we could –"

GAY, right?” a woman with mussed-up hair and fishnets proclaimed. We nodded sheepishly, examining our outfits to pinpoint exactly what gave it away. “Then honey, you BELONG at Neighbors.”

We gave each other a quizzical look. “Is it 18 plus?” Jeremy asked, pulling Gary near to him as the woman stumbled closer.

Of course! Follow me!”

Common sense teaches you to never trust those tantalizing words, but we were desperate. Tentatively, we followed our newfound friends, our hands clutched tightly together.

Right there!” the woman said, trying her best to point straight ahead. “It’s right behind that dumpster.”

There was nothing before us but a dark alley peppered with trash from the lone dumpster shoved against a wall.

Go on,” the woman prodded, flashing a cherry-red smile.

Jeremy managed to let out what he hoped was a harmless little laugh. “You know, we’ll just…”

We’ll just—yeah…” Gary finished, nodding emphatically.

We waited five long minutes to make sure that our new friends had gone on their merry way, and then made a run for it. As if on cue, there was a grand flash of thunder, and buckets of rain began to beat down violently upon our sorry party clothes, soaking us to the bone. We couldn’t stop laughing.

Some—most, actually—might say that we’re losers, but we think that we happened to win big time that night. Because waiting for us just a few miles away was a home that wouldn’t turn us away and a fridge full of something much better than booze: a gallon of milk and a bucket of cookie dough.

I recently decided to become a locavore. For all of you unfamiliar with the term, a locavore is someone who eats only locally-grown foods. All week I have been eating leaves and I must admit, I feel like one of those preachy health fanatics whose idea of fun is downing shots of wheatgrass juice on Friday nights. The greens I’ve been eating are crisp, organic, and locally-produced, but I have about eight pounds to eat before next week’s farmers market and there are only so many ways one can rethink the salad. I am quickly realizing that it may have been wiser to become a locavore in mid-summer when practically everything is in season, but I am not one to abandon a worthy cause so readily (except for the time when I gladly abandoned my month of vegetarianism for a plate of Roscoes Fried Chicken and Waffles).

In my first week as a locavore convert, I have begun to realize that this commitment required a bit more than leisurely strolling through farmers’ markets for fresh ingredients or perusing cookbooks for new recipes. For one, my GPA is taking a hit. As I have yet to find a coffee farm at a reasonable driving distance from downtown LA (100-mile radius is the distance usually allocated for locavores’ food sources), I have cut myself off from my drug-of-choice and have subsequently been unable to finish much work before my new bedtime of 10pm. The absence of a local flourmill has also slashed sandwiches, pasta, and baked goods from my diet, as well as other imported American staples like bananas, sugar, and chocolate. My friends have become concerned about my health, both physical and mental, and I can’t blame them. Living without pizza and cappuccinos as a college student is sacrilege at best, suicide at worst.

Despite its challenges, the locavore movement has a rapidly increasing fan base from diverse backgrounds, ranging from granola-chompers to the urban food elite, appealing to those who seek to expand their social and political consciousness to their food choices. In our globalized food system, in which most of our food is imported from over 1500 miles away, the common consumer has lost all connection to the origin of his or her food. Formerly exotic food options have become normative banalities, and instead of savoring produce when it’s at its seasonal peak, we demand its tasteless imposter at all other times of the year. These food choices are not only harmful to our personal health, as food that takes over a week to travel to our plates loses a great degree of its taste and nutritional value; they are also disastrous to the sustainability of our environment and local and global communities. When we lose our connection to our food, we also lose our connection to the person who planted, grew, and harvested it. One of the strongest selling points of the locavore mantra is the opportunity to shake the hand of the farmer who grew one’s food and establish accountability and transparency for their farming practices, something conventional, monocrop farming avoids. A higher percentage of our food dollar is given directly to that farmer rather than a faceless middleman or manufacturing company, allowing money to be recycled within a community. By buying locally, consumers also minimize their carbon footprint by reducing their dependency on foreign oil, which is used to process, package, ship, and store our food before we even put it in our grocery carts. It seems that our morning bowl of Cheerios and glass of juice is just as guilty of gas guzzling as a Hummer.

The problem with eating locally is that it requires work, and our culture has reared us to expect instant gratification, especially when it comes to our food. While I am tempted to exchange my kale and mustard greens for a quick and greasy Big Mac, the reward of eating locally and seasonally has never been so great. I am constantly discovering new foods and creating culinary masterpieces that would make Alice Waters proud, such as homemade strawberry rhubarb jam or an asparagus and leek frittata. My locavore experiment is a success, save for my one reclaimed guilty pleasure: a piping hot cup of delicious non-local coffee.