A room with many chairs and tables in it

Onze Bar

Paris – a city anywhere you walk, you can have a visual on at least one café within 100 feet.  Paris – a city where once inside the café, it is common practice to prendre un café or boire un verre at any hour of the day, any day of the week. Paris – a city where relaxing, people watching, and gossiping still take precedent over emails, internet, and business calls while sipping one’s café, unlike the growing ‘coffee shop’ trend elsewhere.

The one bar that I have found that merges both the U.S. coffee shop style with the Parisian style is Onze Bar.  This quaint bar is one of my favorites in Paris, as it offers relatively cheap drinks (5€/pint excluding happy hour), always entertaining company & conversation, a gallery for local artists, and also a music venue for small indie bands.  New York-based painter, Mary Childs, first introduced me to this bar at the exhibition of her paintings back in the fall.

Being located in the 11th arrondissement, Onze (easy to see where they got their name) Bar has the Cheers’ feel where locals come to enjoy a beer and bavarder.  The décor is “grungy vintage†with chairs and couches that tend to resemble furniture found in a college fraternity house.  Yet there is still something classically Parisian about sitting on love seat with exposed springs or on green velour Victorian settee in the middle of a bar.  During the days, one can go here to enjoy a peaceful afternoon of free Wi-Fi, then enjoy a round with the neighbors at the brim of the evening, et finalement watch it morph into a sublime concert hall.

Even though Onze Bar isn’t close to any main landmark, it is in Paris’ mélange of multi-cultural, trendy, on-the-rise area.  It is also not too far from Père Lachaise Cemetary, the Oberkampf area, or Canal Saint-Martin, where the movie Amélie was filmed.  So if you want live music, local art, technological infusion, or the always comforting, traditional Parisian café experience, go to Onze Bar – and don’t forget to say Hi to Morgan, the bartender!

Information:
Address: 83 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 75011
Tel: 01 48 06 11 97
Hours: Tues–Fri: 10:00–2:00am, Sat: 11:00–2:00am, Sun & Mon: 5:00pm–2:00am
Website: http://www.onzebar.com/

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