Since the Trump election, living in Paris as an American is kind of like being a registered sex offender.

Following Donald Trump’s stunning win, America’s knee jerk reaction has been to “find humour in it all,” which JOHN VON SOTHEN finds downright pathological, especially considering it was partly responsible for Trump’s victory in the first place. 

JOHN VON SOTHEN reveals why Paris’s most diverse and hipster arrondissement has become France’s Ground Zero.

For the past two years, I’ve been a contributor for the online publication Mediapart thanks to a column they’ve given me called Schizofrench. It’s a sandbox of sorts; essays and rants ranging from my love of Moleskin notebooks to my hatred for French flea markets, to the way Airbnb has changed my neighbourhood sitcom. All of it, of course, is super serious and fits in […]

A flea market (vide grenier) visit ranks up there as one of the things people most romanticize about France. Don’t believe the hype says JOHN VON SOTHEN, who’s had his share of an institution that has seen better days

The European elections will soon be upon us, yet it seems I’m the only one who cares. And I can’t even vote! But my interest lie less in the politics of Europe and more in imagining what Europe would look like if they really did go all the way, as in the full federal sense, […]

I don’t care if Liberation folds. I really don’t. I’m done with mourning newspaper deaths, and ever since my native Washington Post sold out to Amazon, I swore I’d never get attached to one again. I also don’t really care if Liberation becomes a Starbucks either or a Foundation Cartier or an Office Depot. What I […]

Every day it seems somebody wants a “bonne adresse” (an inside travel tip basically on where to eat, buy, or see something). It could be the Parisien friend who’s about to visit New York, the American friend about to come to Paris, or the neighbor looking for a good resto in the 10th, not to mention the […]

Everyone in the states nowadays is talking about “the new normal,” which ironically doesn’t sound very American. It’s not like a-mazing! Or OMG! And it has nothing to do with a new music scene or breakfast product from KFC. It’s a term coined by an economist actually, Mohammed El‐Erian of PIMCO (a global investment management […]

In the summer of 2011, I was asked by GQ to write an open letter to DSK. We all know the story. He’d been arrested in May and cuffed and dumped in Rikers Island soon afterward. Upon release, he’d rented out a rich loft in SOHO to plan his defense. Throughout the summer, the case took on a roller […]