Bastille Day in Santa Monica, Calif.

Posted on July 16, 2007

I went, I saw, I failed. That’s my take-off on veni, vidi, vici ("I came, I saw, I conquered") from Julius Caesar. However, I just went about 25 miles to Santa Monica, Calif., to attend a Bastille Day celebration.

I got there at the opening, and I can only say that it was run with all the panache and bureaucratic splendor of a French government union, meaning to say that it didn’t function at all.

I bought raffle tickets for a trip to France, and the French-speaking booth attendants had no idea what to do with them. I stood and watched for a while as a young woman held them in the palm of her hand, waiting for me to disappear so she could trash them. I guess they already had a winner chosen even though I was the first to buy tickets.

I bought a glass of French red wine, which the server poured generously (thank you for that), but it didn’t taste very good. I looked at the food booths, and there were three. One served panini, which isn’t even French. Another served bread (no takers), and a third served cous-cous dishes, which looked tempting but not in the least special (and oh-so-colonial!).

I did buy a Josephine Baker poster and a t-shirt for my wife (made by an American artist out to capitalize), but I left fairly quickly. Maybe the Santa Barbara fest with its Vietnamese food is better. I’ll try that next year–unless they dredge my raffle tickets out of the trash and proclaim me the winner.

I’m not holding my breath on that.

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