When Gil and Siles found their dream location for their own place — a dimly lit massage parlor set squarely in view of their alma mater on rue de l'Abbé Grégoire — they set out to transform it.
Down the block, a construction site played host to a parade of distractions, including a tattoo parlor set up in the back of a van, arcade games with metal claws that featured a pack of cigarettes as the big prize, and a beer garden of sorts, where hordes of young factory workers chugged watery beer and chain-smoked over plates of sliced pig knuckles.
There was something vaguely avant-garde about the effect of seeing, say, Morris intone "Die Frist ist um," the phantom mariner's soliloquy in "The Flying Dutchman," while standing in the middle of the ornate parlor set from Franco Zeffirelli's version of "La Traviata".
Indoors, we have one of the parlors set up with electric guitars, a microphone and keyboard.
The most common element, though, is Prince's impressive collection of rare books, many of which have been packed into custom-made covers designed to resemble the leathery bindings of encyclopedias or parlor sets of the Great Books.
He complemented the saccharine walls with rosy furniture from different periods and places, including an Edwardian banquette, a French fin-de-siècle parlor set and 1950's Palm Beach chairs.
Out: their former digs, a living-room-parlor setting that was adorably intimate.
"How Glory Goes" (Nonesuch), her second recording, includes standards from "Show Boat" and "West Side Story," and sweet, modest songs by young composers in varying modes (a lullaby here, a calypso tinge there, a parlor ballad setting of a 19th-century love poem).
Little was resolved at that curt session in the rectory's parlor, but it set the framework for the bitter legal battle that ensued.
AMMAN — Two months ago, the most famous ice cream parlor in Damascus set up a new outlet amid the fast-food joints, stalls selling plastic household goods and offices lining Al Madina Al Munawara Street, a traffic-snarled road in Amman.
