WHO? Deux Mecs, Des Masques… Two Guys, Some Masques…

; Deux Mecs en fêtent 14 Juillet, Wael et Olivier, Le Bleu et Le Rouge (*also credit to Juriel Zeligman, Wael’s partner.)

If you couldn’t fly to  Paris or land on the beach in Biarritz to gaze upon `feu artifice’ or fireworks on the sand for 14 Juillet, or Bastille Day (in English), New York this year offered an adventure, albeit short but fantastical all the same: a quick cruise to Governors Island for the Parisian Ball.

The two captains of this ball — really a rave “plus”– Wael Mechri Yver and Olivier Van Themsche, pictured here, presided over a cast of French dance trance techno deejays and numerous vintage French amusements, like flying swings and giant masks, into whose mechanical mouths we could throw balls and onto whose arms, giant  rings. (Bars were stocked with all kinds of booze and champagne, of course, and Le Gamin, the Brooklyn bistro, served up burgers, croque monsieur, and salad  niciose style.)

The whole scene took me back to a time when I boarded trains all over France with friends, each of us with just a back pack that contained a bathing suit, something to throw over it, and a tooth brush. The rest — unless it was a guitar– we picked up along the way. We weren’t boarding any trains last night but we circled the carousels and danced in the mist (rain drizzle).

Some of us even got to attack the moving masks, not the figurative ones we wear every day to cope in the city, but giant Guignol replicas. How’s that for French therapy? **Photo and video shot by Susan Kirschbaum

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