Life Paris Underground
posted by on November 26 at 15:07 PM
This sounds too good to be true:
A secret society of French mechanics snuck into the Panthéon after hours, built a workshop, and spent a year fixing an antique clock that had been abandoned.
Slipping in at closing time every evening – French television said that they had their own set of keys – they set up a workshop hidden behind mock wooden crates at the top of the monument. The security guards never found it. The Untergunther used a professional clockmaker, Jean-Baptiste Viot, to mend the 150-year-old mechanism.
When Untergunther announced they’d fixed the clock, French officials decided to prosecute.
Klausmann and his crew are connaisseurs of the Parisian underworld. Since the 1990s they have restored crypts, staged readings and plays in monuments at night, and organised rock concerts in quarries. The network was unknown to the authorities until 2004, when the police discovered an underground cinema, complete with bar and restaurant, under the Seine. They have tried to track them down ever since.
Mr Kunstmann said that les UX had 150 or so members divided into about ten branches. One group, which is all-female, specialises in “infiltration” – getting into museums after hours, finding a way through underground electric or gas networks and shutting down alarms. Another runs an internal message system and a coded, digital radio network accessible only to members.
Marvelous. Just marvelous.
(Originally via Boing Boing.)
Sweet.
Brasil
Meu Brasil brasileiro
Meu mulato inzoneiro
Vou cantar-te nos meus versos ...
Yes, let's prosecute people who go out and restore national treasures to their original state for nothing but the pleasure of the restoration. No charge to the people.
Hmmmm... That makes sense.
Oh, that is too good to be true. Entirely.
Can't wait for the David Fincher movie! Or God forbid, Bryan Singer.
I think I just figured out what I want to be when I grow up. Wow...
This would be a great movie. My vote to direct would be Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro.
La societe pour la liberation des nains de jardin salute nos liberateurs des espaces trouvees et cachees!
Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!
I can see this. Lots of people in specialized work love doing what they do, and the opportunity to work on an important historical piece like the Pantheon clock would send some hobby/amateur clockmakers' hearts racing.
This sounds very romantic but isn't necessarily a good thing all the time. Actual restoration of antiquities is a very specialized science and there is a big difference between restoration and conservation. Sometimes it is better to leave something in a state of disrepair to maintain its historical integrity than to add a lot of new parts, that is why you sometimes see really ratty looking chairs in museums. There are a great many works of art that have been permanently damamged by bad restoration work in the 19th century, the Mona Lisa being the most famous. While the desire to step in when government underfunds is laudable the results are not always so. About 10 years ago a cab driver here in Seattle decided to "restore" the statue of Chief Sealth downtown near Denny. He used an industrial metal cleaner which had a high acid content that actually scarred and pitted the bronze of the statue. On the upside when real restorers were called in for emergency remediation they discovered that the statue was once gold-leafed and a fund was set up for re-gilding the Chief.
My secret group has spent the last two years fixing the Alaska Way Viaduct. Shhhh! Don't tell!
How about getting them here to fix the clock at King Street Station?
(The abandoned parts of the station are fascinating, by the way. Not that I would know)
@10 to have a secret and (kinda)benevolent society running around doing cool shit, i think, is worth the risk to an old clock. i love history and antiquities, but they all have a story, and now these badasses are part of that story which is really neat. so, nah nah.
My secret society has a mattress and stale beer down a manhole in the CD! Wanna come see it?
Stories like this help restore my faith in humanity.
HAHAHAHAHA. That's awesome. And I am drunk in Indiana. It freakin sucks here.
God, I miss Seattle.
@11 - RE: previous comment. Sorry, did I mention I was drunk?
some have already made a movie about this idea of an underground scene and it was actually starring Pink as a actress.
Seems France loves to party within and on top of its past. The movies free on Fearnet. and it is creeepy. If you like crypts and long tunnel hallways.
Ok. I'm getting out my Emma Peel outfit; now where do I sign up?
Vive La France!
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