Bastille Day

For those who seek any excuse for a party, take note: Bastille Day is at hand. With the French, Bastille Day is the equivalent of America's Independence Day. It celebrates the storming of Paris' Bastille prison - a day after Marie Antoinette suggested "Let them eat cake" - and the French people's overthrow of the monarchy. So let's all be French and salute the revolution on its 203d anniversary. Bastille Day is always a big deal at La Truffe, the French restaurant at 10 S. Front St., and this Tuesday will be no exception.

Construction workers look down from the French-owned Sofitel Hotel, being built at 17th and Sansom streets. The city yesterday - Bastille Day - designated the area Philly's French Quarter. The 300-room hote will open in February 2000.

They were ordinary merchants in the French port of Calais when the English army laid siege in the 14th century, but they became national heroes when they offered themselves as human sacrifices to save their city. In the end, King Edward III was so moved by the gesture that he released the captives and spared the town. The Burghers of Calais, as immortalized in Auguste Rodin's heart-rending eponymous sculpture, were liberated a second time Thursday - fittingly, Bastille Day - when Philadelphia officials formally dedicated their new home in the refurbished Rodin Museum gardens.

When the outraged peasantry of 18th century Paris stormed the Bastille, it touched off the French Revolution. They might have spared Marie Antoinette's head if she had had the foresight to import some of Philadelphia's famous packaged pastry.

SAINT-FLOUR, France - On Bastille Day, the biggest national holiday of the year, France celebrated the longest stage of the 2004 Tour de France in great style. The 147-mile 10th stage was marked by a Frenchman who won the tour's first mountain stage and another who held on to the yellow jersey as the overall leader. Richard Virenque won the stage with a strong solo ride, moving a step closer to his goal of becoming the first seven-time winner of the pink-spotted jersey as best climber.

Allons, everybody. It's Bastille Day. It was 197 years ago that the Paris mobs stormed the (then) 400-year-old Bastille prison and got the French Revolution into high gear. And the occasion will be observed here in Philadelphia in a number of ways by Franco-Americans seeking to celebrate their heritage and by others who are just looking for an excuse to party. In the forefront of the observances here is the Alliance Francaise, an organization of about 600 Francophiles in the Philadelphia area.

London Grill owner Terry Berch McNally will celebrate Bastille Day tomorrow as usual - by dressing up as Marie Antoinette and reenacting the storming of the Bastille in 1789, a symbol of French uprising and nationhood. She'll also offer foie gras at her Fairmount Avenue restaurant, in the shadow of the massive Eastern State Penitentiary. Meanwhile, protesters who want to ban the French delicacy were ordered yesterday not to disrupt the "uprising" - or at a minimum to stay 50 feet away from the restaurant and leave their bullhorns home.

When one thinks of France, one thing that comes to mind is fine wine. At least that was the case at the Bucks County Winery in Solebury Township as an open house was held last weekend in honor of Bastille Day. Wine-tasting, a tour of the facility and music was included at the festival. For those who missed the event, take heart: The winery has an Italian festival next month and a harvest festival in October.

To Edwin Easton, the difference between the way the United States celebrates the glorious Fourth and the way France celebrates the glorious Fourteenth, Bastille Day, can be summed up in one word: barbecues. The French don't have them, Easton says. And the balconies with the apartments many French inhabit are too small for barbecues, anyway. Easton, a retired lawyer, and his wife, Daniele, a native of France who heads the local French-American Association, were warming up Thursday, along with 200 guests who attended a pre-Bastille Day fete at International House given for members of the French American community by Claude Fay, the French consul general in Washington.

"The people have no bread," yelled a rabble-rouser wearing a three-cornered hat. "Let them eat Tastykake!" the queen shouted back, elegant in a white wig, gemstone earrings and a long gown. With that declaration yesterday, Marie Antoinette reenactor Terry McNally and her helpers, all dressed in 18th century finery, threw the cakes from the top of Eastern State Penitentiary into the street. Below, thousands of men, women and children celebrating Bastille Day in front of the former prison, now a historic site in the Fairmount section of the city, tried to catch the 1,500 Tastykakes and Twinkies tossed by Marie Antoinette and the other royalists.

Special Events Bastille Day London Grill owner Terry McNally hosts Day celebration. London Grill, 2301 Fairmount Ave. 7/16. 2 pm. Bastille Day: Fairmount Goes French Wheel of Fortune Night Compete in trivia games about France to win prizes. London Grill, 2301 Fairmount Ave. 7/15. 7 pm. Boat to Bartram's Garden River Tour Down the Schuylkill. Tour the botanic gardens & Bartram House. Schuylkill Banks, Market St.; Reservations required: 215-222-6030 Ext 100. $30; $20 children 12 and under.

They were ordinary merchants in the French port of Calais when the English army laid siege in the 14th century, but they became national heroes when they offered themselves as human sacrifices to save their city. In the end, King Edward III was so moved by the gesture that he released the captives and spared the town. The Burghers of Calais, as immortalized in Auguste Rodin's heart-rending eponymous sculpture, were liberated a second time Thursday - fittingly, Bastille Day - when Philadelphia officials formally dedicated their new home in the refurbished Rodin Museum gardens.

Friday-Sunday Run for your lives! Fans of '50s-era B-movie kitsch will have a field day at Phoenixville's 11th annual BlobFest, a festival celebrating the classic sci-fi movie The Blob, filmed in and around Phoenixville. The event begins Friday at the Colonial Theatre with a reenactment of the movie's famous "running out of the theater" scene at 9 p.m.; although tickets to the theater have been sold out, visitors can watch the mayhem from bleachers across the street. The festival will continue Saturday with a street fair and a Fire Extinguisher Parade (in the movie, a fire extinguisher is used to defeat the Blob)

Talking drums along the Delaware, beguiling splashes of West African guitar and keyboard, intoxicating vocal melodies in mellifluous Yoruban wafting up the sloping green hill where an appreciative crowd took it all in, a postcard-perfect summer sunset backdrop of Philadelphia across the water - only a serious killjoy could find much fault in the 100-minute set of Nigeria's King Sunny Ad? at Camden's Wiggins Park Riverfront Stage on Tuesday. Born 62 years ago as Sunday Adenyi, the easygoing Ad? spoke only a few words in English but handily communicated through both language-transcending exuberance and subtlety, proving anew his mastery of the juju genre.

Stephen Starr has often said the "most fun" aspect of his business is the process of creating his restaurant "children" - a brood of 18 stretching from Walnut Street to Atlantic City to New York. But when the kids turn out to be as gargantuan and unruly as Parc, the mega-bistro he has conjured up for Rittenhouse Square, a little extra attention to the after-care is also in order, in both the dining room and the kitchen. I can only imagine the fun Starr and designer Shawn Hausman experienced in putting together Parc.

London Grill owner Terry Berch McNally will celebrate Bastille Day tomorrow as usual - by dressing up as Marie Antoinette and reenacting the storming of the Bastille in 1789, a symbol of French uprising and nationhood. She'll also offer foie gras at her Fairmount Avenue restaurant, in the shadow of the massive Eastern State Penitentiary. Meanwhile, protesters who want to ban the French delicacy were ordered yesterday not to disrupt the "uprising" - or at a minimum to stay 50 feet away from the restaurant and leave their bullhorns home.

A Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge ruled this afternoon that protesters of foie gras cannot interfere with Bastille Day festivities planned for this Saturday at the London Grill restaurant on Fairmount Avenue. The ruling slightly relaxed the stipulations of a temporary restraining order set in place last Friday. According to today's decision, the protesters -- members of the nonprofit animal rights group called Hugs for Puppies -- cannot enter the Fairmount neighborhood on Saturday except to have no more than four people handing out pamphlets more than 50 feet away from the restaurant.

Celebrations were erupting all around us. My friends and I had been on a riverboat in the south of France, and we were surprised and delighted when we realized we would be arriving in Paris on July 14, Bastille Day. As soon as we arrived at the hotel, not wanting to squander such an opportunity, we nearly assaulted the concierge, and quickly agreed our best bet would be a dinner cruise on the Seine culminating in fireworks at the Eiffel Tower....

SAINT-FLOUR, France - On Bastille Day, the biggest national holiday of the year, France celebrated the longest stage of the 2004 Tour de France in great style. The 147-mile 10th stage was marked by a Frenchman who won the tour's first mountain stage and another who held on to the yellow jersey as the overall leader. Richard Virenque won the stage with a strong solo ride, moving a step closer to his goal of becoming the first seven-time winner of the pink-spotted jersey as best climber.

Spain ignored Saudi-backed mosque, bombing panel told The Spanish government deliberately ignored a mosque frequented by suspects in the March 11 Madrid train bombings because the facility was financed by oil-supplier Saudi Arabia, an academic testified yesterday. Spanish authorities knew for years the Islamic Cultural Center adhered to the Wahabi fundamentalist movement sponsored by Saudi Arabia, Islam expert Jesus Nunez told a commission investigating the bombings. "Until now the West in general - and Spain as part of it - closed its eyes to what Wahabism means as a rigorous doctrine that violates human rights," said Nunez.