Cabaret Populaire - Culture Rapide

Chill bar in Belleville and probably one of the few spots that still has affordable drinks in Paris. Quite diverse with lots of character and traces of different cultures and times.

Cool concept, nice outdoor seating among Parisian graffitis. You can sit there absorb the summer vibe of Belleville and have a nice conversation with friends. The staff won’t interrupt you.

I went there with a friend - A chill and friendly bar, with nice outdoor seating. When we visited there was an open mic night in English. There was a lot of poetry and poems, a few standup comedies and a few songs - all in English

great and chill experience until the owner arrived and started shouting. upon being asked to calm down he started yelling that he was at home, that it wasn't a 'camping' and that he wasn't going to make enough money from friends sharing a table (?). he then proceeded to call customers trying to intervene nazis. completely erratic behaviour. apparently it's not a rare occurrence, as reviews from past years seem to describe similar situations. visit at your own risk.

Come have a drink on the patio lots of seating. It can get hot inside but worth it for the events they put on. Great atmosphere and vibe if you looking for an alternative to the ritzy side of Paris. Perfect place to park yourself at the end of the day if you enjoy a plastic patio chair with good company.

Cozy place to visit

The decoration in this bar is incredibly busy and inspired, and the perfect backdrop for the open-mic nights they have regularly. Drinks are cheap and varied, the bartender is friendly and cocktails are inventive. As is often the case in Paris, the Culture Rapide toilets are in the basement. To reach them you have to wind down a spiral staircase of such frightening narrowness that only one person can occupy it at any time, i.e. there’s room for either a person going up or a person coming down. As the person at the top can see the person coming up better than the person coming up can see the person going down, courtesy has it that the person coming down will wait for the person coming up to pass before engaging descent. It’s an inverse snipper situation: in this case socially advantageous to the person coming up, who proceeds from a tactically inferior position of lower ground and therefore collects more value from the unwritten protocol of who gets to use the staircase. The irony is that the person going down generally has a more pressing urge to get to the toilet than the person coming up who has already relieved him/herself. The staircase railing is brightly painted in craft style and the preceding wait tends to transform the descent into an experience it wouldn’t otherwise have been (this is what economists refer to as the anchoring effect). The narrowness of the staircase structures the descent into a screw-like movement: you turn more than you descend, fabricating an illusion that you are not being carried down by gravity but are actively pushing up the whole rest of the establishment and pulling the toilet space toward yourself. When you reach the bottom, a new social enigma is presented: the men have a urination stall whereas the women line up for a closed stall. The urination stall is in full view of the lineup for the closed stall, which transforms the urination process into a kind of performance reserved for men. Given that Culture Rapide is a performance setting, frequently hosting slam poetry and open mic events, it’s difficult not to rise to the performance challenge, even if this means acting out an insouciance that belies the reality of urinating in view of a human lineup. It’s essentially a performance urinal. The hand dryer is very noisy, the acoustics of the sink space funneling sound directly into the main room above, often blanketing the voices of stage performers. Really, it’s a performance hand dryer.

I went to see a band called Jingle Django here back in March and it was great. The lady behind the bar was very pleasant and helpful, and the place itself felt very welcoming. I'd definitely go back!

This place is pretty sweet. We first discovered it during the warm weather days and loved it for its large outdoor terrace seating. Drinks are cheap and good, chill vibes emanate. Inside, the place is definitely dive bar to the max - but that's what I love about this place. On Thursday nights, there's an English open mic. We stumbled upon that one night unexpectedly, but had a good time! One of belleville's gems. If aux folies is packed, why not give this place a shot?