Apple at Cremerie de Paris
1995, Cremerie de Paris opened an avant-garde Internet café. Some Americans were already using the web while most hotels in Europe were not yet connected. That connection brought American tourists to the café — and a few of them were people you don't meet every day.
September 1999, a dynamic visitor from California tried to sell the Cremerie de Paris a beautiful new translucent computer, the Apple iMac G3. Photos of the computer were stunning, but the café had grown up in a Sony environment — attached to Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony — and didn't want any other brand around. There was also very little money, as there were not yet enough clients using the web.
Two days later, the same man returned with a green Apple iMac G3 in his hands and suggested a deal: "If I offer you this iconic computer, would you find a nice spot for it at your café?" That was an offer the Cremerie de Paris could not refuse.
Talking with him was fascinating. The conversation turned to dot-com domains, and he advised against ever registering hyphenated names (domain-with-dash-signs.com): "These will soon look obsolete, because new, simplified keyboards are coming for mobile devices like phones… In some years most people will navigate the web via phone"
A quarter of a century later, during the 2024 Olympics in Paris, a façade renovation opposite the Cremerie de Paris N°6 freed up space for giant billboards. Apple came by with a beautiful iPad billboard showing a drawing by Simon Landrei. As the poster was being put in place, someone from Apple told the manager of the Cremerie de Paris: "You are one of the few people in France who knew Steve Jobs."
That came as a surprise — because back in 1999, the Cremerie de Paris had never realised that the man who had come by with the computer was Steve Jobs himself. These kind of stories happen around the Cremerie de Paris: it is a place with a lot of magic, mixing all kinds of people, all the time. Apple returned with 5 more billboards, one more kult than the other.
- 📢WhatApple billboards — iPhone 16 & iPad — towering above the Cremerie de Paris.
- 📍WhereCremerie de Paris N°6 · 12 rue de la Ferronnerie, 75001 Paris
- 📅WhenParis Olympics 2024 & Christmas 2024
- 🚊Getting thereChâtelet–Les Halles (RER A·B·D, M1·4·7·11·14), exit N°1 Marguerite de Navarre
- ✨Did you know?A place tied to the child Louis XIV, Coco Chanel and the first Paris internet café — where Steve Jobs once came by.
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The Apple Billboards were so beautiful, they became part of Cremerie de Paris History
When a Cremerie de Paris Pop Up Store is well done, something unique comes with it. The Expo becomes part of the history of a landmark that is a crossroads between past and future — the same place that saw every Bourbon King of France walk through its courtyard at VB (Hôtel de Villeroy-Bourbon) was, at the very dawn of the Internet, an avant-garde Internet café. The Apple Pop Up Store continues to be admired from the homepage of VB.com — the only "two-letter dot-com" in the world connected to a Pop Up Store / Museum location. Thus Apple becomes an online tourist attraction on a prestigious "Visit" tourism website. Internet Users and Paris Lovers will keep discovering the Apple event through time.