JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Mark Bustos. Credit: Ramsay de Give for The New York Times

Every Sunday, Mark Bustos, 30, a hairstylist at Three Squares Studios, an elite salon in Chelsea that charges $150 to clients like Norah Jones, Marc Jacobs and Phillip Lim, hits the sidewalk and provides free cuts to the homeless.

Mr. Bustos often wanders around Union Square, the Lower East Side and Midtown, where he has gotten to know some of the homeless by name. “See that guy over there,” he said, walking down the Bowery. “That’s Cowboy Ritchie,” whose wife, Mr. Bustos added, “wants him to shave his beard off because it looks too good and the other women flirt with him.”

Other times, Mr. Bustos meets his unsuspecting new clients through friends and paying clients, who tell him about people in their neighborhoods. He does up to 10 haircuts a day.

Read A Hairstylist Provides Free Cuts to the Homeless in the NYT.

The Spiral Staircases of Budapest

These images would’ve come in handy in James Marsh’s melodramatic Stephen Hawking biopic, The Theory of Everything. Read our review at InterAksyon.com.

Finally the van approached the Fondation Louis Vuitton and we could see the building with our own eyes. It is amazing. It is as if a zeppelin crash-landed on Waterworld, and the scavengers made a giant sailboat with the parts. How does it stand up? More importantly, how can the art inside compete with the exterior?

We were disgorged by the van into a long queue for tickets, even if it was just two and a half hours before closing time. Tickets in hand, we joined the next queue at the main entrance. Above the main door is a big, glittering LV logo that made me feel like I was entering an enormous handbag. A guard inspected our bags while a lady with a clipboard asked each visitor where she was from. There was some discussion over whether some Americans with a baby in a stroller should be admitted. The experience was not unlike being judged by the doorman before gaining entry into a trendy nightclub.

Read our article at BusinessWorld.

Naah, the famed New York bookstore is still doing well in the age of Amazon, but its survival depends on whether the next generation of owners continues to love books. Because they are sitting on very expensive real estate.

Read How the Strand keeps going in the Age of Amazon, in New York magazine.

Every bakery claims to make the best baguette in Paris. This bakery in Montmartre does not care to be in that overcrowded group. It proudly proclaims itself the second best in the region.

The cat at the grocery doesn’t care because cats don’t eat carbs (except in Italy, where cats eat pasta), but he’s very friendly.

Paris is beautiful and filthy, like a supermodel with a PhD who doesn’t change her underwear. Or a very hot guy genius with skid marks, except that Paris is obviously feminine. Male or female, it goes without saying that they will cheat on you with everything that moves. And you still would, because it’s Paris.

There is the real risk of getting Stendhal Syndrome—overdosing from the sight of so much beauty that you lose consciousness. Try not to succumb outdoors, as you will either land on dog poop or a homeless person. The homeless are mostly Eastern Europeans begging on the streets. There are shelters where they can spend the night as it’s getting very cold, but apparently it’s safer to sleep outdoors. In Montmartre, which is clearly divided into immigrant and bobo (bohemian bourgeois) sections, the residents have expressed solidarity with the newcomers, providing them with hot food and doing their laundry. Periodically the homeless immigrants are rounded up, given 300 euros, and deported. They come back.

Read our column at InterAksyon.com.

Here’s a very abridged translation of Valerie Trierweiler’s tell-all book about her relationship with French President Francois Hollande.

And a report on how Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin couldn’t name any books by Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano. Oh the scandal.