Humor & Life Quote by Fred Allen

Paris sells itself as revelation: boulevards, art, romance, the whole export package. Fred Allen punctures that balloon in nine words by pointing out the most aggressively unromantic greeter imaginable: a taxi. The joke isn’t just that cabs are ubiquitous. It’s that the “first thing” a visitor notices is not the Eiffel Tower but the machinery of arrival - money, motion, friction, and minor panic.

Allen, a radio-era comedian with a journalist’s ear for deflation, turns travel writing inside out. The line mimics the voice of the wide-eyed tourist (“the first thing that strikes...”) and then swerves into literalism. “Strikes” does double duty: it’s what impresses you, and what a taxi might actually do in Paris traffic. That ambiguity gives the gag its snap, suggesting a city experienced not as postcard but as contact sport.

The subtext is anti-mystique. Paris isn’t a fantasy you step into; it’s a place that immediately puts you in a transaction, a negotiation with a driver, a meter, a destination you’re already late to. Allen’s era matters here: mid-century tourism was booming, American visitors were arriving with big cultural expectations, and cities were modernizing fast. The taxi becomes a symbol of modern urban life as the real first impression - standardized, hurried, faintly hostile to your daydreams.

It’s also a sly democratization of Paris. Anyone can “get” a taxi; not everyone will “get” Paris. Allen invites you to laugh at the gap between the city’s myth and the city’s curbside reality.