“Paris of the 80s” really had nothing at all to do with the Paris Cinema, nor was it ever the city’s official motto. T-shirts with the phrase started to appear in 1979, and it was a poignant, wistful, ironic and self-deprecating joke. It was really very clever, and I don’t know whose brainchild it was.

Worcester was downbeat. It was a rustbucket city, and had a perpetual inferiority complex in comparing itself to Boston. Of course, like everywhere, it had its bright and creative people, and it was from these people, and really only among these people, that the phrase circulated. It never got big, but it was a nice little amusement because it held out a little hope.

Paris Cinema, by the way, back then, was not a seedy place. It was an ordinary movie theater showing first run Hollywood movies.

And Worcester, from what I could tell having grown up there with family going back a few generations, was never a grand and glorious place. It had once been a little larger and more thriving, but its essential character remained about the same.