Coming Attractions

I wasn't aware until I saw it on this blog (which, by the way, is quite wonderful) that there was an actual name for those green, twirly column thingies that advertise movies and shows in Paris.  And doesn't the term Colonne Morris sound so much more refined and sophisticated?

Of course, learning the term merely piqued my curiousity about the name Morris and I let my fingers do the walking to find out that M. Morris, a printer,  first constructed them back in 1868, copying a similar structure in Berlin.  The company was purchased by JCDecaux, the French advertising giant, back in 1986.  As of 2006 (the last statistics I could find), there were 790 of these columns in Paris.  Several of which do double duty as either phone booths or public toilets although happily not both.