When Worlds Collide, or "Globalization Rules!"

Long-time readers of this blog may remember my 2005 post, When Worlds Collide, about the Polish-Mexican Bistro in London's Shepherd Market.

After that I thought I'd seen everything. And then I read an article by Michael Kimmelman in yesterday's NY Times, For Blacks in France, Obama’s Rise Is Reason to Rejoice, and to Hope. I thought my head would explode from cognitive dissonance when I came to this:

[Youssoupha, a Congolese rapper] was nursing a Coke recently at Top Kafé, a Lubavitch Tex-Mex restaurant in Créteil, just outside Paris, where he lives. Nearby, two waiters in yarmulkes sat watching Rafael Nadal play tennis on television beneath dusty framed pictures of Las Vegas and Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. A clutch of Arab teenagers smoked outside.

I read the passage to the Boy Wonder. After bursting out laughing, he proclaimed, "Globalization rules!"