He dreamed of re-acquaintance with the whole world: an American for 40 years gathered dozens of people for dinner

Jim Gaines was an icon of the Swinging Sixties, an American in Paris who became famous for inviting hundreds of thousands of strangers to dinner at his home. He died this month. His story is told by Vicky Baker for Air force. Next - from the first person.

Photo: video frame YouTube / ellpic

Last February I made my last trip abroad before the lockdown. I bought a ticket at the last minute and jumped on the Eurostar to Paris, driven by a sudden urge to dine with a friend. Jim Gaines was in his 80s, his health was deteriorating, but I knew that he would be glad to me. Jim was always happy to have guests.

The purpose of this journey now seems controversial in the era of the pandemic. I was far from the only guest in his studio in the 14th arrondissement of Paris that rainy winter evening. Inside, people were jostling shoulder to shoulder in the narrow kitchen. Strangers started talking, teaming up, holding food on paper plates and reaching out to fill their glasses from a shared paper bag of wine.

For over 40 years, Jim opened his doors to everyone every week. Anyone could come to an informal dinner - all you had to do was call or email him to add your name to the list. No questions asked. When you arrive, place your donation in an envelope.

The air hummed as people of different nationalities—locals, immigrants, travelers—filled the small open-plan space. A pot of hearty food was smoking on the stove, which was then poured into plates and placed on the common table. Jim is accidentally nicknamed the “Godfather of Social Media.” He started connecting strangers long before it became a trend in Silicon Valley.

I met Jim when he was already a venerable age, but his whole life was exceptional. He was born in 1933 in Louisiana and lived in Venezuela as a teenager. He founded the Arts Lab, an alternative culture center in London, where he interacted with David Bowie, John Lennon and Yoko Ono; founded a magazine on sexual freedom in Amsterdam, and later became a teacher of sexual policy in Paris, where he settled in 1969.

At the same time, he was often considered a son of Scotland - due to the influence that his stay there had in the 50s and 60s. He founded Edinburgh's first bookshop to sell paperback books, co-founded the Traverse Theater and helped launch the Fringe Festival.

When Jim died earlier this month aged 87, his Herald obituary described him as “the unofficial agent of the Beat generation in Scotland”.

Although many respected people, as a rule, after achieving success choose to communicate in a small circle, Jim never stopped reaching out to new people. I first found out about him when I received an unexpected email in 2008.

I wrote an article from Barcelona - not the famous Spanish one, but from the one on the coast of Venezuela - and it brought back memories for him. His father worked in the oil business and moved there with his family when Jim was a teenager.

My article talked about meeting people through the Couchsurfing website, where locals opened their doors for free to strangers around the world. This was before AirBnB came along to monetize the idea, and Jim loved the concept of non-profit cultural exchange.

“When you get back to Europe, come for dinner,” he wrote and promised to tell me about his own travel project, which he thought I might like.

Intrigued, soon after returning I went to Paris. I imagined some kind of private dinner with the cultural elite, but what I saw was more reminiscent of a student party - albeit with more mature guests and moderate alcohol consumption (Jim did not drink, and his parties ended strictly before 23:00).

Photo: video frame YouTube / ellpic

Jim congratulated me like an old friend, and while we were talking, he pulled a book from his living room shelf. “People for people,” I saw on the cover. This was the project he wanted to tell me about.

He explained that in the late 1980s he founded a series of reference books for countries behind the Iron Curtain. Instead of standard descriptions of attractions and hotel listings, their format resembled an address book and contained contact information for hundreds of people in that country. It was couchsurfing, but offline.

The book he gave me was about Poland. I liked it and decided to go there to see if the participants are still ready to host random guests, given that so much has changed.

Information about people was posted depending on the city where they lived. These were two or three lines from their address, date of birth, phone number and hobbies. Thanks to Google and regular mail, I was able to reach several of them. Most of them knew Jim either personally or through friends. Everyone had fond memories of the project, they were still ready to act as local guides to show me their city.

In Gdansk, I asked civil servant Kristina Wrublewska why she decided to take part in projects. She said that she worked as a media fixer, helping journalists cover anti-communist strikes at the shipyard.

“They [the media] were looking for women with headscarves and horses with carts, repeating the same old picture. I wanted to meet people to break stereotypes and show that not all the images in your head correspond to reality,” she said.

“I was surprised at how easy it was,” Jim told me. He prepared guides for Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Baltics and Russia, in which thousands of local residents contributed.

“Some older people in Russia were afraid to be on the Western list because they thought it would be easier to find them and take them out,” he said. - But many young people wanted to get into the book... I received bags of mail. I'm sure the local postman wondered what was going on."

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Over the years, authorities often asked what was going on at Jim's home. Particularly when he started making fake passports. It was back in the 1970s when he was inspired by an American traveler who had renounced his American citizenship 20 years earlier and created his own “world passport.”

For Jim, non-national passports seemed to embody his ideals of peace and global freedom. So he turned his house into an “embassy” and began making world passports for anyone who wanted one. The documents were so convincing that some people used them to cross borders.

“Look, you can't do this. You must stop making passports,” said the irritated French policemen standing at his door. But Jim continued - until he ended up in court. Although he was eventually acquitted of fraud and forgery charges, he was found guilty of "misleading the public."

Jim has always denied the idea that it was a naive undertaking, but according to some of his friends, he was very gullible and this led to financial mistakes and legal problems for many years.

“I often had to stop him from signing something. Sometimes he didn’t even read it,” says his son Jasper, who was born to Jim’s marriage to Vivek Reuterskjold in the 1960s.

Photo: video frame YouTube / ellpic

Jasper grew up in Stockholm after their divorce, but has been visiting Paris every summer since he was 10.

“There were mattresses on every free piece of floor, people sleeping everywhere,” he says, recalling his previous visits. “It was exciting and fun, but sometimes I felt jealous. Like many. People were very supportive of him. People wanted to have the rights to it, but no one succeeded."

Jasper says his father opened the world to him. He made extensive use of his father's address books while traveling, and now lives with his family in Bangkok, where he has tried to replicate his father's Sunday dinners: "Only for six months... It was a lot of work."

During the 1990s, Parisian dinners became increasingly crowded as the hippie generation grew older. But then a new wave of young visitors appeared. Bloggers found out about Jim.

“The Internet both destroyed and saved dinners,” says Seamus McSweeney, a close friend who has helped organize Sunday get-togethers for decades. “They became less spontaneous as people tried to book their place six months in advance - which was incompatible with Jim's travel and also annoying as these people often didn't show up. But at the same time, these articles on the Internet revived the idea. There was a young crowd and new energy."

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At the peak, Jim hosted up to 120 guests, filling his studio and backyard. An estimated 150 people have attended it over the years.

“The doors were always open,” says Amanda Morrow, an Australian journalist who lived with Jim for a year and a half. “There was a constant flow of guests—some wanted to stay, others just wanted to say hello.” Jim never turned anyone down."

“The only thing that really upset Jim was when people left,” Jasper says. - It was difficult for him. He didn’t like to be alone... Although, fortunately, there was usually a new person to distract him.”

During my last visit to him, he looked weak and exhausted by various ailments, but he also radiated pleasure and never tired of being a conductor of human communication.

“I was wondering when you would be back,” he told me in the American accent he never lost.

Photo: video frame YouTube / ellpic

This was a man who spent time with Lennon and Bowie, who was once friends with Sonya Orwell and walked around Paris with Beckett. And yet he made everyone feel special. Every person mattered.

“It was like a politician's tricks, but he did it naturally,” says Seamus.

The latest coronavirus restrictions have had a significant impact on his schedule, but his friends say the pandemic hasn't depressed him. He assumed that the meetings would resume, and enjoyed the company of a limited number of people.

He died in his sleep on January 6, and his life is very accurately described by the words of Jesper: “His goal from the beginning was to reacquaint the whole world. And he almost succeeded."

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