Renting a desk in an open office full of random people? Sounds like a horrible work environment.
I've turned down jobs in the past because they were in open offices, and I might still do so today. I basically agree with you that it's a bad idea to work full-time in an open office. But, for a three days a week kinda work place, just for a change of pace and an excuse to take a walk out of my house, it's been really nice. I plan to start checking for co-working spaces when I first get to a new city. It gives me some much-needed variety in my work day, gets me communicating with other people in tech in the city I'm in, and provides some other benefits (some of those benefits: there are distractions but they're different than at home and at coffee shops, the internet is faster than my home internet or most coffee shop WiFi though this may not be true for everyone, quieter than coffee shops, not home so I can fixate on work and not whether dishes or laundry needs doing, etc.).
I'd like to visit Paris one of these days, maybe once my French is stronger. I could see signing up for this for a while.
That said, I also spent some time at the ATX Hackerspace which did have a bunch of startuppy types, and it was mostly free of bullshit, too, because so much of the focus there was on the hacking and not the "I just need to raise $x million and this thing's gonna explode!" mindset. So, conversation in that space were about laser CNCs, 3D printing, and electric cars, rather than everybody trying to give their (too-long) elevator pitch to as many people as possible.
just go to paris now. unless you are absolutely fluent, parisians will just respond in english.
I have a private office now and, amazingly, it costs no more. But the irony is that I only found out about it through someone I'd met in the previous open office.