Paris at a Certain Age

Springtime in the Streets

It's the ninth annual Festival of Arts in the Streets in the 10th arrondissement where we've been staying.

Canal Saint Martin is draped with fluttering banners in shades of blue: sky blue, marine blue, blue violet. Art events are scheduled all weekend from the marvelous sprawl of Villemin Park, to the restored inner square of Hôpital Saint-Louis (that dates from the same period as Place des Vosges and is constructed in a similar style), to Espace Jemmapes (in spitting distance of Hôtel du Nord), to Place Raoul Follereau. There are performing artists everywhere you look. And the citizens of the 10th are out in force to enjoy it. This city uses its parks to full advantage. And they support the arts in word and deed.

We saw all sorts of performances for both adults and for children. Everywhere you looked there was something going on. Some people walked from one venue to another while others spread out blankets and settled in on one performance space to watch the events or just the other people or even the clouds reflected in the glass of a nearby office building.There was an old-fashioned amusement ride with real baskets for kiddies to sit in, powered by a man turning it by hand.

But it was last night's event that took my breath away and hardened my resolve to find a way to live here permanently.

As dusk fell over the canal, a fantastical white ship floated up along the side of the canal, accompanied by haunting music and a kind of surreal scat singing. It was preceeded by towering white creatures out of a dreamscape and citizens of the 10th followed it in pied piper fashion.

Atop the dreamship, acrobats performed, accompanied by the fanciful music and song. As they traversed the length of the canal and crossed over one of its bridges to return along the other side, more and more people followed, Mardi Gras style. Residents hung out of balconies. And of course no traffic was allowed, so the streets were full of people swaying and dancing. We were all in a fugue state of joy and enchantment.

The ship 'docked' by the park at Square Villemin and the crowds poured in to watch another acrobatic performance there in the park. There were sparklers and light effects and the stilted creatures jumped rope over a string of lights.

For a finale, an enormous sinuous tube wormed onto the field and erupted with a great gush of bubbles that flowed like lava, covering the surface until we were surrounded by tides of bubbles. Adults, children, even dogs danced and swam and pirouetted in the sea of bubbles which shimmered in the reflected light. It was such a magical experience that I expected the crowds to drift upward and fly off into the night.

Metro Gals

I saw these two metro gals sharing their iPod and it reminded me of my teenage friend, Gina Pocekay. I see her in my mind's eye, here in Paris on the metro with her iPod, and I smile.

Going Postal

I had the opportunity to visit the post office today, always an ordeal no matter what country you're in. There are usually long lines in Paris branches, just like in the US. But the post office has a little chart posted outside advising which hours are the least busy, so today's visit was at 9 AM to avoid the crowds. There is a separate commerçante line for storekeepers or business folks.

On a previous visit, I experienced the famous 'Line-Jumpers-of-Paris', folks who brazenly cut ahead of you with clever excuses, ordinary chutzpah or sheer rudeness. The clerks have little sense of being rushed and take all the time they need to complete each transaction in methodical sequence. No multi-tasking here! You can spend 45 minutes in line and then be told it's impossible to send what you want to where you want in the container you want.

But while in line you get to examine how different La Poste in France is from the US Postal Service. Not only are there cash machines, change machines, photo machines, greeting cards and school supplies for sale, there is an entire BANK in the post office. You can get a friggin' mortgage there. As well as telephone cards and ATM cards. And you can arrange to have your computer data backed up through one of their services.

Before I left the apartment for this postal visit, I had carefully packed my carton and sealed it with super-duper tape and made certain it could survive the trans-Atlantic and trans-continental trip it would be making. Only to discover that if I used one of the special La Poste boxes it would cost 30 euros less to mail. I was ready to be told to take my Amerikanski box and go home and return with a real French box or pay the 30 euros extra. But no: the postal guy was not only very cute, he was utterly charming and slowly and methodically sliced open my surgical taping and then slowly and methodically repacked the whole thing in the much more chic French box. All the while being very discrete about the weird crap I had stuffed inside. Not only that, but he was complimentary about my crude French and chatted about Northern California versus Paris (slowly and methodically, of course). Another wonderful lesson on Life in Paris.

More Metro Pub

Another Creepy Metro Ad: 'nuff said.

But then there is this one for a horse event. When you first look at the photo, it resembles the eye of a person, but then gradually you realize it's a horse. Very intriguing and riveting.

La Pub

Compared with the US, Paris is relatively free from the garish signage that permeates modern urban life. Even on television, the commercials are grouped into bunches every 15 minutes or half-hour and you can easily avoid them. These segments are called La pub, short for lapublicité. They seem to be wittier here and a great way to learn French, so ironically I watch more commercials. Advertisers want you to remember their products, so they speak clearly, give lots of visual clues and are easy to understand.

The metro stations have large ads, somewhat smaller than US billboards, and they don't seem quite as offensive. Some are downright intriguing, like this ad for Bigard, a show at Theâtre Comédia in our quartier. Others echo the Magritte exhibit at Musée Maillol right now.

But a few ads are downright creepy. Some of the sci-fi movies playing in Paris right now show people without eyes or mouths and I have to literally turn my ahead and avoid the images if I see I'm walking towards one of them. Others make me wince like the one below. Sab of Paris Set Me Free recently blogged about an ad that I found disturbing as well. In fact, I couldn't even take a photo of it. You'll have to visit his blog to view it.

Fête d'Aligre

On Sunday, after traipsing along le coulée vert (as Tricoquine mentioned is another way of referring to la Promenade Plantée), Iz and I wandered down Boulevard Ledru Rollin. We stopped for sandwiches à emporter at a traiteur and headed to Square Trousseau for an impromptu picnic. Surprise! La Commune Libre d’Aligre was having a neighborhood fête.
There was a wacky band playing Triplets de Belleville and other fun pieces. The band was composed of all ages and they had flutes, horns, saxophones and even a tuba. They hammed it up playing to the crowd while little children roared with laughter and joined in the clowning. Periodically one of the band members would jump off the stand and hold high a posterboard with lyrics so the audience could sing along.

Booths lined the square: political causes, snacks, neighborhood preservation groups, etc.
There was an area for childrens’ fingerpainting with their work on display, taped to trees. Others played ping-pong or clambered over climbing structures and slides. Older folks were out in force and tapped their toes to the beat of the music while lunching with family. A good time was had by all. The public spaces in Paris are well used by the citizenry and designed for joie de vivre.

The Commune Libre d’Aligre is one of four communes of Paris. Montmartre is another (does anyone know the other two? Info would be appreciated). There is a strong history of resistance to oppression in this commune, dating back centuries. Today they are a very active community with a film festival (Cinémaligre), community gardens (Aligresse) and proposals for a café/community center. What a joli quartier in which to live!

Promenade Plantée

The Promenade Plantée is an unusual and amazing park in the 12th arrondissement that I’ve wanted to see for quite awhile. It was the first elevated park in the world, although other cities have since copied the idea. It’s built on top of an old railway viaduc that traveled from the Bastille to the eastern edge of Paris. The trains stopped in 1969, but rather than tearing the structure down and filling in the area with new buildings, they constructed spaces for charming art stores and cafes under the viaduc arches (Viaduc des Arts) with a 4.5 km elevated park on top. You might recognize it if you’ve seen the Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpey movie, Before Sunset. So take a Sunday walk with me along the Promenade Plantée. As always, click on a picture to see a larger view.

des vaches? à Paris?

Cows? In Berkeley?
San Francisco Bay Area folks may remember this Berkeley Farms Dairy advertisement. I had this same reaction on encountering large art cows all over Paris this spring. The Cow Parade concept of auctioning off life-size decorated 'art cows' has been used in many cities around the world for fund-raising. The Paris version is called Vach'Art and will help support the Africa Alive Foundation.

Other cities have adapted this idea into something more thematically appropriate for their locale. San Francisco had hearts. Sonoma County (home of Charles Schultz the cartoonist) had Charlie Browns. Santa Fe had ponies. Park City, Utah had Moose on the Loose. Seattle had pigs (pigs? Something to do with Pike Place Market).

I didn't expect Paris to decorate kitchy Tour Eiffels or Arcs de triomphe. But cows are hardly emblematic of Paris. Two things say Paris to me: little dogs and ladies' scarves. Can't you imagine statues of miniature poodles outfitted in foulards (scarves)?

Food Festival, French-style

Many thanks to the blog Why Travel to France for alerting us to the Salon Saveurs des Plaisirs Gourmands, an expo of regional French gourmet foods. This event takes place twice a year, in May and in December. Fortunately we were able to arrive shortly after it opened on Friday and avoid the expected weekend crowds. Folks came prepared with their shopping trolleys, called poussettes de marché, in order to haul away their bounty.

It was like Bon Marché’s Grande Épicerie crossed with a neighborhood marché, times ten. I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the vendors represented relatively small concerns, many obviously mom-and-pop with their teenage children helping out alongside in the booths. They were quick to inform you of the special qualities imparted by their local terroir. Some were dressed in traditional costumes and many had photo displays of their farms.

It was such a joy to stroll past hundreds of booths, traveling from an enormous display of spices and herbs to a fragrant bread stand to a booth piled high with sausages and cheeses and then on to a wine tasting display next door. The aromas were intoxicating; luckily there were plenty of free samples. What a wonderful introduction to the Région hautes-pyrénées, Région tarn and Région
var!

My favorite area in the expo included the products of Île de Noirmoutier, a 20 kilometer long island on the French Atlantic coast that was an early monastic settlement in the seventh century. The island’s agricultural co-op had a restaurant in the expo where we had huitres (oysters) with bread and wine for lunch. You could taste and smell the ocean while eating the oysters and almost feel the sea breeze across your face. We bought some of the tiny potatoes that are native to the île, nicknamed "Potato Island".

There were ten to twenty different foie gras stands, with enough foie gras to cover the streets of Sonoma. And chocolate: oh, the chocolate! Take note that the loaves of pain au chocolat featured above were the size of rural mailboxes. And there were many macaron makers (not at all like macaroons). The French strawberries, gariguettes, have come into season and were in evidence at the expo. Earlier in our stay, locals had cautioned us against the large, fat ones appearing in the marchés, “They’re Spanish, no good. Wait for the gariguettes, those are the ones that really have taste!” We’ve learned to trust their recommendations.