This American Life

Did anyone catch the "Americans in Paris" show on This American Life? I ended up missing the beginning and the end but got a good chunk of the middle. Most of it was by or about David Sedaris. As Sedaris fans may remember from his book Me Talk Pretty One Day, he basically wound up in Paris with little to no knowledge of French, nor a particular affinity for French culture. And he's not famous over there, either. He has never been to the Pantheon, but he watches a movie a day, loves the frozen food store Picard, and frequents Deyrolle, purveyor of taxidermized animals (I guess he finds cool stuff there for his sister Amy of "Strangers with Candy" fame).

Weirdly enough, I was just checking some page numbers in Adam Gopnik's wonderful (but ever so faintly nauseating) book Paris to the Moon and he alludes to collecting posters from Deyrolle, too! So, kids, if you are looking to meet American expatriate writers in Paris, forget stinky old Shakespeare & Co, go to Deyrolle!

I have never been to Deyrolle, or Shakespeare & Co (I'll write on my immoderate love of Gibert Joseph someday) but I did get a kick out of the segment on Grand Jury butter. Apparently David is in charge of the shopping but Hugh, his partner, screamed at him because David served Ira Glass (the host of TAL) "Grand Jury" brand butter, which was a humiliation beyond recovery. Grand Jury is the store brand for ... what is it, Casino grocery stores? so obviously anyone with that on their table is un-discerning to the extreme. Monsieur will serve "Président" to the guests, I suppose.

What if there were a "Sénat" butter, or a "Chambre des députés" butter? Where would that fit in the hierarchy?

There was also a segment about race, class, and cross-cultural relations-- unfortunately the name of the woman interviewed doesn't come to mind, I'll listen to the bit again and correct this post-- but it was fascinating to listen to her commentary on the way Paris made her think about different parts of her identity and how they could be highlighted or ignored depending on the situation: when walking into a store, is it better to come off as Black or American?

Trannies on parade!

OK, so after the previous wonky and dry discussion of the squatter expulsion at Cachan, I have to have a more interesting post.

Libération reports that there was a "prostitute pride" march on Saturday from Pigalle to the Centre Pompidou. In France, prostitution is legal in and of itself, but criminalized indirectly through a variety of laws, including one against "racolage passif" or "passive soliciting" passed in 2003.

Anyway, guess who is the first person quoted and identified by name in the article? "Maîtresse Nikita, dominatrice et prostituée depuis trente et un ans, Jean-François dans le civil, perruque noire, juchée sur des bottines à talons effilés." Yup, a trannie dominatrix in platform stilettos! After her, who do we have, according to this article? Another trannie (no stilettos, though), a young man named Venus with "ballerina legs" and a hooded guy on a leash. Then a token ethnologist-activist, and another trannie bringing up the rear.

This is such a common theme in newspaper and TV reports on gay pride marches, especially in France, so it's not a big surprise that it pops up here again, just a mildly depressing one.

Six-foot-tall transsexuals in platforms tend to realize that they attract a lot of attention to themselves and don't have a problem with it. They can be awesome spokespeople. And of course at least one of the goals of gay pride marches, at least when they started, was to épater la bourgeoisie, and I'm sure that was part of the appeal of a prostitutes' pride march. But I feel that the "lead with the trannie" approach to journalistic coverage of every single public event of sex and gender revendication ends up feeling a little tired and slightly insincere.

I get the feeling that Libération is generally sympathetic to the plight of the prostitute, especially since they hate Sarkozy too. Le Monde doesn't seem to have any coverage at all. However, the article seems to hold the marchers at arm's length. There is as much coverage of what the marchers look like-- at least the more colorful ones-- as coverage of what they are protesting or hope to achieve. The wardrobe descriptions are more precise than the description of the political platform. Add to that the categorizations-- "les arpenteuses latino-américaines des allées du bois de Boulogne" and "les bitumeuses de la rue Saint-Denis" and this article feels a lot like objectification, not solidarity.

local vs. national

The drama of the evacuated squatters at Cachan continues. About 200 of the squatters who have refused to be housed elsewhere are now living in a municipal gymnasium across the street from the university dorm complex. According to Libération, the city government had first refused to provide a shelter for the expelled squatters since that would "perennize" the situation. But, continues Libération, the Socialist mayor changed his mind when the CRS (police force under the direct supervision of the Interior Ministry, not the local police prefecture) charged a group of the squatters, mostly women and children, who were camped out on the sidewalk in front of their former home, Building F. Le Monde doesn't report that incident.

So, if I understand correctly, here we have a local-national conflict. The local (left) government doesn't want to get involved in the situation that the national police have created by evicting squatters from a university building. In order for CRS to enter university property, the Recteur in charge of the IUT (technical university) of Cachan (It's part of Université Paris XI-Sud, in the Academie de Versailles if I am not mistaken), ie, a representative of the national government, has to ask them to do so.

According to Le Monde, forced evacuations of this sort have become more and more common recently. The article quotes local elected officials on the left protesting the police prefects' increasing approval of force to expel squatters (there is no mention of CRS involved in evicting squatters specifically, just the local police approving interventions). This is partly because, the article states, the government has to pay damages to proprietors when it doesn't expel the squatters.These damages have increased substantially in recent years, and the state had even fallen behind in its payments in some cases. This suggests another type of conflict, between local politicians and the local police prefects-- that is, again, between local government and national government (or its representatives).

All this administrative complication is giving me a headache! I'm worried I don't understand these articles since they're about French government and administration, not about la belle ville de Paris ...

Dormitories

The dormitory of a girls' high school in the 16 arrondissement is open for an exhibit this summer. Hector Guimard, the architect of the dormitory, publicized his work by having postcards printed. This article in Libération also describes several Guimard buildings within walking distance of the exhibit.

There's another article about a dormitory in today's Libération. A vacant university residence in Cachan, a suburb of France, has been evacuated of its squatter residents, some illegal immigrants. The dormitory has the reputation of being the largest "squatt" in France, with reportedly "thousands" of residents. The sound clip included with the article is mostly the reactions of nearby students.

Paris street markers

If you 've ever had even the smallest glimmer of interest in Paris, you probably know Parisian street markers, blue-and-white plaques marking the street and arrondissement.Via Cabinet Magazine online, I found a link to a history of Parisian street markers. Until 1728, streets didn't necessarily have marked names, and the first practical markers were stone tablets.

The website has some examples. You can still see a lot of these old street signs in central Paris. The site also gives the rules established for naming streets. The outer arrondissements of Paris are particularly interesting for the "pantheon" of modern public figures-- French and non-, Nobel prizewinners, writers, artists, scientists, politicians-- who have gained the immortal fame of having a Parisian street named after them. No "Oak" and "Elm" and "Broad" and "Chestnut" for Paris!

When helping a friend with a dissertation on street numbering systems, I learned that there were no street numbers till the 18th century, either. Here's a site that explains that houses had numbers, but they were based on tax registries, so they didn't proceed in order and probably weren't all that useful for locating an address! A page from the Postal Service website explains that large houses outside of the Farmers General Wall were required to be numbered beginning in 1726. Another system, established in 1775, numbered each house on a street sequentially but the numbering started at an arbitrary point, continued up one side of the street and down the other to return to the starting point. Yet another system was "sectionary" which suggests to me a system like that in Venice- numbering goes sequentially up and down streets in a whole neighborhood.

A certain Choderlos de Laclos, best known for having written the epistolary novel "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" (that's "Dangerous Liaisons," like the Glenn Close/John Malkovich movie), wrote up a proposal for street numbering that was essentially the one eventually adopted. This site includes a decree from the revolutionary Paris Commune in 1793 to get rid of all the old street numbering systems and adopt a new one, but it does not explain how the new numbers would be assigned. It wasn't until the Empire (1805) that the current street numbering system was put into place.

More Canal Saint-Martin

The transition between the previous post and this one would have been made by the fact that both reference the Canal Saint Martin, except oops! I forgot to add that the bike store where one may acquire one's electric bike is on the Canal Saint Martin.

Anyway, in Paris, divergent things happen side by side. In this instance, the Canal Saint Martin neighborhood is on the one hand highly gentrified; on the other, it has a high concentration of homeless people. In particular, as mentioned previously, they hang out on the Blvd Richard Lenoir, where the Canal St Martin goes underground to the Place de la Bastille and the Bassin de l'Arsenal. The benches of the recently-re-landscaped central median tend to be occupied on weekdays by a collection of down-and-outs. If I understand correctly, this is also one of the areas where Emmaus (an organization that aids the homeless) distributed tents during the winter, and also where some homeless people had their tent burned recently. Anyway, there's news- several associations working together put up a large tent --40m2. In the headline it says "tipi" but in the body of the article, "un chapiteau" suggesting a circus tent-type affair.

The idea of the tent is, of course, to call attention to the plight of the homeless, but also to have an office space where people can fill out various applications and forms for help from the government, applications for housing, etc.

In addition, the associations organized a free picnic dinner last night, inviting anyone who was homeless or "mal logé" (living in a residential hotel, a shelter, anything temporary or not up to standard).

Libération on the tent: http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/societe/198326.FR.php
Le Monde on the picnic dinner: http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3226,36-803143@51-797646,0.html

The "little queen" in Paris

Two links for today about bicycles ("la petite reine") in Paris. The first, on Le Monde's "Un été à Paris" blog, is a mixed review of cycling conditions in Paris. On the one hand, the Mairie has created 314 km of bike lanes but on the other, many of these lanes are shared corridors- buses and taxis can also use them. As the post remarks, until recently, bicycling in Paris was dangerous and only daredevils, hardcore bike lovers, and the slightly batty ever tried it. My impression is that the number of bike-riders has vastly increased in Paris in the past 5 years, though it is still not up to the level of Belgian, Dutch, or German cities.

Luckily the bloggy medium doesn't require actual citation of reliable sources to support one's ramblings and wild claims. I am *sure* I have read somewhere that as of 2005, the number of cars in Paris is stable, while motorcycles are way up and bicycles are somewhat up, but I no longer have the foggiest where I got that from (L'Express? Nouvel Obs?). In any case, the last time I was in Paris was the first time I ever thought, "hey, if I were going to live here for awhile, I'd totally get a bike." One of my friends had a bike. He liked it because he hates the Métro with a passion, but he said that it wasn't the best. For one thing, riding in traffic in central Paris exposes you to all kinds of air pollution (although, if you smoke Gauloises, this is nothing your lungs haven't seen before); for another, Paris is in fact very hilly- Mont Saint Genevieve, Montmartre, Montparnasse, and Menilmontant tend to stand out more if you are on a bike.

The second link is from Libération, about a new type of electric bike. You plug it in to a wall socket, charge it, and the motor provides all the necessary power to get around. The seat is more like a motorcycle seat, rather than a bicycle saddle as, really, there's no need to pedal except to provide a sheen of justification for taking up the bike lanes. Libé says this new type of transport is part of the "urban feignasse" (urban lazyass) movement-- one can be bobo techo écolo branché, just without the ... ugh, work. So, shell out 790 Euros and ride it to yoga today !!!

Le Monde's blog: http://aparis.blog.lemonde.fr/aparis/2006/08/paris_vlo.html

Libération: http://www.liberation.fr/vous/198301.FR.php

Palais de Tokyo: nexus of hip-dom

Talking with the skater kids reminded me of my visits to the Palais de Tokyo. I would suggest it as a great place to go in the summer if I could say for sure that it is air-conditioned. I actually think that it isn't. However, the café is so damn hip that you will be not just figuratively but literally cooler when you hang out there. Believe me, the overpriced très design café on the roof of the Centre Pompidou is staid compared to the Palais de Tokyo. I will also say that I have very much enjoyed most of the exhibits I have seen there. I feel that they are the best of contemporary art- stuff you hadn't thought of by people you've never heard of, that change your perspective on the world in ways that stick with you when you leave. I would compare it to P.S. 1 in New York in terms of the role it plays in relation to other art venues in its city.

This summer the Palais de Tokyo hosts a series of ecologically-themed exhibits. They seem to share themes of vegetation, landscape, nature as perceived and shaped by man. Also, an all-comers graffiti wall has been set up outside, and there are night-time fire performances. One could argue that as the City of Paris gentrifies, tourist-ifies, and muséifies, such things as graffitis and street art are also becoming increasingly muséified-- gaining increasing recognition as art forms, but ultimately being excluded from the types of spaces where they emerged and flourished. Ergo the article in Le Monde today about graffiti ....

Palais de Tokyo: http://www.palaisdetokyo.com
Le Monde on graffiti: http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-781732,36-802240@51-791458,0.html

Skate culture in Paris

At a friend's wedding this weekend, I met two kids ages 10 and 14 who spend every summer in Paris with their dad. They are into skateboarding and told me about the site Paris-Skate-Culture . As the name implies, it includes descriptions of skating sites in and around Paris. It also serves as a platform to call for more skate parks in Paris, especially a covered park. The two skaters (sorry, guys ... I seem to have forgotten your names) said that they particularly liked the Palais de Tokyo, the Bercy skate park and the steps around the Palais Omnisports, and the steps in front of the mall at the Place d'Italie. Those sites are described in the website, and there are some good pictures, too!

I knew about the skate park at Bercy but as the site says, it tends to get crowded on weekends. From the earthwork on the Seine side of the park you have a great view down into the skating area, which is fenced off from the rest of the park and kind of tucked into a corner. Dozens of kids on rollerblades and skateboards, and I think a BMX bike or two, were swooping up and down the ramps.

The site gives you an idea of the good and bad of skating in Paris: contemporary sites like Bercy or the Place d'Italie sometimes tolerate skaters, but several spots listed on the site have installed anti-skating barriers or have banned skating outright. I wonder if the regulations about changes to historic monuments are what have kept the Trocadero and the Palais de Tokyo free of such barriers.

More about the Piscine Josephine Baker

I haven't done a great job of keeping up with Paris news, but there is an article in Libération today about the new Piscine Josephine Baker.

I get a mixed impression from the description in Libé. The pool has immediately become a major attraction for Parisians, and people stay until closing time at midnight. Unfortunately, the pool is small- 25m long, 4 swimming lanes. Smaller than my neighborhood pool in the suburbs when I was a kid! Space is at a premium in Paris, but wasn't the point of putting a pool in the Seine that space was, in fact, available there? I don't know about the engineering constraints of making a floating swimming pool- but would it have been that much harder to make a bigger one? The article notes that you can't really swim laps because there are kids and adults all mingled in the lanes. Why not have built a main pool and then a separate kiddie pool? Would they have built a bigger one if Paris had gotten the 2012 Olympics? (That's it! Let's blame the Brits!)

Libé also mentions the old Piscine Deligny, another floating pool built,according to an old article in L'express, in 1801 and destroyed/sunk in 1993. Quotes in Libé from a people who remember it say it was very cruise-y and edgy- one woman's mother wouldn't let her go because "women were topless and the men were bizarre." There is no topless sunbathing permitted at Josephine Baker-begging the question of what the pool's namesake would think.

Here are some photos of the Piscine Deligny at Veritas et Venustas.

I have been to the Les Halles swimming pool, and other than being a little crowded, it's not bad. Natural light filters from a slanting glass roof in the Jardin des Halles, past tropical plants. The concrete ceiling is curved and has arching ribs like the inside of a scallop shell. I have heard others say it's a little cruise-y, but I didn't notice ...

Not to belabor Lyon, but it has a very nice open-air pool in the Rhone. There are actually two pools with decks and changing areas between them. What can be better than laying on a deck chair and looking at the buildings of centre-ville Lyon across the river, under a cloudless sky? Maybe doing all of that with a glass of rosé in your hand? There is a restaurant at the Piscine Josephine Baker.