Street furniture in Paris

Call me a geek, but I take an interest in street furniture … things like benches, streetlights, fire hydrants, etc. And so I finally produced a little pet project of mine, which is a simple video showing the street furniture in Paris. I did this knowing full well that most people aren't interested in such things, but I thought a few might be, and it could be a useful reference.

So now my video is out there. It ended up running for more than half an hour. I try to cover a variety of things you see on the street, including some things that are relatively specific to Paris, such as the famous Wallace fountains, and sanisettes. And I do cover the aforementioned benches, streetlights, and fire hydrants.

Wallace fountains are extremely specific to Paris. You find them all over the city: green, cast-iron sculptures with a thin stream of drinking water running in the center of the open sculpture. I think most people don't realize that these fountains are not just decorative. The water they provide is drinking water, so you can fill your water bottles with it. I do it, in hot weather (the fountains don't run in winter because of the risk of freezing).

Sanisettes are also fairly specific to Paris, although Paris isn't the only city that has them. They aren't as old as the Wallace fountains—in fact, they were all upgraded in 2009—but they are nearly as iconic now. And they are also very practical, and like the Wallace fountains, they are free. The latest generation even provides a drinking-water tap on the outside, in case there are no Wallace fountains nearby. Unlike the Wallace fountains, the sanisette taps only dispense water when you press a button … environnement oblige!

There are some other, more discreet objects in the Parisian urban landscape. Fire hydrants are among them. Finding a fire hydrant in Paris requires some detective work. They are mounted directly in the sidewalks, and you have to look for them on the sidewalk or look for tiny enameled plaques on the sides of buildings that specific the exact location and type of a nearby hydrant. If you're in Paris with kids, challenging them to locate these hydrants can be an amusing game.

Another weird type of object is the survey marker. These are tiny iron disks that are mounted on the sides of major buildings. They give the surveyed height above sea level of the marker. Most of the markers are missing the actual plate that gives the elevation today, but it's still interesting to try to find them. They are the sort of thing that you never notice until you look for them, and then they seem to be everywhere, just like fire hydrants.

Still another interesting item is the manhole cover that leads into the Catacombs, or more specifically, into the underground quarries beneath Paris of which the Catacombs are but one small part. These manhole covers look practically identical to other manhole covers that don't lead anywhere interesting, so you have to know how to spot them. In the video, I don't even explain where they lead, leaving that up to the viewer to research.

Anyway, this project is finished. It took a long time because I had to collect different shots of street furniture over a period of many months. I don't expect it to get too many views.

The rue de Rivoli revisited

Yet another video online … this one a new strolling tour of the rue de Rivoli. I already have a video that covers the western end of this rather long street that slices through central Paris, but I've added another video that shows the eastern end, from the rue du Louvre (right next to the Louvre) to the place de la Bastille. The rue de Rivoli merges into the rue Saint-Antoine right around the rue de Sévigné, which then continues on to the Bastille. It's a nice walk with lots of people. I filmed it just after sunset, because it has kind of a nice atmosphere (the other video was during the day). In fact, the streets were a bit damp, giving them that Miami-Vice look.

The rue de Rivoli is quite long, and very straight for a significant part of its length. The rumor is that it functions as an impromptu drag strip at times in the wee hours, but I haven't walked it during the wee hours to verify that. The western end is pretty consistent, with multiple blocks of arcades and businesses like restaurants and tourist shops as it runs parallel to the north side of the Louvre. After the Louvre, there's a much larger variety of shops and businesses on both sides of the street, and a lot of pedestrian traffic, and far fewer souvenir and tourist shops.

The street eventually passes Châtelet, then the Hôtel de Ville—Paris City Hall—which at this time of year has an ice rink in it … and that justifies a slight digression. They were playing music at the rink, so I didn't include it in the video. Why? Because every time you put music in a YouTube video, you risk being flagged by copyright trolls. Now, the incidental capture of music in a video is normally an instance of fair use under U.S. copyright law (17 USC § 107), and may also be non-infringing on de minimis grounds. But try telling YouTube that. There are a lot of companies on YouTube that make fraudulent or invalid infringement claims just to “monetize” videos that they don't own, at the expense of the actual video creators. I want to avoid that kind of scam, so if there's a significant amount of music captured incidentally in a video, I often remove it, or just edit out the part with the music (I did the same thing for my video on dancing on the Seine, and my Luxembourg Gardens video). Unfortunate but true.

Moving right along … well, after skipping about 150 feet of the street to avoid that music, I continue on. There are lots of nice shops in a very nice atmosphere east of City Hall, and there's an open market on the place Baudoyer on some days, although it was winding down at the time I walked past. There's a large semi-pedestrian zone where the rue Saint-Antoine moves towards and merges with the rue de Rivoli a bit beyond that. Further east the pedestrian traffic quiets down a bit, then picks up again around the place de la Bastille, where is where this video stops. The video closes with a view of and from the huge Opéra Bastille, the city-block-sized replacement for the Opéra Garnier (at least for grand opera).

Someday I'll continue east from the place de la Bastille with another strolling video, since there is much to see down that way, too.

New fashion for the bouquinistes

Bouquiniste is the term applied to a merchant with a small stall near the banks of the Seine River who sells used books, magazines, posters, and so on. In Paris, there are hundreds of these bouquinistes operating along the river, and they are a Parisian institution. I pass them often, and I wonder how they remain solvent, as they don't seem to sell a great deal, even though they frequently have a a fascinating array of old publications and printed material, most of it in excellent condition. I suppose their overhead is low, since they operate out of their green boxes, so they don't have to sell a lot to stay in business.

If you are wondering what I'm talking about, take a look at the short unedited video I've posted here, which shows a few bouquiniste stalls along the river. Bouquin is a French slang word for a book.

For whatever reason, these stalls are usually painted dark green. The bouquiniste stores all his merchandise instead the stall, and padlocks it shut when he's not open for business. During business hours, the stall is opened and the bouquiniste sets up a chair or to for himself as he waits for clients. Many people look, few buy. But the merchandise is often interesting, and it's in good shape, not junk, even though most of it is used. In fact, I rather wonder how the bouquinistes manage to build up their inventories of printed matter in such good condition. You can often find really cool books, or original concert or movie posters, or various art prints that you can't find anywhere else. It's no surprise that people like to stroll among the bouquinistes to see what they have for sale.

Anyway … the Paris city government issues permits for bouquinistes and helps with the placement and upkeep of stalls, and lately it has been considering an upgrade in the stalls because so many of them are beginning to show their age. It has commissioned four prototypes for new stalls that it has put on display at a certain spot on the river. I've posted a photo here of the four prototypes. I think the first and second (the two prototypes on top) are pretty cool, but they are a bit odd and a sharp departure from tradition, so I suppose one of the bottom ones might be better, all things considered. The Number 4 prototype (bottom left) is probably the one I'd vote for. We'll see how it goes. The bouquinistes are an important and well-loved tradition in Paris, so I'd hate to see any extreme changes made to them.

Christmas decorations in Paris

Compared to what one sees in much of the United States, Christmas decorations in Paris are pretty lame.

I can think of several possible reasons for this. First, France isn't nearly as religious as the United States. Less than ten percent of French people attend religious services regularly, compared to about half the American population. The French also fret endlessly about what other people will think, and are thus much less likely to do anything extreme, such as heavily decorating a home or storefront or street. There's also probably some concern about political correctness, with the French being afraid of offending the substantial Muslim minority (although they never seemed to worry about offending the Jewish minority). Whatever the reasons, decorations in Paris are very simple and sparse compared to the U.S.

Another odd thing about decorations in France is that they aren't very colorful. Mostly you just see white lights, occasionally mixed with some blue lights or red lights (but not both). Green lights are scarce, and lights of all different colors, as you might readily find in the United States, are nowhere to be seen in Paris. Streets are not decorated unless local merchants get together and pay for it, so one street might have nothing while another might be moderately decorated. Even the decorations on the Champs are paid for by local merchants on the avenue.

Speaking of the Champs, they changed the “decorations” this year, and the new decorations are pathetic. The previous decorations included tens of thousands of tiny white LED lights and “dripping icicle” light chasers on all the trees. This year consists of a few Hula Hoops with lights on them, mounted on butt-ugly stands beneath most of the trees. The hoops change color from time to time, but most of the time they are so unremarkable that you might miss them while looking up the avenue. Somebody definitely went the low-cost route this year. And supposedly we are stuck with this bargain-basement lighting for the next four years. Public opinion of the new lights has been overwhelmingly negative.

I've put up a video of the lights on the Champs, such as they are, so you can judge for yourself. I almost didn't bother, since they are so ugly, but the need to communicate and document overrode my aesthetic sense.

And speaking of videos, I've also put up two other Christmas videos. One shows the much more substantial decorations around the large department stores in Paris, the other shows the Christmas market on the Champs-Élysées itself.

The Printemps and Galeries Lafayette department stores decorate far more than anyone else in the city. They've recycled decorations from year to year for several years now, but they are still pretty. As with other Christmas decorations in Paris, the department stores have not gone for much color in their decorations, but the designs are nice. In the past, they changed decorations every year, but I guess times are hard now.

The department stores also traditionally decorate their windows with animated displays for children. Those are a bit on the decline, too, but there's still a fair number of windows with displays for kids. The displays are often very complicated, animated by motors and cams above the ceiling that move objects in the display using fine plastic fishing line. It is typically very well executed and fun to watch. The non-kids windows this year feature some over-the-top fashion displays, essentially elaborate advertisements, some of which would spook me if I were a kid.

My third video concerns the Christmas market on the Champs, which is a fairly recent phenomenon. It was only started a few years ago. It's probably the largest Christmas market in the city. Like all such markets, it concentrates on food (especially mulled wine, because French people are strongly attracted to drugs like ethanol). The stalls also sell the kind of semi-worthless gifts that you tend to buy for people at Christmas when you feel obligated to give them something but not concerned enough to really pick a good present. Things like bars of home-made soap, strange-looking carved wooden objects, scarves and gloves, magic cleaning products, artificial flower arrangements, and so on. The merchandise at Christmas markets in Paris (and perhaps elsewhere) eerily resembles what one finds at similar markets in the United States. I find myself wondering where these merchants go during the rest of the year. Who buys home-made soap—and where—in June or July, for example?

This Christmas market, like all such markets, also features a lot of things that have nothing to do with Christmas, such as a “Father Christmas Roller-Coaster” that is totally unrelated to Christmas except for the sign that says “Father Christmas Roller-Coaster.” This coaster for kids actually looks like it was designed to resemble a caterpillar, but I suppose that children can be counted upon to readily hallucinate that the caterpillar has morphed into Santa Claus thanks to the all-important sign (if they are able to read it).

There's also a tiny ice rink that appears to use synthetic ice, which I thought rather interesting. And there's some sort of indoor attraction with “more than 200 animatronic animals” according to the signs outside. It looks like mostly dinosaurs from the outside, and here again, it's hard to see the connection to Christmas. I don't recall Santa having his sleigh pulled by velociraptors, but who knows?

There's also a gigantic eyesore on the place de la Concorde, a huge ferris wheel that is extremely popular with tourists even though it ruins the view for everyone along the axis of the Champs-Élysées. The owner of that wheel must rub his hands with glee each Christmas season at the thought of all the money it's going to make. I don't know how he managed to wrangle an authorization to put it up each year, and perhaps it's best that I don't know the details.

Mouffetard Street

My video of Mouffetard Street is finally finished and online. I shot it in September, but it took a long time to get around to editing it.

The French word for “street” is rue, which is why you see this word so often on street signs in Paris. In place names, words like street or avenue are usually not capitalized in French, and the name of the place follows the noun designating the type of place … so rue Mouffetard simply means “Mouffetard Street.”

Mouffetard Street is one of the better known streets in Paris. It is famous as a street with a lot of food shops on it, although it really doesn't have that many food shops. It's extremely old, too: it has followed roughly the same path since the days when the ancient Romans ran the city, and there are signs that it had already been an actively inhabited area for thousands of years before the Romans arrived twenty centuries ago. Today it's a moderately straight street that physical extends approximately south from the place Maubert to the avenue des Gobelins in the Latin Quarter, although it doesn't actually take on the name of Mouffetard Street until you reach its lower (southern) end.

The street starts low at its north end, near the Seine River, and then rises significantly as it passes over the summit of the Montagne Sainte Geneviève, a hill named after the patron saint of Paris. From that point it descends again towards the avenue des Gobelins, ending at a spot where a small stream, the Bièvre, used to flow (and it flows still today—but it is completely buried below street level). At the summit of the hill, it passes discreetly to the east of the huge Panthéon, the twenty-five-story church of Saint Geneviève that dominates the Latin Quarter skyline.

Most of Mouffetard Street is “standard charming,” meaning that it is a typical street of Paris, which in turn means that it is charming, as soon many typical streets of Paris tend to be. For various reasons, it is more famous than most streets, but I wouldn't say that it is really much different from thousands of other interesting streets in Paris. However … since it is so well known, I've made a video about it.

From tourist guides, you'd think that Mouffetard Street is just jam-packed with food shops, but that's not really true. Most of the street (under its various names) is lined by shops and restaurants, and a significant landmark near its midpoint is old École Polytechnique campus. (The school moved to the suburbs years ago, but the campus is still there and serves as a government ministry now.) As it moves south and actually becomes Mouffetard Street by name, it passes the place de la Contrescarpe, a roundabout that Hemingway wrote about in A Moveable Feast. From there, there are more and more shops and restaurants, and eventually the street is blocked to vehicular traffic, allowing only pedestrians. As you finally descend towards the southern extremity of the street, the food shops and some open markets appear. Overall, it's about 2/3 of a mile long.

In my video I start at the place Maubert (where there is a very nice open food market on certain days of the week, although not on the day that I shot), and I walk all the way down to the lower end of Mouffetard Street. I make a quick detour to show Hemingway's former apartment, which is right off the place de la Contrescarpe.

The Luxembourg Gardens

This summer I filmed the Luxembourg Gardens with the intent of making a video about them, and I finally finished editing it. I just uploaded it to YouTube a few days ago.

The Luxembourg Gardens are some of the largest and prettiest green spaces in Paris. Oddly enough, they don't actually belong to the city, unlike the vast majority of other parks within its limits. The Luxembourg Gardens belong to the French Senate, which meets in a building at the north end of the gardens, the aptly-named Luxembourg Palace. Because the gardens belong to the national government rather than the city of Paris, they are guarded by gendarmes (who are part of the army), rather than police officers.

I consider the Luxembourg Gardens to be one of the best places to relax in the city. They are large enough that the non-stop traffic noise of Paris doesn't penetrate into the center of the gardens, so you can sit and relax in near silence while you read or vegetate. Often all you hear is the wind in the trees and the occasional cries of children playing nearby. The gardens are filled with chairs, which nobody steals (American visitors always ask me about that), and you can sit all day without being disturbed by anyone. Assuming you have that kind of free time on your hands, the Jardin du Luxembourg, as it's called in French, is a wonderful place in which to escape the stress of noisy streets and crowds.

The central gardens just south of the palace are beautifully manicured, in a style originally commissioned by Maria de Medici to resemble the style of her hometown of Florence, Italy. The rest of the gardens has alternating areas of tall trees and perfectly maintained lawns. Flowers decorate many parts of the gardens, and when the flowers wilt, they are removed and new flowers are planted, so that the gardens are always pretty (this practice is followed in other Parisian parks, too).

There's more to the gardens than just trees, flowers, and grass, however. There's a big playground for kids. There's a puppet theater for kids, too. There are playing fields for pétanque, a favorite game of the French, and there are tennis courts. There are basketball courts as well, and there's even an area with tables containing inlaid chessboards, if you prefer something a bit less strenuous. The long paths that run through and around the gardens are popular with joggers and strollers.

There's also a group of beehives in the park, and a miniature replica of the Statue of Liberty. And there's a gazebo that seems to attract a lot of high-school bands from the United States. On the day I was there, in fact, the Stevens High School band, from Rapid City, South Dakota was giving a concert. Talk about something completely different … it must have been quite an adventure for them. Unfortunately, I had to mute their performance in the version of my video that I uploaded to YouTube, because YouTube these days is afflicted with copyright trolls that will fraudulently claim copyright infringement on just about any music they find in an effort to dishonestly make money from advertising. They were playing things like a medley of Henry Mancini music. They were—well, about as good as you'd expect from a high-school band. I found myself wondering if they paid their performance licenses for the concert.

I didn't really manage to do justice to the gardens in my video. I'll probably have to redo a new version in the future.

The Cour du Commerce Saint André

There's a tiny little passage between the boulevard Saint Germain and the rue Saint André des Arts in the Latin Quarter that is almost a thousand years old, called the Cour du Commerce Saint André. For centuries, it has been a small commerce street, and it still exists today, very much as it did back when Philippe Auguste was running France in the 13th century.

Although this small pedestrian passage is in a very busy part of the Latin Quarter, it's easy to walk past it without ever realizing that it's there. It is paved with very rough cobblestones and features a number of restaurants and an eclectic assortment of shops. One of the restaurants is a bistro from the turn of the century (the turn of the previous century, not this one), and another is the oldest café in Paris, the Procope, where people like Benjamin Franklin, Robespierre, and other Big Names from history came to chat and eat. It was also in a courtyard just off this passage that the guillotine was first tested (on sheep). And the passage originally ran just outside the city wall of Philippe Auguste, and some vestiges of that city wall are still in place and visible.

At the north end of the passage, which is covered, there's a bonsai shop, a stationery store, a bar, two restaurants, and a podiatrist's office.

Overall, the Cour du Commerce has a great deal of charm for its small size, and that's why I decided to make a video about it. The great thing about Paris is that cool and interesting spots like this are the rule, rather than the exception.