Sunday part II; What Paris is mostly for...

In Anita Loos', Gentlemen prefer Blondes, the sincerest gold digger in the world, Lorelei Lee, remarks to her companion, Dorothy 'Shopping seems to be what Paris is mostly for'. It's true that Paris seems a very different place when you can't buy it.

It's two weeks after the shock revelation that an obscure employee of the Societe Generale (too junior even to be called a trader) lost nearly 5 billion euros of the banks assets by creating a series of false accounts. Some people will be thinking twice about shopping, even in the dernière démarque of the soldes.

I'm walking across Paris from Place Blanche to Saint Germain.

It's Sunday afternoon and the fashionable rue des Martyrs is all closed up. With it's designer storefronts hidden until the start of the working week, the street looks more part of the surrounding area than usual.

With nothing to distract at street level, my glance turns upwards. At the corner, half-way down, the top storey windows of a building are crowded with outsize carnival masks.

I continue down the grandes boulevardes, past Printemps and Galleries Laffayette all shut up. There are small groups of tourists milling around hopeful that something might open. They are dressed for shopping - smartly in black, with sunglasses. There is the odd fur coat. They go right up to the windows of the big stores to check that they are really closed (in London, in New York, they'd be open). They walk up and down in front of the abandoned Opera just in case they are mistaken.

In fact there is one shop open. The sort of small shop you find sqeezed between international chain stores on the main streets of any big city It sells cut-price pashminas, cheap souvenirs and wheeled luggage. The neon-paper discount signs in the narrow windows are always bigger than any display of goods. As nothing else is open, the hopeful tourists are actually going in there. They'll maybe actually come away with a plastic vanity case or a commemorative scarf featuring the Eiffel Tower. On any other day, they wouldn't even notice this place on their way to Charvet or Hermes but today, even on Sunday, they need to shop, and this is the only shop available.

The Place Vendome is the most glorious shopping arcade of them all. It's closed and empty, the meticulously clean shop windows flashing with gold light. In the centre by the Vendome column, there's a black hire-car with a photographer and a couple in wedding clothes. The photographer's assistant runs over to straighten her dress. They embrace. They smile into the cold wind. But something's not as it seems. It starts with her hair. It's too bouffant, too fashionable, too exciting for a real wedding. I wonder, is she embracing him sincerely enough - or does she look too thrilled, too much in love. He looks unconcerned, but maybe that's standard for men. Then I remember. Getting married is another thing you generally can't do in France on a Sunday. This isn't a wedding. It's a photo shoot.

Down by the river, there's a man in a red bandana selling roasted chestnuts from a homemade oven; a shopping trolley caging a brazier made from a large cooking-oil tin (huile fritable)  with an inverted dustbin lid balanced on top. His cooked chestnuts resemble an ariel battle-plan, ranked in three divisions. He moves his batallions with a long rake, like a movie-general deploying his troops: the raw occupy the hot centre; the just-cooked, he pushes to the right, and the well-cooked, he moves towards the outer edges of the lid.

Comments

[maitresse]

to be more precise, he lost something like 1 billion with his false deals, and then the SG management effed up the rest because they tried to cover it up, and then the asian markets fell, and the whole thing spun out of proportion...

that said, this was a lovely stroll through my old neighborhood (rue des martyrs), thanks :) see you soon in paris!

[badaude]

Funny to get your comments at the start of the day (JST) rather than the end (EST)...
Let me know when you'll be back on CET (= Central European Time ie Paris).
xbadaude

[La Belette Rouge]

So funny!! I just watched "Funny Face" There is a scene where Audrey Hepburn is doing a photo shoot in a wedding dress and she cries because she feels like a fraud---this was not the happiest day of her life.
I love a good synchronicity.

[Margaret]

This blog is soooooo wonderful. I love your drawings and your POV--happy, sad, annoyed or perplexed, I always look forward to your latest. Thanks for ce petit bout frappant de Paris.