Since the disastrous Pompidou years, working-class Paris has been
steadily nibbled away, either by destruction or more insidiously by
a kind of internal colonization. Take for example a small outlying
district populated by Arabs, blacks and poor whites twenty years
ago, the L'Olive neighbourhood north of La Chapelle The area is
noted as pleasant, people frequent it and explore it, and as the
rents are low some settle there. Others follow, first friends and
then anyone else. Rents go up, buildings are renovated, bars open,
then an organic food shop, a vegan restaurant...The earlier
indigenous inhabitants are driven out by the rising rents and
settle further away, in Saint-Denis if they are lucky, or else in
Garges-les-Gonesse, Goussainville or God knows where. But new
neighbourhoods are emerging, for example the Chinese quarter of Bas
Belleville, which has grown since the 1970s to the point that in
some streets, such as Rue Civiale or Rue Rampal, the restaurants
and shops are all Chinese, with many Chinese sex workers on
Boulevard de la Villette. These Chinese almost all come from
Wenzhou, a large province south of Shanghai, whose inhabitants are
reputedly known for their commercial skills. Paris is constantly
changing as a living organism, both for better and for worse. This
book is an incitement to open our eyes and lend an ear to the
tumult of this incomparable capital, from the Peripherique to Place
Vendome, its markets of Aligre and Belleville, its cafes and
tabacs, its history from Balzac to Sartre. In some thirty succinct
vignettes, from bookshops to beggars, Art Nouveau to street sounds,
Parisian writers to urban warts, Jacobins to Surrealism, Hazan
offers a host of invaluable apercus, illuminated by a matchless
knowledge of his native city.
General
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