Finding my Inner Flaneuse

Newsletter 23 July 2023

Bienvenue and welcome back to Musée Musings, your idiosyncratic guide to Paris and art. It’s been a very agreeable week so far - Nicolas has taken me out of the museums and onto the streets. We’ve been walking and people watching every day. On Monday, we decided to get falafels on the Rue des Rosiers and then walk over to the Seine to eat them. We did that last time he was here, and just like last time, while we were waiting for our falafel, a young man in a white shirt and dark pants wearing a hat asked if Nicolas wanted to say some Jewish prayers. To which Nicolas readily agreed. Someone wanting to say a few prayers for you and with you is never a bad thing. (Figure 1) And it made the time go a bit faster as well. The L’As du Falafel guys though are really organized, even when the line is long. When you get to the counter, there’s not much to say but: Yes everything, yes spicy, yes wrapped to go.

Figure 1. Say a little prayer for me …. 

` We walked over to the Seine and found Paris Plage!!! Not exactly as I remember it - wood chips instead of sand - and a little less exuberant. (Figures 2, 3). Have you ever been in Paris in the summer, when Paris Plage is in place? It was the brainchild of the mayor of Paris in 2002. To bring the beach to people who couldn’t leave the City with everybody else in August. Politics intervened in 2017, when the city of Paris discontinued its relationship with the company which had built the Paris Plage beaches free of charge since 2002. Because the company had sent a proposal to Donald Trump, to build his wall along the Mexican-U.S. border. We walked the length of the plage and since Nicolas has never met a chair or chaise longue or bench that doesn’t beckon, our walking was punctuated with a good deal of reclining and sitting.

Figure 2. Paris Plage

Figure 3. Recuperating after eating falafel

Tuesday, we headed off to the Canal St. Martin. (Figure 4) We walked until there was no more water and then found a nice park with lots of shade to appreciate our rotisserie chicken sandwiches and homemade coleslaw. But Nicolas had an ulterior motive. He has the uncanny ability to remember how to get someplace even if he’s only been there once and even if he hasn’t been there in a long time. It was a skill he had long before he became an Eagle Scout but all that training certainly didn’t hurt. And so we found ourselves at the shop he was looking for, the one that sells spray paint and markers. (Figure 5)

Figure 4. Canal St. Martin

Figure 5. Buying markers and (thank goodness) not spray paint!

On Wednesday, we decided to eat our lunch at Paris Plage again but walk along the Seine in the opposite direction afterwards, toward La Bastille. I wanted to saunter along both the Coulée Vert and Avenue Daumesnil. Do you know that area? Here is a little history. From 1859 until 1969, a train line ran here that terminated at the Place de la Bastille. It was an enormous project that required a monumental viaduct, 64 arched vaults long. But when the RER replaced the train, the tracks and viaduct were abandoned. Despite calls for its demolition, the viaduct became an urban renewal project instead. On the elevated train line, thousands of trees, flowers, shrubs and grasses were planted, a promenade plantée, now called the Coulée Vert. (Figures 6, 7) And the 64 vaults below were transformed into workshops for artisans who were being priced out of the city by ever increasing rents. Le Viaduc des Arts, as the arcade is called is occupied by all kinds of artisans - from glass blowers to shoemakers and from cabinetmakers to art restorers. (Figure 8) There’s also a sprinkling of restaurants, cafés, a confiturier (that makes jellies and jams) and a chocolatier.

Figure 6. Coulée Vert

Figure 7. My favorite building along the Coulée Vert - with Michelangelo’s Slaves

Figure 8. Le Viaduc des Arts, Avenue Daumesnil

Thanks so much to everyone who has given me suggestions for Copenhagen. I’ll report back next week. And thanks to those of you who took the time to send a note about the book I reviewed last week: Café Unfiltered. Gros Bisous, Dr. B.

New comments on Is it safe to come out, I mean to go in? :

B - thank you for this astute analysis - it explains a whole lot that only you could put into words.
"I didn’t catch the virus, but I did catch something - the feeling that I was drowning in a sea of stagnant water."
"Then to find a world that was both reassuringly familiar and disconcertingly different."
 Kathy, Washington, D.C.

I just tried to get it on my iPad from “Libby” (a library app that sends books directly to you devices). Great review. Can’t wait to read it. Deedee, Baltimore

Chère Beverly,

Is literary criticism the newest outlet for your genius?  I hope so because I will never make it to the exhibitions you review but can always get my hands on a book, including this one when it is available. Bobby, Columbia, S. Carolina

Thanks very much for this lovely piece. It's much appreciated. All the best, Michael, New Vessel Press