Shit in the Streets and Suburbs

Tread lightly in Paris, because you never know whether your shoes will be sporting dog shit for a while. Fortunately I haven’t been so unlucky, but several other people have fallen victim to the curse. People here just don’t feel obligated to remove their dog’s waste, and there are a lot of dogs to spew their waste.

Unfortunately, the cavalier attitude towards dog waste is mirrored in a general Parisian attitude towards litter. Walk out of any subway station, and you’ll see sprawling used subway tickets like the beginning of fall. The number of discarded, still lit cigarettes is pretty astounding. It’s not uncommon to be confronted by the faint whiff of urine in the Metro stations. Of course, while we’re on the subject of urine, it is, as in any big European city, pretty common to see soused dudes peeing on the sides of walls. In short, Parisians don’t seem to care about public mess.

It’s a hard attitude to square with the aesthetic culture of France. After all, this is a nation that has some of the highest per-hour productivity in the world but whose output is much smaller, as a consequence of frequent breaks. One museum we tried to visit for a site visit today was closed because it was a Tuesday. Efficiency as the economists define it goes out the window with both breaks and subsidization—France gives tons of money to farmers making French products because those French wines, cheeses, etc. are made right, god darn it. So it’s a tough thing to square both this evident love of aesthetics, of the good life, with a tolerance for public squalor.

I think one of the French observations of Americans is revealing. The French frequently refer to Americans as “neurotic.” We’re just so fixated on the little things, when it’s the big picture that matters. Little picture—dog shit—because, in the grand scheme of things, how much will that dog shit really affect you? Not that much. And while it’s true that one must accept that life will hurl small indignities and that it’s not worth getting all psychically malformed over dog shit, it’s also true that it is not a big deal to, you know, clean up that dog shit in the first place. In other words, you can still accept that it will happen to you and actively make sure it doesn’t happen to other people.

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What the Marais really underscores is that Paris has always been at least two cities; one for the privileged and one for the not-so-privileged. Today, Paris has simply pushed their poor outside the city proper, but this was not practicable back in the day, and so fashionable districts like the Marais were the response. One of the facts that jumped out at me from the reading on Paris in the Age of Absolutism was that without internal immigration, Paris would have lost population. Clearly, in aesthetics and lifestyle, the good life was exclusive to the upper classes.
The architecture and structure of the grand hotels of the Marais display their exclusivity. First, they are inconspicuous. While walking on the Rue Saint-Antoine, we nearly missed the Hotel Sully because of the lack of outward ornamentation. That was entirely contrary to my expectation, as I am more familiar with the American Gilded Age style showy house. The second factor that emphasizes the exclusivity of these hotels are the high walls and thick doors. These clearly served a defensive purpose, and Paris: An Architectural History mentions that some of the Hotels were meant to house soldiers. The third and final factor of exclusivity is the hidden luxury. The only grandness to the hotels is inside the complex; the outside is simply large. All the ornamentation, from the garden to the building’s decorations, can only be seen on the inside of the Hotel complex. The attitude is so hierarchical that it does not even bother to impress the common people.
The same dynamic underlies the two Places. They are both seemingly more open than the Hotels, but their orientation is still one of exclusivity. Unlike a Place de Bastille whose orientation is to the rest of the city, the Places des Vosges and Dauphine’s orientation is inward, towards the gardens in the center of the place. It is away, therefore, from the common people, and towards each other, the noblemen and the worthies contained therein.
Henri IV’s main achievements are therefore one of unification of elite aesthetic opinion. The Place des Vosges is undeniably beautiful, despite its remove from the flow of the rest of the district. By contrast, popular aesthetic opinion was less convincing. We saw a building in the Marais, actually, that had jettying in it. It looked like a mushroom made of stone. And those jettied buildings do not gain in practicality what they lose in aesthetic value—it’s clearly impractical to build several in a row.
That is why the standardized designs of common people’s houses were such a boon to Paris. Besides helping people avoid getting cheated, aesthetically it appeared to be far superior. Given that Paris’ appeal lies in its aesthetics, this represented a huge advance for the city.
One of the revealing aspects about the emphasis on unity in both common houses and the Place des Vosges is how often it’s stressed to be beneficial. We tend to deride asthe suburbs, Levittown and prefab houses as ugly and bland for exactly the same deed, and similarly, many left-leaning commentators view the American suburbs as being bastions of conformity and the establishment. Interestingly, the architectural conformity of Paris was a prelude to a period of absolutist central government in which conformity was expected for the good of the nation, as Paris in the Age of Absolutism makes clear. Yet we tend to view the Place des Vosges as beautiful—at least I do. What’s sin is sometimes sacred in other contexts, I suppose.

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One addendum to this: The Marais is now the bag district of Paris. If you enjoy handbags, messenger bags, luggage, even backpacks, the Marais is your Mecca. And you thought people came to Paris for the romance, the food, the lifestyle…

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No one poorly dressed today. What is the world coming to?

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I did however, have a wonderful Pistachio-flavored pastry called a Salambo. Mmm-mmm-good!

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I’ve begun giving directions to people in French. However, it is accompanied with vigorous hand gestures, which may diffuse the achievement.

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In the bowels of Chatelet-Les Halles, they’ve got an entire string section set up. The acoustics are great. If I weren’t so busy, I’d stop to listen.