On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions. From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
This series was created by Alain Chamot (1971-2020).
Steve from Mendocino
Paris gets pretty strange at times, not necessarily more than other cities, but it seems to stand out more because of the contrast with the formality of the Paris architectural infrastructure.
Euro Disney was originally dubbed Paris Disneyland, but its location is well beyond the limits of the city itself. One of the big subway lines (RER) terminates at Euro Disney, so it’s easily accessible from the city. My grandfather’s beach house in Newport Beach was 30 minutes from Disneyland, and I went first within months of its opening in 1955. While it was more polished than Knots Berry Farm or the Alligator Farm at the time, it was still pretty funky and basic. As it’s evolved, it’s become much slicker, but there remains an old timey feel of the roots underneath. Euro Disney, on the other hand, feels like a corporate formula all the way to the bones. I went with my daughter (who also had Disneyland experiences as a child), and we both felt the dissonance of this inhuman, corporate excrescence that has been inflicted on the French landscape. I’d been curious about this place from the time of its initial proposal, and that itch has been scratched.
Photo credit for this mime goes to my daughter. The edit is mine, but the camera was in her hands. Location is Montmartre.
This gentleman shopper is inspecting goldfish in oversized brandy snifters on display at a Paris shop during the early 70’s.
Rainy day tourist shopping. Paris is frequently overcast or raining, and the condition is called “la grisaille”. Time to find a cozy bistro.
The Pompidou museum is characteristic of French radical architecture, of which I am not a fan. Half the museum’s exhibits are more about the story behind the work than any kind of intrinsic aesthetic quality. On the other hand, there are some lovely Balthus paintings as well as some interesting Picassos and other important pieces that I quite enjoy. Incidentally, anyone wanting to see works of Picasso should make the effort to visit the Picasso museum located in the Marais neighborhood of Paris. There is a sizeable inventory of high quality work. Another very good museum to check out is the Paris Museum of Modern Art. It’s not particularly large, but there is some interesting work that I have not seen elsewhere. Also, the Louvre has the most important collection of Islamic art outside the middle east. Unfortunately, the exhibition of that art wasn’t due to open until two months after the end of my final trip to Paris.
Another angle of the Pompidou museum taken from the Rambuteau subway entrance.
Yet another shot of the Pompidou museum.
Narrow streets. Lots of cars.
Lapassionara
These are wonderful, but why was that your final trip to Paris?
Comrade Colette
Second!
I can’t stand mimes, but I did enjoy some of the other crazy street performers outside the Centre Pompidou. (Security will chase people away from most other venues.)
ETA: Steve, the invisible goldfish reminds me: did you ever visit the bird market on the Île de la Cité?
Chetan Murthy
When I worked in Paris in the early 90s, we used to take the escalators to the rooftop of Centre Pompidou, where there was a lovely little coffeeshop with a *brilliant* view of the city. Loved it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chetan Murthy: I was gonna say, the only good thing about that place is the view from the top floor, which has the added bonus of not including the Pompidou Center
Steve from Mendocino
@Lapassionara: I’m old. I have pretty bad sleep apnea. I have a terrible tremor in my hands, which is deeply embarrassing in restaurants. I can’t drink wine because of blood pressure. The city is becoming an increasingly generic modern city and less quirky than what I knew over all those years. And most of the people I most cared about have died. I have my memories and my photos.
Steve from Mendocino
@Comrade Colette: Yep. It’s wonderful.
Lapassionara
@Steve from Mendocino: it has changed in the years I have been traveling there, but it is still the most intriguing city in my view. I love the street life, the markets, the small examples of daily life that are so lovely. I will go back to Paris soon, I hope, as being there reminds me of the beauty of everyday.
Steve in the ATL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: le zing!
scav
Thing about the Beaubourg, there were always people around it, street performers, etc. Of course everyone hated it at first, but Parisians always do, and at some point it’s rather like one’s crazy uncle. They get rather fond if it in an odd way. Well, except for la Tour Montparnasse; I don’t think many ever warmed to that one. Or the new library. I think the quip about the best thing is being on it so that one doesn’t have to see it has been said about the Eiffel Tower, la Tour M and Beaubourg.
JanieM
When I started to scroll down and saw the first picture but not the explanation, I sort of did a double-take. Like, is this an infrared shot or something? All that pink and red! ;-)
I went to Disneyland in 1961 and 1972. In 1961, at age 11, I was dazzled. In 1972, just out of college, I was beyond cynical, and particularly nauseated by the epitaph on the gravestone outside the fort in Frontierland: “He died fighting for the right.” Yeah, right. I’ve been to Disney World a lot, not unconnected with the fact that my sister works there. Big topic.
I think the rainy day one is my fave of this set. Also the last one. The only “big” city I’ve spent a lot of time in is Boston, but I’ve loved my few visits to London and NYC. Even if I never saw a famous site or attraction, I’d go again just for the chance to wander the endless variety of streets and neighborhoods.
As to the “big” city of Boston — I went there to college from a midwestern town of about 20,000. One of my first dates was with a guy from my class who was not only Chinese-American — I had never met an Asian in my home town — but from New York City. We walked and walked that night, and I was quite bemused when he talked about how homesick he was for the big city. Boston seemed plenty big to me.
Benw
Yo man thanks for all the wonderful glimpses of Paris.
CaseyL
My one and only visit to Paris was in 1981, and we got there while the Louvre was closed for something or other. We visited the Pompadou instead, and I remember nothing except bitter disappointment that we were there instead of the Louvre. (Sorry, Pompidou!)
That shot of Euro Disney, good lord. It looks like a knock-off of Hotel Coronado – which I love the look of! – but FFS, not as a replicant trying to pass itself off as Olde European architecture. Grrr.
Suzanne
Designed by a Briton and an Italian.
Not really in any French tradition.
randy khan
I totally agree about the Picasso museum, which is quite good and packs a lot into a pretty small place (considering his output). The lighting fixtures are even interesting.
The Pompidou is a pretty wild building, but it’s very functional as a museum. One thing that was striking was that, unlike the Louvre or D’Orsay, it seems to have some huge gaps in its collection, notably post-WWII art, which was dominated by Americans and is pretty thin. (Let me put it this way: The Milwaukee Art Museum, which is pretty good, but not in the same general class as any national museum in Europe, has a better collection of work from, oh, 1945 to 1965.) This seemed odd until I remembered that France was pretty poor after WWII, and of course the center of the art world had shifted away from Paris, so it was much harder to collect the top work from that era.
On the other hand, from around 1900 to 1945, the collection is pretty darned impressive.
Steve from Mendocino
@Suzanne: Commissioned by the French
Wag
I love your photos, and it is a pleasure to see the city evolve over the years.
As incongruous as the Pompidou Center is, it really is a photogenic building. I was first in Paris in 83, when the Centré was new. As I recall they described it as a building turned inside out. The escalator up to the roof provides a great view of the neighborhood.
i last went to Paris two years ago. I took my teenage twins to the Pompidou center, and we had a great time. Several interesting exhibits, and the architecture continues to contrast nicely with the surrounding city.
Wag
scav
@Suzanne: The Louvre Pyramid etc was by I.M. Pei, the redesign of the d’Orsay by an Italian, the Arch at la Défense by Danes, Opéra Bastille by a Uruguayan-Canadian (!) — it’s not unusual at all for the French.
ETA. And, of course, le scandale is very French.
BigJimSlade
@JanieM: Starting at 25, I lived in Boston for 17 years – loved it. Just the right-sized city.
BigJimSlade
Thanks Steve from Mendocino! Man looking at goldfish in brandy snifters and la grisaille for the wins! Sacre gris! And the mime covering his crotch is right there, too, lol.
Betsy
Paris is suddenly getting more interesting and human again, as mayor Anne Hidalgo continues a visionary transformation of streets away from car traffic domination — and towards protected bike facilities (protected meaning physically safe from cars), removal of parking spaces, and conversion of the extra pavement back to people space and greenery such as tree plantings and stormwater filtration landscaping.
And for many years now “Paris Plage” has taken back the riverfront from what used to be a highway, converting it to a walkable, bikeable park.
JanieM
@BigJimSlade: I agree, and if it seemed like I was saying otherwise, I was being unclear. I lived in the Boston area for about twelve years, counting college and a couple of later stints, and spent another 4 or 5 years there for my job, a week or two at a time, in a company apartment right outside Harvard Square. I retired a year and a half ago, and then COVID came, so I’ve been missing it a lot. I was incredibly lucky to have the arrangement I had.
BigJimSlade
@JanieM: No, I didn’t think you failing to appreciate it or anything, I just read your comment and went, “Hey, Boston! Alright!” :-)
rlc
@Betsy: The transformation has been dramatic over the last 8 years. The number of bike commuters on the Blvd. de Magenta has skyrocketed.
On our last visit, the Picasso Musee that Steve mentions had a dual show of Picasso paired with Calder and oh my that was fabulous. That’s a very good museum, included on the tourist pass. The neighborhood around it is worth a dedicated morning of walkabout. You can get a decent if touristy falafel not too far off for a change of taste.
Some dumping on the Pompidou here. Yet we return every time. I happen to think the top floor is pretty darn good. I did curse my hurting feet and the mistake of trying to grok the lower floors though. The view is superb, another is the cafe on the top floor of Au Printemps.
Steve is right that the lower numbered arrondissements are getting, shall we say, corporate touristified. And mallified, witness Les Halles. But Paris is bigger than that! I mean, take a stroll along the Canal St. Martin, hang out in Buttes Chamont, have lunch at the top of the hill. Not a lot of tourists, and a really good vibe. Well it works for us.
Suzanne
@scav: My point is that the Pompidou is really in a global tradition, more in the lineage of the so-called “International Style”. There’s nothing necessarily “French” about it. The idea of exposed building systems started popping up all over the world at that time. Piano and Rogers, and their contemporaries, did work in that aesthetic all over the western world…. and they’re increasingly working in the Eastern world, too.
I would also note that the Pompidou and the Louvre entry by Pei are pretty different. Pie’s work is largely about suppression of systems and structure to create floating planes.