Château Rouge...and pigeons.

Time: 9AM
Location: 18th arrondissement, Paris
Neighborhood: Château Rouge

Upon arriving in Paris on June 4th, I was greeted by a much busier image of what you see above. About an hour after this was taken the street was filled with locals buying fresh produce for their afternoon snack or picking a good cut from the charcuterie for their Saturday night dinner. About three hours later, shortly after the police officers stationed right around the corner began their donut (or pain au chocolat) break, the "black market" was in full swing. Vendors appear out of nowhere, selling everything from Louis Vuitton bags to MAC makeup to Ray Ban sunglasses. (I was a little  upset about the sunglasses because I purchased mine in the states just before I came to Europe) Thirty minutes later the police return and the street empties faster than I can finish a gelato cone, which is extremely fast I can assure you. The same routine repeats throughout the day until dusk when everybody returns to their shabby Parisian apartments and try their best to feed their families. After a few hours of my first day in Paris my initial fears of the "sketchy" neighborhood subsided. It was then that I started to observe the interactions of its people.

The community in Château Rouge sounds like it came straight from The Lonely Londoners. Everybody gets on like they are back in Cameroon or Ghana in their local villages. There are friends and enemies. Lovers and fighters. My favorite person was the apparent matriarch of the street. I called her the Queen Mother, and she reminds me of Tanty from The Lonely Londoners. As she was selling her MAC makeup you could tell that she ran that street. It was quite amusing and fascinating at the same time. I spent many days just observing when one day I saw something unexpected.

As I was exiting the Metro station (around the left corner in the photo) I watched as crowds quickly cleared and two French police officers tackled an African man. Of course, I am not sure of the circumstances surrounding his arrest, but seeing as he came from the black market I am guessing he was selling something illegally. The police officers, who were white, exhibited unnecessary brutality following the tackle, and after the shock left my face, I returned home.

I later thought about that incident and realized that I also see others illegally selling items in many places in Paris. The Metro, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, etc. The majority of these people, though not all, are white and a majority of the places are tourist attractions. I realized that my neighborhood was a clear target for the police because few, if any, tourists walk the streets and the homogenous race of the neighborhood is able to shade any sense of racism that would be evident if an officer approached an African vendor among white vendors. I could easily be looking too far into this occurrence, but I never witnessed anything similar in central Paris, and the past of French police brutality doesn't help their case (see the 1995 film, La Haine). It may not have been intentionally racist, but I do believe there were undercurrents of racism in the incident.


If anybody is ever in Paris again, though, I do recommend spending an hour or two going out to neighborhoods like this and exploring the non-tourist Paris. Montmartre (the 18th arrondissement) is the closest one will get to experiencing "real" Paris. Even though the Sacré-Coeur is a major tourist attraction, the area has for the most part been able to retain its integrity as a true glimpse of Paris.

On another note, this little guy walked right up to Kelsey and I yesterday in London. No, we did not kill and eat. There were too many old English animal lovers in the area. (for any public viewers of this blog, that is a humorous reference to a book in our course)

Oh and that street in Paris has a fish market that attracts hundreds of pigeons that love to fly in your face. Maybe not hundreds, but enough to make me have many embarrassing encounters.