Day two: July 2, 2004
Destination : avenue d’ivry
Weather : overcast
Time of departure : 5.30pm
Canine breakdown : 1 chow chow, 1 grey terrier, 1 pitbull with a black eye, 1 grey poodle, 1 pug, 1 fat golden lab, 1 springer spaniel pup, 1 boxer sporting a red cape, 1 unidentified pointy thing
Public transport options : 67 bus, 62 bus
I can see Les Olympiades on the map. There is no indication as to what it might be. Crossing boulevard Jourdan i reach rue d’Arcueil, which curves round to the right before meeting a post office and the rue de Rungis. Here, a rotund bonhomme is leaning out his balcony window. At place de Rungis, people are drinking, laughing, getting home from work for the weekend. Yet another fat bonhomme is walking a very little springer spaniel, holding up traffic while everyone stops to look. Emboutillage! It’s while I am waiting for the traffic jam to clear that I see the tigers:
On up the rue Bobillot and look! over there on the park bench two men are huddled over a small thing… there’s a transaction going on. A little further up the street, just before it meets rue de Tolbiac, a grooming salon for dogs. Toilettage. Another block, and it’s flagrant desire.
rue de Tolbiac is insanity at this hour. As I walk past the upper end of rue Charles Fourier, the church seems more imposing in its looming beigeness than it did yesterday. The patisserie directly opposite is now closed... which makes the experience of walking past it so much more rewarding:
Tolbiac is a hotchpotch of everything Paris could possibly represent, a microcosm of some kind of inhabited Parisian ideal. There’s the art gallery, which is currently closed, its insides gutted and messy, dustpans and paint on the floor. I couldn’t have gone anyway; the entrance fee is too high:
I’m not sure too much here makes sense. There’s a poem of sorts, about seven feet high, on the right.
I could stand here forever trying to work this place out, but instead I let the pull of one of Paris’ best interpretations of capitalism, the bookstore, take me away.
Right onto avenue d’Ivry and suddenly I am in Chinatown. Every second building is an Asian grocery store, every third a Chinese or Vietnamese restaurant. The cultural make-up undergoes an immense shift and here, amongst supermarkets called BIG where every fruit and vegetable is shrink wrapped in plastic – even the lettuce, even the oranges, even the bananas. Shooting to the sky are several towers and high rises, and everywhere the crowd, la foule. The French seems to contain the idea of madness within its crowd. I like it. It seems like the whole world is outside. In search of the Olympiades, I walk down to the Porte d’Ivry metro, but nothing advertises itself as such. The post office is on the rue Simone Weil, and the many signs pointing to it force the idea of this strange suicidal white philosopher onto the topography here. Things don’t mesh around here. I’m still wondering what and where the Olympiades could be, and have started trying to make things fit. I am almost convinced that it can be what I want it to be:
(it turns out these are part of the Université de Paris 1: Centre Charles Mendez France) when I see a sign that reads OPTIQUE OLYMPIADES outside a grotty shopping complex. I go round the back of the OPTIQUE building, past the billiard hall and the dank corridors lined with stores, and on the other side I find proof that there’s at least a memory trace of this word, even if I still don’t really know what it stands for.
I look around me: tower blocks everywhere. And there’s one called the IMMEUBLE HELSINKI and another named the IMMEUBLE TOKYO, so, for lack of any other inspiration, I toy with the idea that it’s a collective name for this miniature high rise city, the names of the towers corresponding to the countries of the world. Some very French attempt at cultural unification through baptism. But still, je ne sais pas. Je n’en sais rien. I squeeze onto the 62 bus coming from the Bibliothèque Nationale and start my ride home, still wondering.
Weather : overcast
Time of departure : 5.30pm
Canine breakdown : 1 chow chow, 1 grey terrier, 1 pitbull with a black eye, 1 grey poodle, 1 pug, 1 fat golden lab, 1 springer spaniel pup, 1 boxer sporting a red cape, 1 unidentified pointy thing
Public transport options : 67 bus, 62 bus
I can see Les Olympiades on the map. There is no indication as to what it might be. Crossing boulevard Jourdan i reach rue d’Arcueil, which curves round to the right before meeting a post office and the rue de Rungis. Here, a rotund bonhomme is leaning out his balcony window. At place de Rungis, people are drinking, laughing, getting home from work for the weekend. Yet another fat bonhomme is walking a very little springer spaniel, holding up traffic while everyone stops to look. Emboutillage! It’s while I am waiting for the traffic jam to clear that I see the tigers:
On up the rue Bobillot and look! over there on the park bench two men are huddled over a small thing… there’s a transaction going on. A little further up the street, just before it meets rue de Tolbiac, a grooming salon for dogs. Toilettage. Another block, and it’s flagrant desire.
rue de Tolbiac is insanity at this hour. As I walk past the upper end of rue Charles Fourier, the church seems more imposing in its looming beigeness than it did yesterday. The patisserie directly opposite is now closed... which makes the experience of walking past it so much more rewarding:
Tolbiac is a hotchpotch of everything Paris could possibly represent, a microcosm of some kind of inhabited Parisian ideal. There’s the art gallery, which is currently closed, its insides gutted and messy, dustpans and paint on the floor. I couldn’t have gone anyway; the entrance fee is too high:
I’m not sure too much here makes sense. There’s a poem of sorts, about seven feet high, on the right.
I could stand here forever trying to work this place out, but instead I let the pull of one of Paris’ best interpretations of capitalism, the bookstore, take me away.
Right onto avenue d’Ivry and suddenly I am in Chinatown. Every second building is an Asian grocery store, every third a Chinese or Vietnamese restaurant. The cultural make-up undergoes an immense shift and here, amongst supermarkets called BIG where every fruit and vegetable is shrink wrapped in plastic – even the lettuce, even the oranges, even the bananas. Shooting to the sky are several towers and high rises, and everywhere the crowd, la foule. The French seems to contain the idea of madness within its crowd. I like it. It seems like the whole world is outside. In search of the Olympiades, I walk down to the Porte d’Ivry metro, but nothing advertises itself as such. The post office is on the rue Simone Weil, and the many signs pointing to it force the idea of this strange suicidal white philosopher onto the topography here. Things don’t mesh around here. I’m still wondering what and where the Olympiades could be, and have started trying to make things fit. I am almost convinced that it can be what I want it to be:
(it turns out these are part of the Université de Paris 1: Centre Charles Mendez France) when I see a sign that reads OPTIQUE OLYMPIADES outside a grotty shopping complex. I go round the back of the OPTIQUE building, past the billiard hall and the dank corridors lined with stores, and on the other side I find proof that there’s at least a memory trace of this word, even if I still don’t really know what it stands for.
I look around me: tower blocks everywhere. And there’s one called the IMMEUBLE HELSINKI and another named the IMMEUBLE TOKYO, so, for lack of any other inspiration, I toy with the idea that it’s a collective name for this miniature high rise city, the names of the towers corresponding to the countries of the world. Some very French attempt at cultural unification through baptism. But still, je ne sais pas. Je n’en sais rien. I squeeze onto the 62 bus coming from the Bibliothèque Nationale and start my ride home, still wondering.
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