Salut, and welcome to your People’s Daily Paris, numero un, in which, depending on temps or meteo, rain or shine, I jump the metro to get a decent, telling pic of this lively, intimate, shambles of a city. (In rotten weather, we’ll see what lurks in a few year’s worth of files.) The images should be, if you want to know, not the tourist beauties - you can find those anywhere, done far more skillfully than I ever will - but the little stories, encounters and events. I’ll do my best to run it five days a week. The People’s Daily is your avant-courier from one of the world’s eternal cities. Paying subscribers only for now because they deserve it. Thanks one and all.
As you may have heard, things are happening here in Paris. The Olympics are coming in 2024 and the Mayor is desperate to put the best face on the city. She’s making a mess, cleaning up everywhere. Who asked for this ? Who asked for the Olympics, for that matter ? No one comes to Paris to get physically fit except those crazy joggers who race straight at you on the sidewalk, wrapped in headphones and digital heartbeat counters, completely aloof from the world… they probably work in City Hall.
Meanwhile Paris revolts. Not the Gilets Jaunes kind of revolt but a long-held citizen grumble which even the newspapers have finally noticed. Except for Twitterinos, #saccageaparis in its various manifestations has been a secret movement, where citizens log in with pics of the latest redevelopment scam or forgotten street, park or alley in Paris. Is the city to be turned into an enormous theme park to suit a bunch of jocks and their rich protectorate ? The latest news is that the interior of Notre Dame will be ‘modernised,’ while a theme park under the parvis will give people the “virtual” experience of getting inside. Good lord ! Meanwhile the massacre of trees around town continues, with unpredictable results. The tree in the photo below just had to go - our bureaucrats never give reasons - but once it was dead, the roots shrivelled and down went the street !