The walkable city

 

I have been a little obsessed with the idea of the walkable city for many years now. And my very obsession with the subject keeps me from talking about it as much as I might be inclined to here. In the places where my views are particularly strong, and deeply unconventional, making my argument can feel more like a burden than a work of love, so, as with politics in general, and, historically with my feelings about library management, I tend at most to explore the subject around the edges of it.

Though longtime readers may find that to be a bit understated.

That said, in some real way, one could view my darling wife and I's venture through Japan and into France as a search for a walkable city. As people who always loved best walking our city, and vacationed to places where we walked all day, there has been for us an element of a lifelong search for a walkable city to live in. As rich and glorious is the culture of France, I think, aside from its current tragedies and collapse, we would have loved to find a place that suited us in the USA, a place where we already had a right to be and where we already spoke the language. But honestly, we couldn't find one. Perhaps being rich enough, and with a few different priorities, would have sent us to New York, Boston, or San Francisco, but while the walkability of those cities is high on a curve with other US cities, having seen more of the world, it really isn't particularly good.

Fortunately my new Belle Epoque city is the most wonderfully walkable city I have ever lived in, and maybe even that I have ever been to. No, it is not perfect, not even close. But it is grudgingly tolerable in an ideal world and exquisite in this one. And though it certainly has no better a relationship to cars than many other great European cities and I still have a fair list of complaints, I think its historic delights; even and heavy density, baked in tourism, and geography, all play a part in just what makes it so uniquely succesful in its walkability. 

But there is also one odd little feature I love that I wanted to tell you about today.

It seems obvious, and a little weird, but I never experienced it properly before this city, though I suspect it must be common across the country of France. And it is this: 

Pedestrians have the right of way in crosswalks without walk signals. 

That's it.

I know the rhetoric often states this rule, even in Minnesota for instance, but here it is functionally the rule. Every pedestrian, us included, plunges into any crosswalk with the full right to cross, and, essentially, every car stops for them. I don't mean these cars stop if they can, or the third car stops, or they are forced to stop, but they stop the same way a car would stop for a red light. Like, they stop quickly, abruptly. They stop because everyone here believes they should stop. They don't think they have the right of way! They think I do, immediately and unalterably.

Oh, we're not fools, caution still must be exercised, making sure the driver sees us is still part of walking, but generally when we are walking along our street we just walk. Every once in awhile there might be a signalled crosswalk and they still suck. The ones crossing to the beach are especially repellent and long, but mostly, corner to corner, we have the legal, customary, and traditonal right of way. 

And we and everyone other that the freshest of tourists, use it.

Pictures from my vacation where I live

 

As we travel around in this city I take occasional sets of photos. So as not to interrupt our day too much I don't do this often, and when I do it's just for a minute. I later see what I got and usually play with these pictures using all the weird tools at my disposal. But because each photography session is generally inspired by something super compelling to photograph, I often have one pretty good picture just on its own.

We have been all over the town the last few days and so I have a large collection of photographs to... improve when I feel like it, but here are the few that I am happy to show you just as they are, printed straight off the negative, so to speak. Can I make them better by adding cats, or better lighting, or making them dioramas? Probably. But here they are in their native guise before we come to any of that.

Asian Museum, from set 1:

Eglise Saint Jacques-le-Majeur:

Asian Museum set 2 (I really liked the Asian Museum!):

Musee du Palais Lascaris (maybe my favorite museum in the whole city):

Cours Saleya set 1 (we go here a lot and I almost always want to photograph!):

Windy day at the beach:

Charvin Arts, an art supply store:

Vieux Vielle for this pigeon on the roof:

Speaking French

 

Let us address the elephant in the room.

I don't speak French.

Yes, I have studied it for maybe a half hour to an hour everyday for the past six months, even in Japan. And actually, I really can almost read it. But listening? Oh la la. And speaking even worse. When we walk into stores, markets, shops, and cafes we always endeavor to speak French. Simple things don't go terribly, usually. But often there will be a long string of French issued at me whereupon I freeze up like a block of granite, unable to move, speak, or respond. Sometimes, with no other option, we carry on. Sometimes they ask if we speak French. Sometimes they ask where we're from or what we speak. For awhile there people asked us if we were visiting and, full of pride, we told them all about how we were living here now!

At which point we would get a little lecture where we were told we need to speak French.

Which is what we were trying to do in the first place!

Now we just say we're visiting. Why not? We are. Maybe for a year, maybe for the rest of our lives, I don't know, but having been born in and lived in the USA for 60 years I'm not sure I ever managed to become an American. Becoming French seems considerably more out of the question. And what is retirement other than, if one can manage it, permanent vacation? 

So we're going for that.

I'm still trying to learn French. We do, really, live here now. And if the lady in the ceramics shop starts telling us about how to pack up our purchases for the plane I do say "Oh, no. Yes, we're here on vacation, but for a very, very, very long time."

No lecture.

Favorite cafe

 

After a month fully living here it seems like we are settled in. But we probably aren't as much as I think we are. There is a lot to discover here and wild enthusiasms for new things may or may not translate a way of life. 

Our relationship to cafes offers a case in point here.

When we were in the process of moving here, through day trips and brief overnight trips, we found a cafe down the street called Umi. This is a modern style of cafe that makes very good, albeit not perfect, coffee drinks. We went there a lot when we first moved here and thought it would surely be a regular place for us, so convenient and of a kind with many of the cafes we've loved in the past, in a modern, new wave style.

But now we haven't been back for weeks. This is partly because, one day, we discovered going to the grand old street cafes. These are the large, old world, sprawling and lovely cafes pouring out onto sidewalks in the busiest, usually pedestrianized areas. They are often crowded, and very charming. Oddly no more expensive than a more practical cafe like Umi, there are a couple of these down the street from us, and these suddenly captured our imagination and became the go to style of place for us for a week or two. We thought we would just go to these old world European places all the time going forward.

But those places have a lot of theater to them, and fancy waiters, and a lot of bustle, which can be exhausting at certain times. Also, it is cold here sometimes in the Winter, and these places can get a little short on charming indoor seating. At which point we discovered back of the house cafes or tearooms.

Backroom cafes are super quaint rooms at the back of what are usually sweet shops or chocolate shops. A perfect example of one of these is Canet, which has a couple of very different shops down two different streets from us. We went in just to peep at the pastries, or chocolates, or macarons, I forget which, and noticed a little super charming tearoom, almost fussy, but not quite. We sat. A patisserie showpiece, a macaron, and two coffees later, we were fully committed to this kind of cafe. It immediately seemed like that's where we'll be going from now on. 

I even have a few pictures for once (well, I mean, I often have pictures, but not so often of what I happen to be talking about). These are from Canet number one:

You may now have noticed how everytime I described a new kind of cafe I also said it was just down the street from us. This might hold the key to the matter. 

Everything is just down the street from us! Places that we might describe as "far" here would be the closest possible places we could walk to where we lived in Saint Minneapolis. I don't know how to say this without seeming like I'm being ridiculous, or exaggerating, but I do believe it is not outlandish to say that within an easy ten or twenty minute walk from our apartment are, I don't know, 500 places that could be considered in some way a cafe.

A thousand?

It's absurd. We've been to what, 30 or 40? I don't know. We liked most of them.

Today, after a week rather full of administrative tasks and doctors and bank accounts we were released again into our accustomed freedom. We had not particularly planned to go to any cafes, but we went to three! 

One was in a large, beautiful sweet shop specializing in rather pricey but delicious fruit gels in the middle of the old city. In the back of the store, up some stairs was a lovely and empty balcony seating area (we are now at peak low season here). We had two hot chocolates and part of a raspberry fruit gel. Later, after buying a Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin album, we popped in to a small cafe in an interesting neighborhood we're fond of. This was a small, modern cafe and might have been the best coffee we've had here or close to it. On the way home, as night fell, we went to one of the grand old cafes on the main tram pedestrian street, primarily inspired by the tiresome weight of the shopping bags we were carrying (I had bought some french olive oil). There we had a prosecco and a Negroni.

So what then does this mean?

Will we be going to three cafes a day from now on?

What is our way of life here now?

I don't know.

But so far, it seems to be working out.

Sunset

 

Lately the best time of day in our city is around sunset. The cold loosens up enough to be more tolerable by then. And something becomes terribly clear about the ocean, like you could touch the horizon and it would be sharp enough to cut your finger. The buildings take the orange light well too, and the palm trees are all full of stars, which is very appealing.

We walked down to the Sea again today at the sunset, the second to last thing we did in a day full of shopping. My cheese habit is getting expensive. I like to buy one cheese each time I go that I know nothing about. Today it was a goat cheese covered in flowers. The cheesemonger asked if I knew what it was. She said it had a sweet rose gel in the center.

"Okay." I said.

It's six hours later now and there's just a little of it left.

At the beach, and once late during the shopping I took some pictures which I've tried to give a sunset flavor to, and maybe a little bit of the flavor of an old eighties song by the Go-Go's I had stuck in my head today.

This is my town now, roll the footage: