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Commentary
The Olympics — Mon Dieu!
Among the privileges of living in Paris is the privilege to complain about Paris.
Tourists sometimes complain when they’re here, too, but they get very little sympathy either from Parisians or those left at home. The millions of transients who every year pass through the City of Light have usually saved enough money and vacation days to see past the minor irritations of slow service in restaurants and crowds surrounding the Mona Lisa. They come to Paris to fall in love with Paris, and they almost always do. (Those who fall victim to metro pickpockets are excluded, of course.)
As for Parisians, they can complain. Mon Dieu, can they complain! The grievances are passed from generation to generation and are as jealously guarded as the Hausmannian buildings and the Tuileries and Luxembourg gardens. The city has its faults, and Parisians will tell you what they are, at length, and with little prompting. They will tell you who is to blame for it all, too.
An exhibit on dueling on view at the Army Museum through mid-August raises the possibility that the French are easily affronted. In the Romantic era of the 19th century, personal honor was highly sensitized. Playwrights and poets notoriously sent challenges to newspaper critics when works received poor reviews. The opponents then settled scores in the Bois de Boulogne with swords or pistols. The violent elements of Gallic resentment may have atrophied in the two centuries since, yet the descendants (or the survivor’s descendants, at least) have seemingly retained a disposition to disputation.
Parisians today will slash at Paris with zest, as ferociously as they attack their favorite takeout dinner, rotisserie chicken. I try to be sympathetic though really I am simply bemused. How can I contradict them, after all? For the last year, I lived and wrote in a friend's apartment near the Arc de Triomphe. I never would claim any status other than un étranger — a foreigner.
Like their parents and grandparents before them, they are convinced the city has fallen to pieces. I listen, and I look around. I see only a profusion of architectural beauty; markets abounding with appetizing delights; and a fashion sense that residents exude as effortlessly as flowers bloom and birds sing. Those who find fault in Paris surely could find fault in heaven.
Now comes something new to complain about! This seems cause for celebration, although that is clearly a breach of the rules. So, Parisians complain dourly these days about the Olympics. Mercifully, the task requires enunciating only two letters — les j.o. It’s pronounced “zhay-o,” and spoken with a tone of exhaustion or exasperation. Les jeux olympiques, the Olympic Games.
Before runners ever carry the Olympic torch through their city, Parisians have already earned gold medals for complaining about the games.
The Paris Olympics are distinguished by plans to hold many events in the city itself. Swimmers will compete in the Seine; last week, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo took a river dip herself and declared the water clean enough for the competitors. Newly introduced Olympic events, including BMX freestyle, breaking, skateboarding and 3×3 basketball events, are scheduled for the Place de la Concorde. And the marathon will pass by the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, before arriving at the finish line on the Boulevard des Invalides, where Napoleon is entombed.
To make way for the athletes and to ensure the spectators’ safety, some Paris streets and metro stations have been closed for weeks. All of which is cause for much anxiety among taxi and Uber drivers who fear the impact on their livelihoods, and likewise, with commuters who live by the code of métro, boulot, dodo — the daily grind of metro, work, sleep.
The dread has spread, too, to those quartiers where residents now must show QR codes on cell phones before they’re given safe passage into their own neighborhoods. And it has even reached restaurateurs and shop owners who worry that tourists won’t want to brave arduous security checks.
While I am not usually much of an optimist, I have done my best to parry these fears. Tout irait bien, I assure the Parisians. All will be well. The world will come to Paris in July and enjoy all that the city has to offer. The world will fall in love at the Paris Olympics, I promise them. How can it not?
On verra bien, answer the Parisians. We shall see. But they will complain no matter what.
