Whenever They Drain The Canal...

I remember hearing about it when I was in Paris last year:  the Canal St. Martin was drained.

Even before the neighborhoods lining it became fashionable, I enjoyed walking along its banks, or cycling the streets that ran alongside it.  The old houses and industrial buildings that stand beside it made it seem more like the Paris of my imagination than the sites along the Seine did.

The canal connects the Seine with the Canal de l'Ourcq, which in turn connects with the Marne River north of the city.  From what I understand, St. Martin is drained every fifteen years or so.  I've often thought the detritus found at the bottom could tell some interesting stories.

It was drained in January of last year and, the last time before that, in 2001.  As the millenium began, the 10th Arrondissement--through which much of the canal runs--was in its transition from a working-class neighborhood to an area full of some of the most interesting galleries and trendiest cafes in the City of Light.  (Indeed, it was this area that suffered the November 2015 terrorist attacks.)


In this country, we call it "gentrification."  But to the folks who cleaned out the canal, it meant more and different kinds of refuse.

As for "different kinds", you only have to think of one thing that Paris had by 2016 but not in 2001:

Unfortunately, in the early days of Velib--Paris' bicycle share program--a number of the bikes were stolen.  Guess where they ended up?

Now, bicycles have been dumped in the canal probably since, well, there were bicycles in Paris.  So have motorbikes, house furnishings and even an old camera or two.  But if some archaeologist or historian were to study St. Martin's detritus, what would they learn from finding Velib bikes?

Probably the same things they'd learn from comparing the wine bottles tossed into the canal in one period with those of another.    One thing is for sure: You don't see any of it in Amelie or any of Alfred Sisley's paintings!

From The Water To The Port

Three years ago, the Canal St. Martin was drained.  The City of Paris does that about every ten or fifteen years.

In dredgings past (sounds like a series of old therapy sessions!), the "treasures" at the bottom of the Canal included home furnishings, street signs, gold coins(!), World War I shells and even a car.  But the most recent drainage served as a sort of geological record of changes in the neighborhood around the canal--mostly the 10th Arrondissement--and in the City of Light itself.

The streets around the waterway have become the sites of bars, restaurants and clubs.  (The Bataclan, site of a mass shooting during a November 2015 concert, stands literally steps from the canal.)  The area is home to "Bobos"--a term combining "bohemian" and "bourgeois".  They are probably the Parisian equivalent of hipsters. At any rate, they share many of the same tastes with their Brooklyn counterparts.  

They include a thirst for craft beers (French as well as American) and wines.  Empty bottles and cans bearing those labels littered the bottom of the canal when it was dredged. So did another passion of that evanescent group:  bicycles--specifically, those from Velib, the city's bike-share service.

As far as I know, neither of the city's two canals--the Harlem River Ship Canal and the Gowanus Canal--has ever been drained.  Interestingly, the Gowanus--one of the most toxic waterways in the United States--flows, like the St. Martin, through a hipsterizing (Think of it as the hipster equivalent of gentrifying.) neighborhood.  According to an urban legend, the Mafia used to dump their "hits" in the Gowanus because the bodies would dissolve.  

Which brings me to this question:  Could a Citibike survive a dive into a city canal?

Somehow I doubt it would be even as intact as the bike in the photo.  That Citibike, missing since September 2017, showed up in the bike-share service's port at 73rd Street and Riverside Drive, where filmmaker Ted Geoghegan found it.  Its coating of barnacles and mud indicates that it spent time in the Hudson River--which, at that point, is actually an estuary.  

No one, it seems, can explain how it got from the river (or wherever it was) to the bike dock?  Did a thief take it, dump it, feel guilty and dive into the water to fetch it?  That seems unlikely because, well, that's not what thieves usually do, but also because if the thief did indeed dump the bike in the river, he or she wouldn't have found it in the same spot, or anywhere nearby.  The more likely scenario is that some boater or fisher found it and, not knowing what else to do, quietly brought it to the bike port.

That bike is more than likely beyond repair.  Spending almost any amount of time in the water would have destroyed the bike's electronics, and the growth on the rest of the bike indicates that the brackish water has corroded the rest of the bike so that it's structurally unsound, and its moving parts are probably irreparable. 

(Interesting aside:  The Gowanus and Harlem Ship are the only two canals in New York City today. In the 17th Century, however, lower Manhattan was laced with canals. That's not surprising when you realize the area was then called Nieuw Amsterdam, and the Dutch settlers were following a model of urban planning for which their capital is famous.)

A Ride Along Another Canal: A Path To Memory

Today it was Vera's turn.

I took my green Miss Mercian mixte on a ride to, and along, the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath.  I used to pedal along that path when I was a Rutgers student; last year I rode it for the first time since those days.

Today I rode it just a week after pedaling and walking by the  Canal St. Martin through what has become a district of young artists and animators--and interesting, quirky restaurants and cafes--to the city's "little Africa".  Years ago, I also pedaled a section of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath near Washington, DC.  Like the D&R towpath, its surface (at least on the section I rode) is dirt and clay, with pebbles in some areas. A section of the St. Martin has a path with a similar surface, while another part is cobblestoned.

Towpaths along canals were constructed so that horses or mules could tow barges from the shore. Even if their surfaces are not paved, they make nice bike lanes as well as hiking trails because they are usually table-flat, or close to it.  The engineering that went into building them--not to mention the canals themselves--has seldom been bettered.

It's interesting that one reason we like to ride along canals is that they seem peaceful.  Their still waters reflect and refract light in sometimes-painterly sorts of ways, whether the canal courses through Paris residences or old factories in New England--or winds through stands of trees and follows railroad tracks in central New Jersey.  One often sees couples riding or walking, or simply sitting, along canal banks:  Canals and their paths are often among the most romantic sites in their locales.  

I also find it interesting that some canal towpaths are seen as "natural" sites.  Along some parts of the Delaware and Raritan, as well as other canals, trees and other vegetation have reclaimed the land from the remains of abandoned factories and other structures.  Areas along canals have also been turned into, or become, sanctuaries for various animals and birds.  But as lovely as all of those animal habitats, and all of the flora and fauna, are, they are no more "natural" than the canal itself. 

In saying what I've just said, I do not mean to diminish the aesthetic or recreational value of such sites.  I just find it ironic that we now ride along canal towpaths like the Delaware and Raritan to get away from the sometimes-dreary, or even grim, industrial and post-industrial landscapes those canals helped to create, or were built to serve.  

In fact, the city of New Brunswick--the locale of Rutgers University, located at one end of the canal--is such a place.  I don't know whether the term "post-industrial" had been coined by the time I attended university there, but it certainly would have fit:  A number of large and small enterprises had gone out of business or simply left:  Johnson and Johnson was threatening to do the same.  In fact, even some Rutgers administrators, and New Jersey state officials, talked about abandoning the Old Queens campus and moving all of the university's facilities across the Raritan River to Piscataway, where Rutgers already had some of its research laboratories as well as a residential campus.

Instead, they decided to "revitalize" the city.  In essence, they made it just like the downtowns of so many other cities, with all of the same chain stores and restaurants. (I mean, what town worth its salt would do without Starbucks, right?)  So it doesn't look as run-down as much of the town did when I lived there, but it has all of the character of a Sunbelt suburb.

And, of course, my favorite places--except for one--are gone.  Those places include what remains, to this day, my favorite music store I have ever encountered:  Cheap Thrills, on George Street. The prices were indeed cheap, which allowed me and many other students to buy albums (vinyl!) of all of those esoteric bands and kinds of music we learned about from each other.  

(That shop, and a Pyramid Books, which I also loved, were part of the Hiram Market district, which was designated a historic district, then de-designated because, as one architect put it, the area didn't fit into Johnson and Johnson's "clean desk" mentality.)

The only "old favorite" of mine that remains is a restaurant called Stuff Yer Face.  Of course, the menu includes all sorts of things we couldn't have imagined in those days. It also has a bar with an enormous beer selection.  Back in my day, they didn't (couldn't?) sell alcohol, but we could bring it in.  Of course, most of us did!

I ordered an Original Stromboli, for old time's sake.  The young woman who took my order and the one who brought it to me were, no doubt, not even born the last or first time I ordered one.  It was every bit as good--and unhealthy--as the first one I ate in 1979 or thereabouts.  A bargain, frankly, at $6.75. 

At least there was that--and the canal towpath.  They made the ride more than worthwhile.

On The Path Across America: The Hennepin Canal

When I was an undergraduate, one of my favorite rides took me along the Delaware and Raritan Canal Towpath.  One of my favorite rides in Paris follows the Canal St. Martin, and one of the highlights, for me, of cycling in Montreal was the Lachine Canal path.

All over the world, as canals designed for barge traffic fall into disuse, paths alongside them--which were often trod by horses and mules that pulled the barges--turn into all-but-ideal cycling and walking lanes.

Some folks in northern Illinois have discovered as much:  a trail alongside the Hennepin Canal has become a magnet for cyclists.  It's so popular, in fact, that it will become part of the Great American Rail Trail.

The Hennepin Canal connects the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers through northern Illinois.  Like the Delaware-Raritan,  St. Martin and other canals, it once served as an important link for water transportation.  Now it is a draw for all sorts of recreation, including fishing, boating and hiking as well as cycling.  

For one thing, paths along canals are flat.  But, perhaps most of all, canals are almost always scenic, whether because of the landscapes surrounding them or the industrial structures that line them. 

A Market, A Canal, A Church And A Fountain

My bike ride today took me to alternative universes in Paris.  That's what they seemed to be, anyway.

I encountered the first one after riding some side streets near the Place de Clichy, I wandered up some cobblestoned streets (that were really more like lanes) and found myself at the Porte de St. Ouen.

If you are cycling, walking, driving or taking any other kind of ground transportation, you enter or leave the city through those "portes", which are usually passages under the Peripherique, a highway that rings the City of Light. The location of the "portes" are said to approximate the location of openings in the walls that surrounded the city itself and those outlying towns in earlier times.

Anyway, just after passing through the "porte", I saw a sign for "puces".  No, the French highway folks aren't telling you where to find fleas.  Rather, it's shorthand for "flea market" (marche de puces).  So, of course, I followed it.

I hadn't been to the St. Ouen-Paris flea markets in some time. The hyphenated designation isn't just marketing hype:  Although most of the market's stalls are indeed in St.Ouen, a whole section of stalls lies within the Paris city limits.

Notice that I used the plural:  "flea markets".  That's because there are in fact over a dozen different markets, each of them arranged along different streets of the city.  Or, you might say that the markets are like a city of open-air malls.   The only shopping experience that even remotely reminded me of St. Ouen is the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.  Of course, they are very different because the GB is covered and, of course, because of the disparate cultures (even if some of the sellers at St. Ouen are Turkish). I don't know which is bigger, but they both dwarf any flea market I've seen elsewhere.

In both places, it's possible to buy just about anything, though there are certainly more antique and vintage-item sellers in St. Ouen than I recall seeing in Istanbul.  But St. Ouen made me think about the term "flea market", which is a direct translation of "marche aux puces". (The French usually call the markets "puces" for short.)  The term is said to have originated because the sellers in the original markets were often homeless, and covered with fleas.  According to what I've read, their practice began in the latter decades of the 19th Century, when much of the city was rebuilt under Baron Haussmann.  (He's the one who replaced the serpentine medieval streets with straight thoroughfares that radiated out from plazas and parks:  Think of the "Etoile" in which the Arc de Triomphe is located.)  As a result of this realignment, many old buildings were torn down, and their contents were left lying  in the streets--where they were scavenged.

Now, I must admit, some things indeed looked as if they were brought in by people (or even dogs or cats) with fleas.  But some other things certainly didn't.

And, while many of the structures that became stalls were old industrial facilites, others looked like they might have given a bourgeois lady or gentleman quite a view.

There are also some interesting contrasts, such as this:

I like it a lot, but it's kind of funny to see the kind of graffiti art you might see in Bushwick or Mott Haven on a building in which old paintings and prints are sold.

Speaking of structures, later in the day, at the other end of town, I encountered a church unlike any I've seen in this city--or anywhere else.

All right, from the outside you might think it's just another late-19th (or early-20th) Century church built in the Romanesque style.  And, in fact,it is, deliberately so:  It was built to replace another church similar in style--on the outside.

Once you get inside, the church still shares some characteristics with other Romanesque churches, including the high, vaulted ceilings--which, of course, are designed to get parishoners to look upward and be reminded of the vast power of God.  But then there's something you've never seen in any other Romanesque church--or, probably, any other church:

Steel girders!  If someone were to build a Romanesque church in Manhattan's Meatpacking District (when it was indeed a district where meat was packed) or Soho (when it was still industrial), I might expect something like this--maybe.

The girders inside the Notre Dame du Travail (Our Lady of Work) were taken from the Palais d'Industrie constructed for the 1855 Universal Exposition and torn down in 1891.  And the stone on the outside was taken from an earlier church that had become too small for the community it was serving.

Even though the city made a rather detailed historical marker for it, and the church offers pamphlets and other materials explaining the church's history, I guess they don't expect tourists to visit, as it is on the far southern end of the city, far from better-known sites.  Thus, the marker and the printed materials are only in French--which, fortunately, I can read, so I was able to write about the church (however sketchily) here. 

Along the way, I made other stops at interesting spots--and for a picnic lunch on the Quai de Jemmapes, by the Canal St. Martin.  And near the end of my ride, I stopped at Place Felix Eboue to hydrate:

Well, if I were my iPhone or laptop, I guess I could have hydrated there.  I enjoyed it nonetheless.  It's different and it's Paris, after all! 

A Paris Bike Tour To The Grand Train

Sometimes I am a creature of habit.  Yesterday I went to Paris Bike Tour, from whom I rented a bike when I was here last year.  I did the same this time, except that I  got one of their "official" bikes (with the PBT logo and colors) this time.  Last year's bike was a silver Arcade, which was similar, if not the same, except for one thing:  the bike I got this year has a Shimano Dynohub powering the front and rear light, which I used last night.  Last year's bike had battery lights.

At first, I thought this year's bike was slower--or that I've aged more than a year or gained more weight than I thought I did since last year. (Don't ask!  Never ask a woman questions about her weight! ;-)) Then I thought that the seat was slowing me down--after all, it's the cushy sort found on bikes like this, and I'm used to my Brooks saddles.  But, finally, after steering out of the rond (or roundabout, as the Brits call them) of the Place de la Bastille, I realized why everything felt so sluggish:  The tires had about half as much air in them as they needed.  

I could have topped off the tires at any number of places, namely bike shops and gas stations.  As it happened, PBT is closer to Bastille to any other such place (that I know about, anyway), so I went to them.  Just for good measure, they did a quick check of the rest of the bike, and found nothing amiss.

All was well with the world, and off I went on the bike.  Mostly, I've rambled:  I've had no particular destinations in mind.  Actually, I headed for the hills, such as they exist.  Of course, I rode up the longest and steepest hill in Paris:  the one leading to the Sacre Coeur de Montmartre--and, of course, down to the teeming streets and open-air markets of Goutte d'Or, often called the "petite Afrique" (little Africa) of Paris.

When I pedaled in that neighborhood--and neighboring Barbes-Rochechouart-- this year and last, I noticed that however well-intentioned the bike lanes are, it is all but impossible to stay on them unless you want to stop-and-start, or do a lot of dodging and weaving.  It seems that, even by Paris standards, the streets and sidewalks of that neighborhood are narrow, and people are always out shopping or otherwise out and about, always in large groups. So, they almost can't help but to spill into the bike lanes.  They almost invariably get out of your way, at least to the degree they can, and say "pardon".  I saw only one cyclist argue with the pedestrians.  That cyclist himself is African, from Senegal.  "Vous n'etes pas francaise"--"You are not French" he said with a knowing grin.  I nodded, sheepishly.  "Pas problem.  Vous etes sympathique."  I almost expected him to say I am "tel" or "trop" sympathique--so or too nice--buy he just left it at "nice".  

Anyway, from there, I rode to Saint Denis--home of the Stade de France, site of the Euro soccer championship and one of the terror attacks in November--only to find the Basilica closed.  Still, it's impressive from the outside:

If it looks unbalanced, that's because the North Tower (the one that would have been on the left) was removed in 1840 after it was damaged by lightning three years earlier and subsequent storms.  Work on reassembling and installing is now in progress.  

But the ride to St. Denis was not for naught, as I found a path along the canal to La Villette, a few kilometers away in the northern part of Paris, where it connects with Canal de l'Ourcq, which in turn connects  with the Canal St. Martin-- an extremely popular spot for cycling, walking and picnics.

Then, after some more wandering I decided to hop a train:

No, I didn't go back to New York.  Rather, I chanced upon something I'd heard about before coming to Paris.

The Grand Train is held, as you might expect, in an old rail terminal and storage yard.  It was nice to look at tains that had, not only power, but also style.

You really had the sense that people rode those trains.

  

In those days, all Frenchmen wore moustaches.  At least, in the movies--and on trains--they did:

The engine in the photo below was designed for use in rugged Pyrenees terrain no other vehicles could reach.  It was used as a "relay" to and from ambulances and other cars and trucks, as well as to get pilgrims to Lourdes. 

It made its first run more than two decades after the first Tour de France cyclists climbed those peaks in the Pyrennes, and its last about two decades before I pedaled up them.

The organizers of Grand Train seem to have "discovered" some interesting uses for old track beds--like a "beach"

a "garden" 

and even a chicken coop.

(It looks like someone thought formal wear was required for this event!)

Hey, they even figured out that a gravelled track bed makes great petanque  court.

I was not surprised:  My Italian grandfather used to play bocce on a disused rail bed underneath an almost-equally disused viaduct of the New York transit system.

What would he think of that young lady?

I Ride My Rental Into History

So, here's where I went yesterday:

Take a closer look:

No, I didn't come home early from my trip.  This replica of the Statue of Liberty is on the Ile des Cygnes, a manmade island in the Seine under the Grenelle Bridge.  

(Now I'll make a confession:  I am one of those New Yorkers who's never been to the Statue of Liberty in my hometown's harbor.  When I have made that confession elsewhere, I have been called a disgrace to the human race, and worse.)

Another difference between this one and the one in New York is that you can ride to this one. Well, almost:  You have to walk down a couple of flights of stairs from the Grenelle Bridge. (When I had a mountain bike with a suspension front fork, I probably would have ridden down those stairs!)  And I rode to it--well, actually, I didn't intend to visit the statue. But it happened to be along my ride.

Yes, I rode a bicycle--but not one from Velibre.  One of the hotel staff told me about a site called Bim Bim Bikes, which can locate a bike rental for you anywhere in France.  When you reserve it, you can pay directly with your credit card or with PayPal or other services.  (I used PayPal since my card is linked to it, which makes things easier.)  The shop--Paris Velo, C'est Sympa (which lives up to its name) --is in a neighborhood I know well, near the Canal St. Martin. A six-day rental cost me 65 Euros (about 75 dollars at current exchange rates).

For that price, I got this bike:

a basic "city" bike from a company called "Arcade".  It's slow and handles like a truck, but  I'm not going for speed or even distance on my rides here.  I could have paid more for a "name brand" bike like Giant, but I figured that even if I got a lighter, sprightlier bike, it still wouldn't be my own.  Perhaps this sounds counter-intuitive, but a more performance-oriented bike might make me wish for my own more than a basic bike like the one I'm riding--which, of course, can in no way resemble my Mercians.

But it rolls over cobblestones--and grips to ones slicked by the light rain this city has experienced for most of the day--nicely.  Plus, it includes, in addition to the lock, this interesting bag

that fits onto a Klick-Fix attachment used with some other bags and baskets.  It loos rather like a purse and includes a shoulder strap for carrying it when I park the bike--which, of course, I did at two cafes and a store.  

(I have to admit that I cried at the store.  A young woman was cradling a kitten who looked like Marlee when she first came into my life!  When I stroked that cat and rubbed its nose, that young woman said, "'s't v'avezoon chat, vrai?" (You have a cat, don't you?) in that Parisian equivalent of New York speech that seems, at times, to have more contractions than actual words.

The drizzle I that colored most of the day was interrupted by bouts of rain and overcast sky. But there wasn't any wind, and it wasn't terribly cold (8C high temperature).  Best of all, the low clouds made for an interesting view:

Since I've lived in, have visited and have friends in, this city, I don't think of myself as a tourist.  So I always promise I myself I won't take another picture of the Eiffel Tower.  But I figure the one with the low clouds is justified.  Heck, I can even rationalize another photo of the Arc de Triomphe.  At least I'm approaching it, just like the riders at the end of the Tour de France.

Hey, I even rode around the rond--twice!  I have to wonder, though, what it would be like if they made those Tour riders pedal through the cobblestoned bike lane. Hmm...Maybe they could think of it as training for the following Paris-Roubaix race.

Finally, I'm going to do something I often do when I travel: subject you to a history lessson.  Two, actually.  The first I encountered on the Metro, on the way to pick up my rental:

I had to transfer from la ligne 2 to ligne 5 at Stalingrad.  That's what everybody calls it, but the official name is la Place de la Bataille Stalingrad.  The city was known by that name at the time it staged one of the major conflicts of World War II.  For centuries, it was known as Tsaritsyn; today we call it Volgograd.  I find it interesting and ironic that the name "Stalingrad" cannot be found in Russia, but it remains part of the appelation of the intersection of Paris' two main canals (St. Martin and Ourcq).  

The sign is also interesting because it's in a style that's disappearing. When I first came to Paris in 1980, most signs inside the city's Metro stations were in that style.  Now most of them look more like this:

Now for more history:  Along the way, I stopped at this square:

named for the French officer falsely accused and imprisoned for passing military secrets to the Germans.  He just happened (yeah, right) to be Jewish.  So was the writer who fought for his release, and the reversal of his guilty plea:

The avenue on which Dreyfus park is located bears Emile Zola's name.  He is right that the truth wins out.  Sometimes it takes time--and it comes too late for some people, including the  victims of the terrible incident this statue commemorates.

I have mentioned Jews who were rounded up and detained in the Velodrome d'Hiver (known to locals as Vel-Deev) before they were deported.  That is, if they survived the head and unsanitary conditions inside the velodrome.  

As Zola said, the truth marches on.  And this is its color:

Or so I like to believe.  That sign is found on one of the streets that form one of the Dreyfus Park's boundaries.