The week before Christmas I was puttering around the apartment and decided I needed to go somewhere in Paris I hadn’t been before. I had heard from numerous sources that there were some precious streets near Parc Montsouris in the 14th that were worth checking out, so I hopped on the RER and rode down to Cité Universitaire armed with little more than my camera, my Paris Pratique, and the names of a few streets rumored to be notable.

I’m sure Parc Montsouris is as charming as I’m told, but it is winter and the trees are bare, so I’ll give it a more thorough appraisal at an appropriate time of year. That said, there are a couple of interesting attractions at the southern terminus of the park: the RER station house, and the Paris Meridian.

The Gare de Cité Universitaire predates both the RER and the park itself, having once been a stop on the old steam “Ligne des Sceaux” (Seals’ Line) that connected Limours and Plessis-Robinson to Paris from the mid-19th century to the 1930s. The building originally dates from 1846, but was rebuilt around 1936 – about the time that Paris-Orleans line ceded the railway to the “Compagnie du chemin de fer métropolitain de Paris”, or CMP, the precursor to the SNCF. It’s a squat, Art Deco building, with much of the air of a pre-War bank, but I find it handsome in its way.

The next stop was the southern marker of the Paris Meridian, a very interesting artifact in these days of GPS and Google Maps. The Paris Meridian was established in 1667 during the planning of the French national observatory, whose future site it was to bisect. A couple of years later, astronomer Abbé Jean Picard used it to triangulate the length of one degree of longitude, and subsequently calculated the circumference of the earth with a startling degree of accuracy. Along with Ferro’s Meridian, Paris’s remained one of the primary international datelines until the Greenwich Meridian was adopted in 1884. It is curious to note that by this point there were, according to Wikipedia, at least nine other contenders: Berlin, Cadiz, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Rio, Rome, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, and Tokyo – a fact I’m sure can be explained by the rise of nationalism in the 19th century. What tickles me is that, while China has called itself “The Middle Kingdom” for millenia, Europe didn’t assert its various “centers of the Earth” until after the Enlightenment, with science, rather than myth or religion, in the service of the state.

Speaking of myth, the Paris Meridian has inspired its fair-share of conspiracy-mongering – Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code is but the latest in a long history of esoteric intimations. As I understand is the case with much of his research, Brown conveniently mistakes the Paris Meridian for the “Rose Line” found in Eglise St-Severin in the 6th, an older, local meridian which is roughly 100m west of the Paris line. Moreover, the Arago medallions that the main character follows back to the Louvre were set down in 1984, using (to my knowledge) contemporary surveys. The Arago line does not cross the Louvre pyramid, nor does it directly correspond to the stele in Montsouris. Scissors and glue do not a puzzle solve.

But back to the stele. It’s about 4m high, and has a hole through top to provide a sightline. Though its northern counterpart was erected in 1736 in a private park on Montmartre, near the Moulin de la Galette, this was put up 3/4 of century later by Napoleon, in 1806. The inscription, however, is marked by a deep rectangular trough where the emperor’s name should be, thanks to his post-Waterloo damnatio memoriae. It’s a toothsome irony, I think, that the name of he who stretched France’s borders farthest should be effaced from a tool of reckoning those borders.

Montsouris Moderne

My curiosity exhausted, I left the park, heckling a couple of sinister crows on the way, and proceeded down its western border (rue Emile Deutsche de la Meurthe, which become rue Nansouty). It is the streets that spur west from here – impasse Nansouty, villa du Parc de Montsouris, rue du Parc de Montsouris, rue Georges-Braque, and Square de Montsouris – which are rumored picturesque, and which were my general destination. I must admit that, at the time, I was guided more by intuition that information, and subsequently failed to visit a couple of streets with notable addresses. I knew that Braque had lived on his eponymous street (it was previously rue de Douanier – street of the Customs Agent), but I didn’t know the address (it’s No. 6) and the street seemed rather uninteresting. One thing I completely overlooked was the Villa Guggenbuhl, a 1926 Cubist townhouse by André Lurçat at 14, rue de Nansouty. The Cubists were not having it today.

The first street I ducked down was the rue du Parc de Montsouris. It was a good choice. At the end of the street, framed beneath a looming, nondescript apartment building, two precious 19th-century townhouses formed the corner, an iron gate between them. The one facing me was done in smooth stone, asymmetrical with double balconies on the first floor and two half-timbered gables, one narrow and one wide, jutting from the roof. A steeply pitched garret poked out from behind the smaller gable, adding a bit of fairy-tale fancy. The shutters, timbering, brackets, and decorative iron floor anchors were all in green, and the stone crawled with vine, it’s green gone for the season. Not a particularly beautiful building, but pleasing for its idiosyncrasy and unexpectedness. To my left was a more traditional brick house with three identical gables. What it lacked in architectural interest it made up for with decorative charm: brick dentils, lemon-meringue windowframes and latticework, rust-red iron railings and headers, and a patinated three-panel door topped with a generous transom (I love transoms).

After looking at these two buildings for a bit, I turned around and noticed an even more out-of-place one behind me, occupying with its courtyard the whole western half of the interior block. It had an octagonal, vaguely italianate tower in one corner, and a large, somewhat Art Deco solarium on the top floor. Paris may have Hausmannian vistas of infinite mansards, but is predictably lacking in domestic vernacular architecture. I felt it was an auspicious beginning to my walk.

Turning the corner of rue de Parc de Montsouris I found another peculiar house, this one more defiantly modern with its single sawtooth roof and obvious plainness. Further down the street a very simple, cubical house sports long wooden balcony above the pitched grade. Across from it is a mid-sized postwar apartment building. Unimpressive as it is, it made me notice something that it shared with many the other buildings along the street: abundant creeper vines. Vines are, of course, nothing new in house-dressing, but in the streets near Montsouris they deploy with such ferocity that even this ugly building benefited from their organic iterations. I know nothing about vines, but I know that ivy doesn’t go out of season. Whatever these were, with their woody stems and red leaves their purpose seemed to be less to cloak a wall in green and shadow, than to wrap them with their vascular patterns. I will only know for sure when I return in spring, and see if they have bloomed. But they are beautiful as they are.

Continuing back onto rue Nansouty, I passed rue Georges-Braque and ran into Square de Montsouris. The building on the northern corner stopped me in my tracks, it was so wonderfully filigreed in vine. Looking up the street, which crosses the spine of a hill, I realized this was the strip from which the neighborhoods reputation derived. Most of the buildings appeared to be from the interwar period, and though there were many less-interesting, run-of-the-mill structures and none of the free-standing rogues of rue de Parc de Montsouris, there were plenty of houses with personality, and detail worth seeking. A few seemed more nostalgic – with Queen Ann touches, one even affecting haunted Tudor – while others, more stodgily modern in geometry, were splashed with Art Deco mosaics of blue and gold sunflowers. The whole street was unified by rampant vines and a preference for glass-and-iron porch awnings. The effect was delightful.

At the end of rue de Parc de Montsouris – or, ordinally, its beginning – was a striking modern specimen whose design was obviously the work of a more progressive talent. It had no frills or ornament, and was instead distinguished by the proportion and construction of its functional elements. A concrete spiral staircase with a ribbon handrail – whitewashed as the rest of the crisp façade – twisted up to the first floor entrance. Above on the left, a narrow 16-light window covered (I’m assuming) the interior staircase; to the right, a corner of faux-factory 4-over-1-light windows enclosed an airy loft. A roof deck, fenced with trellis, capped the whole. I found out later that this, 53 av Reille, was the Maison-atelier Ozenfant, Corbusier’s first French commission, executed with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, in 1923. Apparently the original roof was a more overtly industrial sawtooth – which would have been a bit heavy handed, I think, and smacks of idealogical ornament. Though I can do without the trellis, the roof deck is much more sensible. So much for function, Courbie.

Reservoirs Montsouris

Exiting onto av Reille, I saw something I had not previously comprehended from the map: the Réservoirs de Montsouris. Of all civil engineering and public works architecture, none have such a fortified aspect as the urban reservoir. Whether its walls inspire containment or defense depends upon their design. While the Central Park Reservoir, with its canted slab granite, has the air of a prison, the Réservoirs de Montsouris look the perimeter of a sentimentally fantastic city. Firm grassed earthworks are buttressed by stone walls. Dainty Victorian pumphouses, frosted glass and black iron, perch tiered on each side. Watchtowers become winter gardens. A Wallace fountain was in the courtyard, of course. I took my shots.

Here are some pubs currently up in the Metro. They are for Cité de l’architecture et du patrimonie, a new museum in the Palais Chaillot dedicated to French architecture, monuments and cultural heritage from the 12th-century onward. It is slated to fully open in March 2007, and is to have 23,000 square meters of exhibition space. Apparently the permanent collections and auditorium are already open, and public programming has started. Will have to check it out.

Kudos to the design team behind the ad campaign. I’m not sure where the tower on the barge is from, but the airlifted building is one quarter of the Bibliothéque Francois Mitterand. I hope there will be more in the series.

On my way to Vanves on Saturday I had to change trains at Montparnasse-Bienvenue. I had never been through that station before, and happily discovered that the long passageway that connects the 12 and 4 lines with the 6 and 13 lines is outfitted with one of those human conveyor belts. These things are a godsend if you’re in a rush, whether in mass transit or at an airport (Zurich has a ton of them), but they also make for a fun, leisurely Jetsonian ride.

Though I’ll explore the relative conveniences and shortcomings of the Paris metro another time, one thing I have to commend it on is judicious deployment of design, for educational as well as advertising purposes. Just as many of the blue streetsigns in Paris offer a historical note on the man or event whose name they bear, and landmarks and points of interest are well marked with the “Histoiré de Paris” shields, the Metro has its own textbook style history lessons peppered throughout.

What I liked about the Montparnasse station was that, in addition to the little educational posters – usually placed on the platforms to pass time between trains – it had a long graphic presentation of the Metro’s cultural history along one of the long walls of the trottoir. Lines, trains, conductors, itineraries, vendors and even cockroaches are all touched upon, with brief explanatory text – made to be read while standing still – accompanied by crisp illustrations – meant to be enjoyed in passing. The overall effect is pleasantly diverting the first time it is encountered, and I walked halfway back down the trottoir to look at it more closely and understand what I could of the text.

My favorite section was the one on old logos, at top. I love old trademarks in general, and I think that seeing these side by side offers a nice visual conceit on the historical trajectory of subways through modern imagination. It begins very florid, tightening and becoming more linear as it goes through the belle époque, past the fin de siecle, and emerging in a more restrained midcentury incarnation before acquiring its smooth contemporary form. In much the same way the Metro went from a Victorian wonder, to a modern commonplace, to finally a grande dame of a system in need of a freshened visual identity to offset its aged reality. I’d say the Metro is a fine old lady, who wears her age well, but is lucky to have dabs of quality cosmetics.

This Saturday I made an abortive attempt to visit the Porte de Vanves fleamarket. Coming topside from the Metro, I began looking for the telltale signs of Marchés aux Puces: an outer ring of knockoff hawkers, fake D&G and Diesel belts dangling from their fingers; rows of panel vans behind peripheral markets of cheap shoes, clothes and tools; a general flow of people towards some unseen destination just outside the boulevard Periphique. Saturday I saw none of this as I went up and down boulevard Brune, asking directions and getting vague instructions (“Derriere, derriere, derriere…”) until I found myself on av Marc Sangnier, facing the Lycée Francois Villon, and discovered that the Marché aux Puces – which my Paris Pratique declared was at that very spot – was nowhere to be found.

But…perhaps the map was wrong? Maybe the Marché had migrated since publication? I made my way down rue de porte de Vanves, across the periphique, in a last-ditch reconnaissance.. As I passed over the roaring weekend beltway, something caught my eye: down the resolutely shut-up, empty village streets of Malakoff, I could see a building – obviously a bar – giddily dripping with signs and figures and plaques. It was a happy facade amidst so many shuttered, uncaring or unfriendly ones, and I knew instantly I had to check it out.

As I approached, its decorative frolics warmed me in the brisk greying afternoon. Acorner doorway faced the Periph and Paris. Above it, on either side, were two neon signs proclaiming “Le Timbre Post – Pub & Restaurant.” Two tin Nestle ads stood between them, a plastic Santa Claus below, a perched Guinness toucan above, another neon and the weathered statues of Alsatian couple crowning the ensemble.

The wall to the right had its share of paraphernelia, but the left wall was a commercial bedlam, with painted ceramic jazz clowns posted between the windows and the glowing Fosters, Guinness, Leffe, Alken and Pecheur signs. I hadn’t eaten a thing, but the aspect of this place, so absurdly prosaic on these terse streets, yet so obviously honest and local, exhorted me to test the interior, and take a liquid lunch.

Le Timbre Poste has fourteen beers à la pression, an uncommon virtue in a land whose liver prefers grape to hop. I take a Guinness. It is drawn correctly.It is Saturday at 3:30pm – a dead hour in this suburb and this season. The dining room is empty save one couple in the back .At the front the proprietors, or the staff, eat a late lunch with a couple of friends or family, watching rugby. An old, creasy regular drinks at my elbow on the short zinc. He watches the game wordless, and groans at the hard hits.

Another regular comes in, younger, stouter, balder than the first. He is joined by a black dog, lanky, moustachioed and friendly. The dog trots in to inquire of the kitchen, his owner takes a small wine in a large hand and turns to the rugby. I am accorded no lingering stares nor sidelong glances. As an interloper in a parochial watering hole, and a foriegner at that, an unremarked, anonymous reception is, in my opinion, the most favorable one can hope for. I was content. I nursed my beer and inspected the decor. It confirmed expectation.

To catalog all the “stuff” inside Le Timbre Poste would be a pointless exercise. Here, however, is a representative selection: balsa ocean liners, aluminum plane models, climbing tin monkeys, black and white movie stills, painted ceramic pirates, vintage and repro tin plaques, art nouveau beer and theater posters, cartoon character statuettes, a laughing cow lighted sign,whiskey-brand neon clocks…in short, a liberal collection of commercial schwag and popular bric-a-brac.
Now “stuff”, or rather, “lots of stuff”, is by no means a unique decorative strategy and, like any decorative strategy it has both its virtues and flaws, it better and worse applications, and people whose taste or aesthetics are more or less sympathetic to it. I fall in the former category, having always been a bit of a packrat. But though I am not critical of “lots of stuff”, I am certainly critical within it. I am friendly to bric-a-brac, guarded against kitsch, but rather opposed to camp. The line is very fine and subjective, but I think it is best betrayed by a sense of intention. A campy profusion insinuates subjection; it relies on snide humor, and asks you to surrender to its bad taste. A successful bric-a-brac or kitsch is a more sincere offering; it laughs but does not condescend, it touches a cultural nostalgia, rather than teases it. Personally, I prefer something that asks naively to be enjoyed, to being asked to enjoy something pitifully. This naitvete may be a symptom of false consciousness, and kitsch may be an instrument of capital and a parody of aesthetic consciousness, but I am not a Marxist, and am not so stingy with the simple plastic joys I would permit the public, or myself. But that is a body of questions for another day.

Le Timbre Post is a successful bric-a-brac of kitsch. It is nostalgic, but not exceptionally sentimental or melodramatic. If so much of the early theoretical anxieties about kitsch centered on its danger to art, I think Le Timbre Post would provide a solid rebuttal. It is so without pretension, so incapable of seriousness, so solely occupied with simple visual diversions that the idea of it substituting for any form spiritual or aesthetic catharsis seems absurd. “But it is all ads! All schwag! All images of consumption!” would rail Red academics. And they would be right. But they would be wrong to think, in this day an age, that such images, and such a collection of images, could much more pernicious influence than a pastoral toile de jouy wallpaper. More spectacular, yes, more vulgar and garish, certainly. But dead schwag sells nothing, and a profusion of it does not so much sell the idea of selling, or any true commercial bounty, as it does offer a confection – maybe oversweet – of pop-commerce history, that most educated, contemporary palates should be able to suck on both naïvely, and for its naïveté. Then again, maybe I have just stopped worrying, and learned to love the Bomb.

I finish my beer and dismount from the bar. I pay, thank the hostess, snap a few shots, nod my au revoirs to the rugby-absorbed regulars, and return to the empty Malakoff streets. No fleamarket today, but upon reflection I would say – with perhaps the cheekiness Bush has lended the phrase – “Mission Accomplished”. I had found a corner of the attic of civilization, but one with a cold tap. I had slaked two thirsts.

Welcome to my blog.

I was born today, October 8th, in 1979.

I am writing this to know myself better.