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So, This American Walks into Clichy-sous-Bois …
Coming up on Ricochet is an epic series about these infamous suburbs of Paris. One full of amazing plot twists in directions you’d never guess.
It’s going to take me a few days to thoroughly explain all this business about Paris’s suburbs — but by the time I’m done — you’ll know everything you ever wanted to know about where to buy cheap shoes, look for low-cost housing, get your stuff out of customs, buy your weed, hang out, and look for terrorists in the slums of Paris… all on just $5 a day! You’ll also learn about the interesting stuff, and we’ll get to the heart of this mystery about the International Zionist Conspiracy.
But I’m stumped at the outset because this story obviously has to begin with that famous joke about the American in Paris who keeps insisting that — back in the States — they’d have built whatever he’s looking at faster, or bigger, or better. I just can’t remember how the joke goes or what the punchline is; it involves the Eiffel Tower, somehow. Someone here will remember it, I bet. Anyway, I need that joke, because the whole story of my weekend exploration of the ‘burbs really has to start with it.
Clichy-sous-Bois is shown in red. For reference, Île de la Cité (the island where Notre Dame is located) and Île Saint-Louis are slightly off-center, in the middle of the of the concentric rings.
Until I’ve got the intro right, we’ll just go to Clichy-sous-Bois. Basically, that’s the ‘burb I’d never seen before, the reason being that you can’t get there on the RER, the suburban train system. (A quick note about Paris’ geography: it’s like an American city, turned inside-out. One can live a full life in the heart of Paris without ever seeing a slum; the suburbs, however, are where you find the so-called “no-go zones,” as well some places we should all be so lucky to live; but I doubt any of us could afford it.)
I figured I couldn’t declare myself a confident expert on terrifying Parisian suburbs without having been to Clichy-sous-Bois. So when a French guy offered me a lift, I said, “Yeah,” then spent the day shrieking in terror because he’s the kind of driver who gets so distracted while he’s telling me about the terrifyingly high crime rate in Clichy-sous-Bois that he takes the wrong exit and then tries to reverse back on to the Périphérique. That kind of thing really does freak me out.
But you’ve got to help me out with that joke, first, because that’s kind of the key to how it went. Guy is trying to prove to me that yes, these are totally fearsome slums, and I’m looking at them and sort of hinting, “Slums? Look, I’m American. This just isn’t an impressive slum. Got anything better? Slummier?” He’s looking at me like I’m crazy. This isn’t the worst thing she’s ever seen? Doesn’t she see those broken windows? Doesn’t she realize those guys are dealing drugs? Is she… totally naive?
Now, I never like to let on, when I’m overseas — which is most always — that America is anything short of perfect. But I’ve also got that American competitive nature, you know? Like the guy in the joke, which is why I wish I could remember it. So I’m looking at these scenes that are supposed to be leaving me weakly whispering “The Horror! The Horror!” and thinking, “What is this, DisneySlum?” Kind of biting my tongue and resisting the impulse to say, “Look, man, when we say ‘supermarket,’ we mean 24-hour shopping and 45,000 square feet, and when we say ‘a slum you’ll never walk out of alive,’ we mean you will not walk out alive.” But also I’m thinking, “Claire, don’t be a competitive jerk; you’ve got to look like you respect the slums of his Patrie, so don’t say it.”
But now I can say I’ve seen them to the very last ‘burb. Looked like I expected. As soon as they understood we weren’t undercover cops, the locals seemed ecstatic that someone found them interesting. They laughed their heads off once they realized they’d met the first American in history who had ever bothered to schlep out there to ask them what the neighborhood was like. All the way from America? Seriously? Man, that’s cool!
And yes, the cops go there, for sure. It wasn’t until we introduced ourselves and said, “Don’t worry, we’re not cops” that they stopped acting like they were scared of us. When we explained who we actually were and why we were there (and after they finished practically rolling off the stairs with laughter), they were welcoming as could be; but I’d say for sure these young entrepreneurs had seen cops before, and didn’t want us to be them.
I reckon if I hung out with them for a week, I could learn enough to write a book about their whole supply and distribution network, and enough about the life of drug dealers in suburban Paris to write a novel. If I were really enterprising, I could sell the rights and turn it into a television mini-drama like The Wire.
But no one who’s seen The Wire would be all that impressed by Clichy-sous-Bois (Well, let’s be frank, but let’s keep this to ourselves. If you’re American, you haven’t just seen The Wire. You’ve seen the real thing, unless you’ve somehow managed to reach adulthood having never left a very rarified zip code). I didn’t take photos — though my host did — but this video will give you a reasonably good sense of what the scene there is like, although the guys I spoke to didn’t come with a soundtrack. Same scene, though pretty much:
Fess up, America: it wouldn’t shock you to meet these guys in your hometown, right? They’re speaking French, but other than that, they’d fit right in. I know it’s annoying when Americans see the sights abroad and repeatedly insist, “We invented that, you know,” but look, it’s just a fact: we did.
So what’s abnormal here? Well, there’s this: No one in France thinks, “Wow, we could turn this scene into a television mini-drama like The Wire.” Because the difference between “that scene” and “a dynamic, flourishing economy and an original cultural life” is not “the absence of that scene,” but “that scene, plus creative entrepreneurs who take one look and think, ‘Hey, I’m going to make a gripping HBO miniseries that invents an entire new art form—one you can sell, licence and distribute around the world, and everyone will watch it. Even completely uneducated kids in Delhi and Istanbul, who will miss every literary allusion, will find that show gripping.'” It’s totally true that young men around the world were gripped to The Wire: Everywhere I go, people know The Wire. A whole global generation now believes Omar Little was the first person in history to suggest “You come at the king, you best not miss.”
To me, that’s an interesting part. Not that France has slums, but that it just can’t seem to turn them into “a gripping HBO miniseries that people will watch in Delhi.”
Regardless, I can now say confidently that anyone who tells you that you can’t visit Clichy-sous-Bois and come back alive is talking smack, and anyone who comes back alive better be talking smack; if he isn’t, he’s definitely talking smack. He hasn’t been to Clichy-sous-Bois — or at least — he paid no attention whatsoever to the local economy. But minor-league smack, really. When we say “Crack Den,” we mean 24-hour shopping and 45,000 square feet. We have superpower super-slums, and I just go all nostalgie de la boue thinking about them.
For those of you who want to believe that maybe, just maybe, the Russians are indeed totally clueless, I have this specimen for you:
God bless them. I can now literally say I laugh at war zones that make the Russians cower (note: They’re saying “even the police don’t enter” accompanied by footage of “the police entering,” and they’ve used an undercover camera to film the terrifying eating of a sandwich. Also looks like the Russians couldn’t even figure out where the ‘burbs were, though sure looks like they have easy access to Marine Le Pen. Maybe they’re not clueless).
Don’t get me wrong: some very odd things happening in those ‘burbs, for sure. But they’re not even remotely like the way they’re being reported in the US or Russia.
Anyway, more on the ‘burbs, to come.
Map Credit: “Clichy-sous-Bois map“. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Published in General
I’m trying to find the joke, but in the meantime, may I say that this can stand without it. Brilliant and funny writing.
“The Eiffel tower is an impressive sight. It looks like the Empire State Building after taxes.”
Is it related to this quote?
You find the joke. I have to see The Wire, apparently.
In America, the visual difference between a nice but poor area and a slum is trash. In a slum, litter is everywhere and all the apartments smell like stale sweat. I had an apartment once that went from nice to slum in a matter of months after Hurricane Katrina exported NOLA’s hoodlums. A dumpster on every corner couldn’t entice the new residents to deposit their trash. Crime followed.
This reminds me of my college experience in San Antonio. I was there almost a year before someone pointed out to me that the university sat in the middle of a barrio plagued by gangs. I drove a local friend to a nearby grocery store and she was advising me the whole way to lock my car, don’t look at anybody, and “It will only take a second!” It turned out that the mexican gangs generally stayed away from our nominally Catholic university.
Claire, all looked fine in that neighborhood in San Antonio. But locals told me many of the businesses were extorted by thugs. And I met a shocking number of women there who had been raped; some by their own relatives. Understandably, I didn’t hear those stories directly upon meeting people.
Claire,
1) I didn’t know that rap was so popular among Muslims.
2) I had to look up on Wikipedia what the “The Wire” was as I have long since ignored Television Drama – HBO or otherwise.
3) A No Go Zone is where Muslims control the area not where there are rappers and drug deals. I didn’t see a single Muslim in your report.
4) If said No Go Zones exist and there seems to be mountains of evidence that they do, then in what way is the reporting exaggerated? No other ethnic group in a sovereign country can just nullify the laws and make up their own.
5) Le Pen’s objection is no more than rational. Her concern about a group residing within her own country that is transnationaly seditious & subversive is what a normal responsible political figure should object to. Only Josh Earnest can hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil to the absurd degree that PC orthodoxy requires.
Regards,
Jim
Like I said: Americans understand slums just fine. They know that some parts can look fine but not be fine, some parts definitely do not look fine, and crime is no joke. Americans are more than familiar with a lot of these issues.
But I won’t ruin the suspense: This is Part One of a Serial.
Part one of a serial. There are plenty to come. But believe me, I can walk right into any neighborhood in Paris and find Muslims. There’s not one neighborhood I can’t go into. There’s not one I would feel any hesitation about going to. Sure, I could be killed by a terrorist or struck by lightning. But I’m much more worried about being killed in a car accident. Rationally.
Claire,
Conclusion first evidence second. Is this a very French thing too?
Regards,
Jim
Come home Clair. You need some R&R. Charlie Hedbo may have traumatized you. “Slums?” Do you mean the Hood? El Barrio? Burbs mean something different in the US. Escaped city dwellers. Not necessesarily white. Just a hell of a lot better than Detroit. Never watched the Wire? Does everyone in Russia watch the show? Sounds like you are writing in English, but thinking in French.
The guy in the first video whose sweatshirt hood is tied with a neat little bow says it all.
LePen is very accessible to Russian TV, don’t you find? How would you feel about a candidate for President who makes herself available for Putinist propaganda? People laughed at the idea of Palin seeing Russia from Alaska, but in fact, you can. I’ll take someone who can see Russia any day over someone who can’t see why this is no time to be in bed with Russian propaganda. LePen is no Sarah Palin–and I’m not even a great fan of Sarah Palin, who’s no Margaret Thatcher.
There’s a real war going on in Europe. It’s not in Paris, though. It’s in Ukraine.
Glad she’s staying positive.
Claire,
I am not endorsing Le Pen or everything she says. However, when the Presidents of USA, England, and France talk about Jihadists as if they’ve all just dropped acid then I am inclined to listen to an experienced politician who has a rational attitude on this but seems to have gone off the track elsewhere.
Putin will not be stopped either by appeasement or verbal condemnation. If we landed 50 A10s at the airport outside of Kiev then he’d have a whole different attitude.
Kiev is lovely this time of year. I’m sure that the American pilots would enjoy the vacation.
Regards,
Jim
If you’re looking for scary places, I would suggest visiting to the further-out suburbs to the south and south east of France. Evry, Grigny, Corbeille-Essonnes, Melun; out that way. I remember the terrain out that way being especially bleak; large amounts of high rise housing that overwhelmed little towns and villages build in the 1960’s and 1970’s. These are places 25-40 miles outside of Paris.
For a slightly different take, Charles C. W. Cooke discussed the banlieues at length in the January 23 episode of Mad Dogs and Englishmen. And apparently the upcoming/current issue of National Review will feature his article on the same topic.
Go, intrepid explorer Claire! Keep up the good work! Fascinating stuff.
Some of that’s bleak Zus-ville, for sure. Some parts are ZFR, some are ZRU, some parts pleasant enough but one long RER ride away from anything that suggests “architectural geniuses once roamed this country.”)
I’ll explain these initials at length–coming up–but they stand for the incredibly detailed way the government categorizes these neighborhoods. Even the worst ZUS is “dreary as hell, but we’re still talking very first-world here.”
Not going to argue there’s nothing depressing in those neighborhoods. But it’s quite different from what people think it is.
The only equivalent joke I know is about the paratrooper who visit’s Napoleon’s tomb, and is told that this is the greatest soldier who ever lived. The paratrooper nods sagely and asks, “so, where’d he make his drops?”
On the larger point I had no view yesterday and I have no view today (though the image of Claire taking this poor man to South Central and saying “you call this a slum? This is a slum!” is intrinsically hilarious).
Also, I feel horrible, but when I see “Clichy-sous-Bois” the image that comes to mind is the Hansel and Grettel witch’s house -a stereotypical soup place in the forest.
(I speak just enough French to be embarrassing -I gather it actually means something like “place in the woods.”)
That scene was going through my head over and over.
I don’t think her point was that these places in France or the US are nice places mainly that they are all rather similar, and therefore not uniquely terrifying or abnormal. France has urban black ghettos and the US has urban black ghettos and rather amazingly they seem very similar. I wonder how much of that is do to US cultural dominance. Frankly people who don’t live in or near these places I think get overly worked up about their danger. Its not that they aren’t dangerous but people vastly overestimate it. Probably thanks to TV shows like The Wire.
Probably true. I used to do collections in an area like Claire is talking about. Repossessed cars and such. I’m around to tell the tale.
Claire I must say your story here reminds me of my first trip back to Romania in the summer of 2001. My cousins gave me and my brother a car tour of the Bucharest to refresh our memories and show us how it had changed since we had left in 91. I recall at some point we drove through what they referred to as a “slum” and all I could think of is that it wasn’t nearly as bad as some parts I’d seen in Philly and Baltimore. They were rather disappointed when we told them we’d seen worse.
In fact I recalled the first time I saw a major America urban ghetto. It was when our family first went to the Philadelphia Zoo. We took a wrong turn and instead of getting to the Zoo we ended up having to double back through the West Philadelphia ghetto. My grandfather was with us and I think he was very shocked to see such a dilapidated neighborhood in the United States.
But, back to the point at had. Thanks for the reporting on these “No Go Zones”. Here in the US there is a fixation on this topic that is kind of amazing, and it is hardly ever accompanied by any reporting from these areas or specifically about them. Lots of reporters and analysis giving statements and drawing conclusions but very little concrete evidence or explanation. Which I always take as a sign to be weary as more often than not they are just passing along nonsense that they picked up off the internet, because they were too lazy to go there themselves and see what it was like. So thank you for doing the leg work on this.
Indeed. One of the things that I think contributes is that people describe the danger in relative terms. Which is to say that if you are parking your car on 70th and Blackstone you are 5 times more likely to have it stolen that if you leave it on Lincoln and Addison, but that is saying that instead of a .2% chance it is stolen it is a 1%. This also factors in to peoples talk of black vs. white criminality. Even if a random black person is twice as likely to be a criminal as a random white person the vast majority of either race are still non-criminals (ie. +95%).
Yes, and if you live hear and you’re hearing that, you go a little nuts. That’s why this one needs a series.
Is this the norm outside of America — for poverty and crime to be concentrated on the outskirts of a major city, rather than in its heart?
Does concentration of poverty on the periphery result only from a forceful act of civil engineering (eminent domain)? Is it always a deliberate arrangement?
How might the difference affect the way that politicians and citizens relate to these areas? Does a civic society benefit more from the rich and poor living side-by-side? Or does tighter zoning strengthen productive areas and provide a trickle-down effect for all?
Where I live outside of Houston, most poor areas involve elderly retirees and rising blue-collar families in the same apartment complexes where parolees wander and occasionally shoot each other in broad daylight. Those parolees only started coalescing on the outskirts when the city council decided it was the right of slum dwellers to live in the suburbs with taxpayer assistance (Affirmative Action). Downtown (“uptown” to Yankees) is still where one has to fret about gangs.
By the way, this is how you recognize an American slum:
Aaron, the comment button isn’t working.
Outside the English speaking world, yes, the norm is for the centers of cities to be rich and glitzy while the suburbs are filled with poor people. There’s a variety of reasons for that. I think it’s under-appreciated the extent to which the major cities of the non-English speaking world were obliterated by wars, thus allowing for complete redesigns of their downtowns in relatively recent history (1800 to present). There’s also the more general British love for pastoralism that was passed to their Commonwealth and Colonies.
The only place that breaks that mold is South America, and even in South America we’re starting to see rich people moving out to the country and suburbs -so, absent having some cataclysm destroy your cities, the American form seems to be the norm. It’s just that everyone else has had their cities suffer some catastrophe.
There are some other differences, though. In the US, we tend to build cities around manufacturing and commerce (for that matter, so do the British). For that reason, when poor people want to live close to work -so they don’t have to have 2 cars, or so they can ride trains, for example -they tend to live in central cities. In the rest of the world, however, factories tended to be built at some distance from the central cities. Having the smoke from the foundries drift over the Vienna Ringstrasse was a severe no-no, so they had to built far away. As a result, the poor located in the suburbs.
There are important architectural differences, too. In the US, when we were building our major cities, we had steel and elevators, so we built skyscrapers that could accommodate many people. When Paris was rebuilt in the 1870s, no building was larger than 4 stories (in part because of the stairs, also in part for the skyline). The reason why starving artists lived in 4th floor lofts is because those were the cheapest apartments available -no one who could afford not to wanting to climb 4 flights of stairs every day.
Finally, there is a significant cultural difference. The English have always been more interested in their own land and their own houses, and we inherited that culture. Whatever the reason. European cities had massive common spaces and a culture built around meeting in those common places -the cafes, the squares, and so forth. England, however, did not. I wonder how much of this is the Island effect (no space for common places, even the village green was a grazing space) and how much of this is the Arcadian Pastoralism of the 1500-1600s.
If you’d like more information, I’m cribbing Triumph of the City and The Great Inversion, though I’m not actually in agreement with the latter’s thesis (that is, my interpretation of his evidence is above, but it’s not in 100% agreement with his interpretation.)
My point is only that (and this sounds sick on some level; searching for scary places you shouldn’t be), if you’re looking to prove or disprove your point, I’d go to places that are sufficiently far from Paris to be more isolated from Paris and more self-contained banlieu worlds.
Can we get the two of them on a podcast? If Charles was told not to get out of the car, and Claire has no problem walking into any neighborhood- there is a disconnect somewhere.
Claire, I have a question for you.
I have a certain amount of acquaintance with poverty-stricken, crime-ridden areas of the UK, and I know people — Americans — who have more.
I know someone who has lived in the UK for many years and has been to Paris, on more than one occasion. This person’s observation: for all the angst in Britain about assimilation when you come across immigrants who have settled there you find that they are, in general, British, or becoming so. They talk about a “lovely day” and drink tea. This is true, I’m told, even in parts of London most heavily populated by immigrants.
This person did not have the same sense in parts of Paris — it felt like entering a different country.
Does that ring true to you, or not?
To add two more centimes to thisdiscussion (centimes of possibly no longer existing Francs, since I haven’t lived in France since then) There’s two issues here: if the banlieux are “foreign/non-French”; and if they are overtly Islamic. Perhaps that has or has not changed over the past 15-20 years? I recall the banlieux feeling foreign, but not overtly Islamic. Young African immigrants doing rap and/or drugs might be the former, but not really the later.
Ironically, much of what I remember about the French banlieu was due to a couple I knew who lived in Evry: consisted of a nominally Jewish American who married a black guy from, I believe Gabon (former French colony) who was Christian and tried to persuade me to go New Testament.
FEBRUARY 9, 2015, ISSUE
‘Je suis . . . qui?’
A report from les banlieues
By Charles C. W. Cooke
https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/396896/je-suis-qui