Introduction

Welcome to my changing world. I live in Paris, France, in a borderland.

A little over nine years ago – 22 years after settling in Paris – I moved to Boulevard de Rochechouart. That name, which even the French sometimes have trouble pronouncing (it’s “roe-shuh-schwar,” more or less), belongs to one north-central stretch of the semicircular boulevard marking the old northern boundary of Paris (see map; the middle blue marker is me!). Down the street from me, to the west, this same busy street is called Boulevard de Clichy; to the east, it’s Boulevard de la Chapelle.

View Boulevards de l'exterieur in a larger map

Clichy and Rochechouart boulevards form the border between the city’s 9th and 18th arrondissements. I live on the side that’s in the 18th. These two densely populated districts differ dramatically in character – the 9th more bourgeois, quieter, quintessentially Parisian in many ways, the 18th more working class, rowdier, and filled with foreign tourists and immigrants.

Among the reasons for the difference is this: until 1860, in the place of what’s now the boulevard, there stood a wall. Inside was Paris. Outside was a borderland. I may eventually delve more deeply into that history, but for now my main purpose is to explore a microcosm of Paris on the other side of the boulevard.

Why that side and not my own? Partly because I simply find it more interesting. The concept behind the blog is a detailed look at the evolving commercial and personal life of a tiny sliver of Paris – about a dozen streets in all. The area north of me has long been devoted largely to two businesses: the cloth trade and tourism. South of the boulevard the economic activity seems much more diverse and less static.

Indeed, the idea for The Other Side of the Boulevard came to me as I walked a familiar path through the 9th to meet a friend, reflecting for the umpteenth time on how I’d never noticed this shop, that restaurant. Were they new, or had I simply not really looked at them before? If only there were a record of all the businesses in my immediate neighborhood, I thought – one that would keep track of the changes. And then of course it occurred to me that I could make that record myself: a little slice of Paris, door by door, street by street.

In the next post, I’ll introduce my chosen 12-street slice and tell you a bit more about it before getting down to the door by door chronicle.