August• 2017 | 99I am about to become a 21st-century
flâneuse.
I begin on those ninth arrondisse-
ment boulevards once paraded by a
burgeoning bourgeoisie. To my dis-
may, I find little echo of the world
Baudelaire and Balzac described.
Globally branded stores glitter under
wrought-iron balconies; the Parisians
hurrying past them don’t look up from
their phones.
Undeterred, I turn off Boulevard
Haussmann and head towards Gal-
erie Vivienne, one of Paris’s famous
passages,or glass-roofed shopping gal-
leries. Few structures evoke the 1800s
like these. Forming a nearly continu-
ous trail from the grand boulevards to
the artists’ haunt of Montmartre, the
galleries were places where people, like
wares, could advertise themselves. In
other words, a flâneur’s natural home.
Under Galerie Vivienne’s glass ceil-
ing I linger by an antiquarian book-
shop, ready to practice a little flânerie
of my own. The shop’s windows re-
flect nearby café tables, allowing me
to observe a charismatic young man
and an impeccably dressed 40-some-
thing blonde who sit at adjacent tables,
their eyes purportedly on their books.
I watch their reflections as they glance
at each other in turn, as they smile.
I reach back to grab a book so I can
pretend to read as I peep at them,
realising too late I’ve opened a volumeAn impromptu singalong at the Brasserie de L’lsle Saint-Louis, from a 1993 photo