Today I went on an a Parisian excursion. It was to the suburbs. I went to the flea market in Montreuil set on seeing nifty thrift items as my France guide book told me I’d see. It said it was filled with people selling vintage and second hands clothes. I’m not sure if the last time they visited was in 1995 when flea markets still sold vintage items, but all I really saw was cheap stuff. I don’t just mean it was cost effective cheap, I mean it was cheap as in probably having been freshly lifted from a Chinese delivery truck and promptly delivered to and sold in France. I’ve never been a fan of Walmart, or even of necessarily buying things new, so I certainly wasn’t interested in buying Walmart clothing knockoffs for 5 euros.
The flea market is apparently also the place to buy black market cigarettes, as every 5 minutes a guy opened a sack full of discount brand name cigarettes in front of me. This is a phenomenon I’d heard of the last time I lived in France, and having been a smoker at that time I was almost tempted to seek out said cigarettes (especially given that the cost of cigarettes lingers around $10 a pack here), but now I am just annoyed. “You don’t smoke miss, I’m sorry for you!” they would say to me in French when I said “Non merci” to their offer.
But the most striking thing about the flea market in Montreuil was the trash. It was everywhere. It was like they had the flea market the day before and everything they didn’t sell they threw on the street. That – combined with the “carrefour” sky scraper looming above the whole scene, the insane amount traffic trying to traverse the round-about, and the honking of angry drivers – brought back an acute memory of Vietnam. Visiting Saigon (or HCMC if you will) to be exact. I guess the carrefour building – carrefour means crossroads in french – was fitting. I’m all for eliminating the stereotype of Paris being the most glamorous city in the world, but I didn’t expect to find out the Parisian suburbs, or at least these ones, are akin to a developing country. Except instead of chicken feet roasting on makeshift barbecues on the side walk it was corn stalks roasting over charcoal. And they didn’t just put the barbecue on the sidewalk like they do in Vietnam, they put them on the sidewalk with a tiny charcoal grill – one that looks like a mini oil drum – inside of a shopping cart. Bonus points for a grill inside of a shopping cart. I’m sure the corn is delicious, but the sight of literally hundreds of freshly munched corn cobs cluttering the gutter along with used shoes, empty cigarette packs, and spit really didn’t make me feel too hungry.
After a few minutes meandering the flea market I took the metro to the Champs-Elysées – the “glamorous” (cough tourist crap) shopping street of Paris – which is unsurprisingly the very opposite of Montreuil. I think I saw some of the same stuff for 8 times the price. But at least there weren’t corn cobs in the gutters.
To say the least I didn’t buy anything today.