With its garish shops, escort-girl bars, uncouth and drunk visitors, it is
crowded, stressful, overpriced – and shunned by the French themselves. No,
this isn’t the description of a nastier corner of a banlieue, but rather
Hugh Schofield on Paris’s best-known avenue, the Champs-Élysées. And the
French are already furious.
As a native Parisienne, born exactly 160 yards from the Champs-Élysées, who
still lives round the corner, I have mixed feelings about the place. I know
the crowds, because I hear their drunken arguments under my windows late at
night. And it’s true that the avenue has little more to offer today than
chain stores – H&M, Zara, Adidas, Nike – a few cinemas, and
overpriced cafés where no Parisian would ever set foot.
True to the BBC’s default position, its Paris
correspondent blames Jacques Chirac’s long tenure as mayor for the change;
but he’s wrong. What changed everything was the opening of the RER train
station at the Arc de Triomphe in 1973, four years before Chirac’s election.
Today between 300,000 and half a million people descend every weekend.
True, Chirac can be blamed for the 1994 “beautification” of the Champs, when
he blew a fortune on widening pavements, buying designer benches and
allowing the cafés to expand. This brought even more people to the area,
drove the rents sky-high, and completed the end of an era.
This used to be my quartier, a strange ecosystem of elegance and old-style
seediness which had its own charm. I remember, aged 10 and on my way to the
dentist, catching a glimpse of Marlene Dietrich walking along in full
make-up, couture, gloves, and a little hat with a veil, not far from the
Travellers Club (which is still there, barely, in the old palazzo built for
the great Second Empire cocotte, La Païva). Metres away, the side street,
Rue de Ponthieu, so offensive today, was then a row of louche bars with
girls and hoodlums: indeed, several Jean Gabin and Alain Delon movies are
set there.
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