uh oh...it's août!
Guidebooks warn you that Parisians flee the city in August (or août) and travel to more temperate climes to escape the sticky city heat. Shops shut down for the entire month, and the city is overrun with foreign tourists who clog the streets and stores with their awkward backpacks and wide-eyed awe. (The guidebooks don't usually add that last part, considering they're catering to those very tourists.)Having moved to Paris at the beginning of July and seeing the massive shift in the cityscape with my very own eyes, I can confirm that the guidebooks have it right—it's frightening. I can remember the day at the beginning of August when Joshua and I set out for a walk around the Champ de Mars (the park surrounding the Eiffel Tower) and I suddenly noticed that not a single person around us was speaking French. English, yes. Spanish, yes. Cantonese, Japanese, German, Dutch, Arabic, yes. But no French. Rien.
The visual landscape had also changed. Instead of intimidatingly stylish waifs traipsing through the streets in entirely non-sensible shoes—and yet looking like they'd never broken a sweat or a nail in their glamorous lives—there was an overabundance of sensible running shoes, khaki shorts, ball caps and the aforementioned backpacks.
I like to think that I don't stick out as a tourist when I wander around, but the truth is, I'm probably wearing or doing about fifty different things that mark me out as "non-native." I get self-conscious if I wear comfortable shoes—which I bought right here in Paris—or any clothes with even a hint of Spandex in them. (Farewell, comfy yoga pants.) But it seems that the folks who visit Paris during the tourist high season are not only unconcerned with looking tourist-y, they in fact relish the role and dress the part from top to toe.
The outfit of choice seems to be the following: a hat of some kind with either a bill or a brim (bonus points for carrying an umbrella on a sunny day); Ray Ban sunglasses (no joke: EVERYONE wears these, which explains why the Ray Ban counter at the shopping center is like a scene from Lord of the Flies); casual cotton T-shirt or gauzy button-down (men or women); utilitarian shorts in khaki or a bright-colored cotton or skinny jeans that look like they're transforming the wearer's internal organs to a paste; chunky athletic sneakers or flat sandals. Accessories include: large backpack with which to hit unsuspecting passersby as you back into oncoming traffic on the sidewalk to get the perfect picture; giant multi-lens camera hanging around the neck; unfolded map held up to the nose; an assortment of shopping bags that signal to the casual onlooker that you have dropped a lot of money in the past four hours and that your arms apparently never get tired of schlepping. (Maybe it's all that effort you're saving by toting everything you own in that ginormous backpack.)The funniest part about this vision of top-to-toe tourism is that the outfit remains consistent throughout cultures, ages and language groups. Sure, you have the occasional perfectly dressed tourist turned out in their finest designer duds to walk the gravel path around the Tower (I definitely saw a woman pushing a stroller in high-heeled mules that would have looked more at home in a red-light district) or the traditionally-garbed visitors from the Middle East. But for the most part, every single tourist is decked out in as close to a uniform of comfort and consumerism as possible.
And then there's the spatial awareness. As I mentioned before, backpack wearers seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that they're an extra two feet deep or wide when they try to squeeze down grocery store aisles or whip around in a crowd—it's especially odd to see said backpack being worn on the front of the body, like a kind of unwieldy pregnant belly, as though that will make the wearer less obtrusive and less accessible to criminals (neither of which are true). Tourists also seem to have left their ability to empathize with their fellow human beings at home—never have I almost been tripped, crushed, whacked, smacked and trampled on more than when I'm trying to navigate the narrow sidewalks and pathways around a group of tourists. Which are everywhere. Like an infestation of fire ants.
As for the guidebooks' warnings that the city shuts down in August, it most certainly takes on an air of quiet that makes me anxious for rentrée (the start of school and return to normal work schedules). The building across from us boasts one set of shuttered windows after another, making the structure look like dozens of wooden-lidded eyes on the face of a sleeping monster. The restaurant on the corner closed up at the beginning of the month and it, like many others in the neighborhood, is undergoing a massive repainting and remodeling while its owners vacation somewhere delightful.
That's why August actually strikes me as a lovely idea in a busy metropolis like Paris. The shops that are shuttered all have little hand-lettered signs in the windows addressed to their "Chers clients" ("Dear clients") letting everyone know when the owners intend to return from their vacation. Each sign is a reminder to me not that the city is closed down, but that France holds an appreciation for relaxation and rejuvenation in its very governmental structure, where families are encouraged to take time off and be together before coming back to work refreshed and renewed. That's the benefit of having so many independently-owned shops, isn't it? That each individual shop owner is a real person with real needs—one of those being to take some time to just chill.
But it might strike one as odd that shopkeepers would choose to shut down during such an influx of new customers. Suddenly your run-of-the-mill pharmacy is an exotic oasis of products that will have a line out the door full of tourists (or, ahem, recent Paris transplants) who can't wait to get their hands on your merchandise. Why wouldn't you want to stay and rake in all that foreign dough?
One look at those marauding gaggles of backpacks, though, and I suddenly understand why.
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