It’s the same whenever there’s a political demonstration—tens of thousands of militants will converge on Paris to march through the streets, scattering leaflets, water bottles, balloons, placards and food wrappings, and will do so for several hours, turning the boulevards into snowdrifts of litter. But as the last stragglers are chanting their way along the pre-arranged procession route, they will be followed by a full selection of the city’s green machines and dozens of fluorescent-jacketed sweepers-up. The mess is cleared away even more quickly than it was made.
The old cliché is that the French never do any work, but I’ve never seen people work harder than when they’re cleaning up on the day of a general strike.
I pee therefore I am
Much of the mess on the streets comes from less honourable sources than a market or protest march, however.
I have probably written more than anyone on the subject of dogs doing their business on Paris’s pavements. Even more shocking, to me at any rate, is that fact that Parisian men are just as active as the dogs. I’m not only talking about drunks, who have little control over any part of their body, let alone their bladder. I mean the sober adult bourgeois Parisian male, of almost any age, who will find a quiet corner, even in a relatively crowded street, have a quick peek over his shoulder to see if anyone in authority is watching, and unleash a stream of urine against a wall, a tree or one of the countless green-and-grey metal fences set up around roadworks and building sites. He will then zip up and leave the scene of the crime while his steaming river flows gently out across the pavement to wet the soles of unsuspecting passers-by. That Le Parisien commercial in Chapter 1 was no exaggeration.
Parisians have an excuse for this anti-social behaviour, as they do for everything else, and blame their bad toilet-training on the loss of the old metal urinoirs where men could pee in the street. These were called vespasiennes, after the first-century Roman emperor Vespasian, who introduced a tax in Rome to pay for the collection of urine (yes, trust the French to know a historical fact like that). The vespasiennes were introduced in Paris in 1834, though there had long been a law in the city against ‘satisfying one’s natural needs’ in the street. Before the vespasiennes, the only public toilets had been barrels, 478 of which were placed on the streets of Paris, probably making the city much more attractive to rats and flies than tourists.
The vespasiennes were purely stand-up toilets, some of them almost completely open to the gaze of the public. Others were more enclosed, either hidden away in the tall green columns covered in theatre posters, the Colonnes Morris (named after the printer who got the concession to paste up his posters there in the 1860s), or grouped in an open-air compound surrounded by a head-high metal partition.
Very quickly, the larger enclosed vespasiennes became gay hangouts, and, this being Paris, they inspired a minor literary genre, with writers like Jean Genet and Roger Peyrefitte telling stories of the encounters to be had there. The police also took a keen interest, regularly raiding them. During the Second World War, they were used as meeting places by the Resistance, but after the Liberation, the desire for a moral clear out turned against the vespasiennes, and they were slowly phased out. The only survivor I have seen is on the boulevard Arago in the 14th, outside the walls of the Prison de la Santé,*** though temporary plastic vespasiennes are craned into the Bassin de la Villette during Paris Plages.
The vespasiennes were replaced in the 1980s by large, lockable sanisettes that you initially had to pay for, and that quickly gained a reputation for being used by tramps to sleep in and prostitutes for their quickie customers.
The result of demolishing all these traditional public places where men could relieve themselves for free without leaving the pavement was, predictably, the resurgence of the sly visit to a street corner. In desperation, the city’s sanisettes have been made free of charge, but queuing to use one is not a Parisian thing to do, and the complicated process of opening the cabin door is too much for some people (you often see tourists looking with glazed eyes at the long multilingual instructions).
All of which explains why there is a new police brigade interested in what goes on when men pee in public. It is the Brigade des Incivilités de la Ville de Paris, and as well as punishing litterers and errant dog owners, its eighty-eight members (no pun intended) can impose fines of up to 450 euros for épanchement d’urine sur la voie publique (‘spreading urine on the public highway’—a wonderfully visual name for an offence), though the maximum fine is usually reserved for repeat offenders. According to a report published in the Courrier International, in 2008 some 56,000 square metres of Parisian pavement were soiled with urine every month. For those who have difficulties picturing 56,000 square metres, it is about equivalent to soaking the entire floor area of 500 two-bedroomed Parisian apartments in pee.
This story has two rather obvious morals. First, while out walking in Paris, it is highly unwise to tread in anything wet unless you’re totally sure it’s water.
And secondly, before the sanisettes, no one seems to have worried about where Parisian women were meant to pee.
Miscellaneous obstacles
Anyone who is planning to ‘flan’ around with their nose pointing up at the architecture should be warned—Paris’s pavements are strewn with metal booby traps, many of them planted by the authorities themselves.
The most dangerous of these are the posts, painted dark brown or dark grey, that you often see lining the kerb. They look like elongated chess pawns, as if the city were playing a huge, and highly defensive,
