"ART IS ANYTHING DONE WITH PASSION," THE COMMUNARDS SAID. THEY WOULD HAVE APPROVED THE LITTLE SHOPS NOW ON THE ROUTES WHERE THEY DISPERSED
Adapted from a Google map
It's also my neighborhood, and these are establishments where I go. Having made the page I realized that all were founded by immigrants or their descendants. When I asked why, they said:
- Being hired by a company or rising within it can be difficult.
- Diplomas from outside the European Union are not recognized in France.
- Transplanting oneself into a new culture already takes initiative, and once there one must invent one's way.
- Immigrants are willing to work the 12-14 hours a day that a small business requires. *
*A Cameroonian shop owner in another neighborhood sleeps there when she must finish an order.
- Compatriots or family who are already there and often have shops can help newcomers. For their children, the entourage incites following the same path.
# # #
Beginning just behind the church (the dates show rootedness):
- The only stationary store in the vicinity from which one can send a fax or buy The New York Times (since 2005).
Bureau Vallée
10 rue Jeanne d'Arc
Fanny and Robert Ho, Chinese
- Asian and organic products (since 2002).
Boutique Bio et Bien-être
19 place Jeanne d'Arc
From left to right: Aline Ly, from Laos: She is familiar with Asian medicine and chooses the products; Sophie Dmitreff, owner, whose grandmother came from Russia in 1924; Barbara Raab, whose grandparents were Austrian and Czechoslovakian.
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Date syrup and birch sugar
# # #
(On rues du Château des Rentiers and Nationale)
- A pharmacy
Pharmacie Nationale
128 rue Nationale
"Thank you, Catherine!" said this client. The pharmacist is Asian. A majority are of immigrant origin.
Valerie Marquiès (of Spanish and Moroccan origine) shows how to use a blood pressure monitor.
New York's Union Square neighborhood
is as far from the center as the 13th,
and one might expect a comparable ambiance.
But pharmacies are part of a chain, the very young employees know nothing and the clients are anonymous. Here, employees are professionals who inform and know the customers.
- A few steps on: a couturier who also does alterations and reparations (since 2000).
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Marcel Bayo Lukombo
Bayocreamode
12 rue Dr Victor Huntinel (corner of rue Nationale)
Fugitives must have taken this important way.
- On the parallel street, a Chinese restaurant (since 1982):
Simon, who replaced his older brother in 2021.
It seems surprising that an Asian restaurant should maintain itself in a neighborhood where many residents are elderly and have modest revenues and where at night there is very little traffic.
The menu explains the dishes' origins and health benefits.
Its durability comes from excellence.
# # #
On a street that barricades once covered (rue de Tolbiac), Hamid Amin foresees the moment when sales by chain stores and the web will force him to sell the hardware store his mother, from Réunion, founded in 1986. But for the moment...
- Monsieur Amin and his friend Mohammed ("Momo"), a retired laborer who now transports children and does odd jobs:
Burhanie decor shop
70 rue Tolbiac
Momo working for me.
- A shop where every inch is used:
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- One evening as I waited while Monsieur Amid wrapped a package for the man behind the counter I overheard this conversation...
"If the government changes the retirement age there'll be demonstrations, covid is always present and in any case we'll all die some day, we don't know when or how, but it will come."
Those somber subjects were evoked with as much good humor as at the bar of a café.
# # #
There's a mall ten minutes away.
The salespeople are polite,
but one feels that for them it's just a job.
These shops are different.
* * *
Back to the walk.
At the end of rue du Château des Rentiers
is a sign that invites you to enter
"The garden of the Say refinery."
At the end of rue du Château des Rentiers.
That comes next.
Next,
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