Paris - The Other Guise of Paradise

Where are we now?

Rue Oberkampf again, one passage up from "Passage Paradis".

I'm sure that Paris is full of little streets like this.  It would take a lifetime to record them all.  But it's a job that I would be glad to have!  

This one is quite a bit more humble than Passage Paradis now looks.  A reminder that Oberkampf is still a neighborhood "populaire".  Where regular people live.  And maybe some quite poor people.  Cheek by jowl against Edith Piaf's old neighborhood Menilmontant.  Where she herself grew up in poverty, and a little wild.

But changes are afoot.  Paris life can be so fluid.  That, above, is the office of a film-making company.

And what lies behind this shabby-chic vignette?

With it's rustic charms?

A "design" furniture store?  Or maybe I mean "atelier".  Something between a retail space and a workshop?  Paris is always full of surprises.

Giant zinc letters?  For me?  Yes, please!   

At the end of the passage, two little boys playing in their "front yard".   For young people their age, this passage might seem an expansive universe of possibilities for exploration and play.  And yet they are sheltered and apart.

Suspended somewhere between the past and the present.