The City of Tacky Lights

My hometown paper takes a swipe at Paris in today's edition. In its quest to land the 2012 games, Paris has put up an extremely tacky "Ville Candidate" sign on some of its most beautiful landmarks: Assemblee Nationale, Hotel de Ville, and even the Eiffel Tower. Even the buses are in on it--I'm looking out my window right now at a bus with two little white "Paris 2012" flags sticking out from the front like rabbit ears.

As many charms as Paris has, when she gets something wrong she gets it spectacularly wrong. Look at Paris from the top of the Arc de Triomphe, or Place de la Concorde, and it's the most beautiful city in the world. Look down the Seine from one of the western bridges, and all you'll see is tacky, faded neon lighting up the other bridges.

I met up with a friend of a friend yesterday for coffee, and in trying to describe what is so alluring about Paris, this idea of the exception proving the rule is as close as we could get. Because the city is so beautiful, anything ugly is going to stick out like a sore thumb.

The funniest part about the Olympic bid is that the unions have planned a major strike in protest of proposed changes to the 35-hour workweek for March 10: the day the Olympic committee will be in town to evaluate Paris's capability to handle the games.