Put Your Hands Up for Paris

It was one a.m., the music was pounding as sweaty bodies—including those of 10 Harvard students out for a night of Parisian revelry—rubbed up against each other, and, for the first time since seventh grade, I was shaking my hips to the beat of Will Smith’s “Miami.” For the most part, it was a pretty average night out in Paris. This time, though, we were not at a pricey discothèque but at a local firehouse, which was hosting an annual Bal des Pompiers party on the eve of Bastille Day.

It is no secret that Europeans know how to party. Countless American college students trek to the old continent every summer equipped with only a backpack as they hop from city to city to booze it up in multi-level nightclubs submerged in the drumming rhythms of techno music and pass out the next day in city cafés.

Thankfully, our Bastille Day “Fireman’s Ball” did not lack its own supply of house music. We got an earful at the open-air dance fest as the fireman-DJ blasted song after song (including the classics “Love Generation” and “World Hold On” by Bob Sinclair, European house music god). And naturally, the ball featured memorable drunken debauchery.

Besides these obvious similarities, the scene was actually quite different from the trendy Parisian nightclubs on the Champs Elysées. Rather than tight-jean-wearing and gelled-hair young bon chic, bon genre types clumped together around bottles of expensive vodka and champagne, the firemen opened their locales to a rather eclectic crowd. The bouncers did not check for fancy shoes and good looks, but for lack of weapons or alcohol (luckily we made sure to dispose of the latter beforehand). People of different generations—children under 12 and creepy old men alike could enter this late night affair for free—and different backgrounds blended and danced together under the stars in the 4th arrondissement until four a.m., as France celebrated that time, 218 years ago, when a crowd of peasants stormed a prison.

But miraculously, the open door policy and cheap entrance fee, which even included a free drink, did not result in a complete sketchfest, but instead in one of my most fun nights this summer. We danced all night and sang along to the occasional classic American tracks while sipping on our cheap drinks. Firemen mingled—sometimes too cozily—with the crowd and put on a strip tease for our entertainment (no, sadly, they did not do the Full Monty). I even struck up conversation with a Frenchman about a random little island we had both visited as children.

While the combination of cheap drinks, touchy French people, and stripping firemen could have and, in fact, should have resulted in an iffy situation, it didn’t. Maybe it was because we were in a firehouse, or because the drinking age is 18. Maybe the French relaxed vibe completely engulfed us, but it was simply a memorable night.

So, all I want to say is thank you, Paris, for throwing such fun parties.

I grew up in Paris, but this summer I discovered many new ways of having fun of which the Bal des Pompiers is just one example. One of the skills the French have mastered, in part as a result of the country’s socialist tendencies, is the organization of public entertainment, free from red ropes and costly tabs and instead open to all. In the capital, City Hall and the current (socialist) mayor have also done their fair share to improve Parisian life like Vélib, a new initiative which offers very cheap rental bikes around the city, and Paris Plage, transforming the banks of the Seine into Tahitian beaches for those who can’t flee to Saint Tropez for their summer tanning (although a French friend complained that the whole “93”—one of the more troublesome Paris suburbs–crashes the scene). The impact is already visible across the city. Paris, once dead during the summer, is coming to life for those who are “stuck” there in the sometimes hot and usually rainy months of July and August.

People are quick to criticize all the problems with the socialist values which persist throughout Europe, but when one is part of the masses enjoying some good old fashion fun on a Friday night without breaking the bank, socialism suddenly doesn’t seem half bad. In fact, some of it is very good and we, across the pond, could probably learn a lot from it. It is clear that the officials in France are making significant efforts to make life as enjoyable as it can be for their citizens. And, as I relearned this summer, in Paris, life is pretty good and, when it’s not, c’est la vie!



Claire M. Guehenno '09, a Crimson news editor, is a social studies concentrator in Adams House. She may want to party in the city where the heat is on, all night on the beach ‘til the break of dawn, but she will always prefer Paris.