November 18, 2002
The Canal and Locks in the 10th
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| Working locks. November 16. |
Apparently, it was built by Napoleon to expand the water-freight radius. It's still in use. On the day we were there, a man sailed a radio-controlled sloop for some hours. Pairs of men sat along its green banks sipping cans of beer.
It's a funny neighborhood, just a few blocks from the well-visited Place de la Republique (and its wingéd liberty statue), with no one really around. The old waterway was clearly once an unsightly blight -- the buildings along the boulevard are shabby, and some of them are brand new 'developments', conspicuously-placed and cheerful residential towers that smack of government intervention.
But as we headed up, the graffiti became edgier and the first boutiques sprang out of the strings of dull, inexpensive tabacs and restaurants. Some stylish ateliers, miscellaneous shopping, a hip restaurant called Le Sporting and another one with a crazy live folk band on a Sunday afternoon. Prediction: this place will keep getting hipper.
The locks themselves (pictured to the right)? A mathematical thrill. Some guy I knew once went to Panama for a holiday with his girlfriend. At the time, I thought of the tales of mass-scale malaria deaths among the workers digging that trade lane. He came back and told me, "It was cool. We saw the canal." At which point I thought of the US military over-running Panama City in pursuit of ex-CIA operative and sometime drug-runner, Manuel Noriega. Returning to his comment, it seemed patent idiocy. But here, in the Northeast of Paris, I had that little thrill. (I'm still not booking tickets for Panama or Suez.)
The distant lock passes into a tunnel, which then heads the distance to the Seine. Since the canal is covered for the last leg, you wouldn't have seen it from any of the more central districts.
Posted by amol at November 18, 2002 01:01 AM