Olympic Complaint

Drawn on April 08, 2024 | Published from Palm Beach |

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Olympic Complaint

Paris is something else. From its humble origins as a Gaulish riverside fishing village to today's vibrant 21st Century metropolis, the city's transformation through time has sculpted it into one of humanity's most incredible masterpieces.

Despite some debate over whether Julius Caesar's vague description of a conquered hamlet called Lutèce referred to Paris or Nanterre to the northwest, the swampy foundations that later became a fortified Roman castrum with temples, baths, and arenas marked the beginnings of a place destined to host stories that would ultimately change the world. After Rome's rise and fall, the miserable medieval slums of Le Marais, wondrously woven together by stunning Romanesque and Gothic churches, corbel homes, and fashionable faubourgs, filled the void. Then Turgot took a tour of the city and gifted Louis XV a map showcasing a capital carved-out by the vanity projects of great kings past. But with monarchs falling from grace, a fresh batch of decapitations [more here] pushed the thinkers of the former Third Estate to embrace communist blocks rooted in a new form of democratized classical design. Enter Napoleon, engaging in a competition of monumental one-upmanship with historic French rulers, including Clovis, Charlemagne, Henri IV, and the illustrious Louis lineage. Even the lesser-known nephew, first president and last emperor Napoleon III, much to Victor Hugo's disdain, left his mark with Haussmannian interventions that bulldozed buildings into grand boulevards, uprooted damp quarries into wooded parks, revolutionized social housing into an internationally recognized style, transformed sewers into the saviors from cholera, and shifted the paradigm on architectural theory in such a radical way that even subways would be fit for tsars! (Stay tuned for an anecdote.) And if the Second Empire didn't impress, the Beaux-Arts' took the mantle by erecting the dazzling World Fairs and their expansive urban projects of cities-within-the-city during a moment in history that, for the very first time, would earn its name not from a leader, but from a movement built on beauty known as the Belle Époque.

Bref, see where I’m going with this?

Whether symptomatic of the daily grind or the lingering foul mood after having been drenched in apple ejaculate from a hastily bitten chausson-aux-pommes just before nearly missing the jam-packed train for said "daily grind," the incredible living-history of Paris is often overlooked by its citizens. In fact, I suspect this general complacency has subconsciously influenced their unique brand of complaint; what is dubbed the subtle art of "bragplaining." (Still workshopping names.) Nomenclature notwithstanding, the true spectacle isn't Olympic sport, but rather the remarkable way in which a Parisian succeeds at complaining about how wonderful their city is. A phenomenon noticeably magnified in the brouhaha of the 2024 Summer Olympics. The ability to make something sensational sound abjectly reprehensible should be submitted to the I.O.C. as a formal category in the Olympic Games. Bragplaining would guarantee France a gold medal.

While I firmly believe that no city on Earth is better suited to host the Olympics than Paris, a typical Parisian, marked by the tell-tale flakes of a viennoiserie on his lapel, might suggest Pyongyang just to shake off enthusiastic visitors.

Now for the anecdote.

As Paris embarked on designing its metro lines, Charles Garnier, famed architect of Napoleon III's opera house, laid down a condition to the Minister of Public Works in 1886 [1]:

"The metropolitan railroad, in the eyes of most Parisians, will only be excused if it rejects absolutely all industrial character so as to be completely a work of art." To his point, he insisted that "Paris must not be made into a factory, it must stay a museum. [...]"

— Charles Garnier, president of the Société Centrale des Architectes, in a letter regarding the upcoming 1889 World Fair to the Minister of Public Works, most likely Edouard Millaud, 1886.

This concept, distinct from the ethos of contemporaneous London or New York, set the tone for Paris' public transportation: A loud, overcrowded, piss-scented subway fit for emperors, not rats! 🤬

Dammit, now I’m doing it!

Please enjoie the drawing.

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[1] Original French, in full; "Le métro aux yeux des Parisiens n’aura guère d’excuse que s’il repousse absolument tout caractère industriel pour devenir complètement œuvre d’art. Paris ne doit pas se transformer en usine; il doit rester un musée. Ne craignez donc pas d'abandonner parfois les poutres en treillis et les maigres ossatures en acier; appelez à vous la pierre et le marbre, appelez le bronze, les sculptures et les colonnes triomphales..."