The Rue Saint Jacques
Funny how things change, yet they remain the same….sort of. I was going down memory lane with friends and we got on the subject of some great old hangouts on the Rue Saint Jacques; Le Who’s Bar, Polly Maggoo, and Le Cloître. I’m talking late 60’s, early 70’s when there was a whole movement going on throughout France at that time, and Paris in particular.
We were young and we would sit all night milking a glass of cheap red wine, chain-smoking Gauloises or rolling our own cigarettes with cheap tobacco and talk about how our generation of hippies and free love would revolutionize the world. “Look at the mess the older generations had made of the world,” we said; and we vowed that we wouldn’t make the same mistakes; ….that our generation would be different.
As I said, things change, yet they remain the same. Le Who’s Bar is still the one with music, still the place that is just a little more expensive, but a place to go when you want to dance, or when other places are closing.
Polly Maggoo on the other hand was always packed, everyone knew everyone and you could always squeeze one or two more people inside on cold winter evenings, or take up residence on the sidewalk in the summer.
No longer in the same location, no longer the ambiance of baba cool when legendary rock stars would stop by on any given night. The new Polly Maggoo is but a few feet away in its new location trying to recapture the magic of the past….and perhaps with time it will.
A little further up the street was my favorite, Le Cloître. Quieter than the other two, here was a more philosophical crowd; the intellectuals who liked to play a game of chess while sipping a glass of wine. A few months back I was on the Rue Saint Jacques and I passed by, and it was just as it was in my day with young people crowding the entrances and I wondered, are they too talking about the mess that my generation has made of the world? Are they vowing to not make the same mistakes; ….that their generation will be different?
Probably so, I thought, probably so.
Photo Credit: Flickr
4 Comments
I used to spend time in those bars, in the early seventies. It was exactly as you said. Till now I remember those incredible places.
and still miss them.
Beatrice, those were the best times, the best days in those places and even though I passed by the Rue Saint-Jacques a couple of days ago, I was too busy to even notice what was there and what wasn’t. There have been so many changes in Paris over the years.
Then again, I’m sure in a few decades, the young people from today will remember it as the best of times.
A continuous cycle of life that goes on.
Oh wow, reading this I’ve got one of those lovely/awful pit of the stomach fits of nostalgia. Some of the best and worst times of my life were in the Polly Magoo and le Cloitre, mostly ‘74 – ‘75. Anyone remember Franco the Italian street painter? Or Max de Guadeloupe? Or Arturo the Guatalmalan writer? Or Lebanise Jacques, the barman? Or Pegui the bouncer? Those tables, the smell of the toilet, the insubstantial lock on the toilet door, the songs that were played. Leaving at – what – 4 in the morning and decanting to the bar down the road until the 1st metro. I could go on. Fabulous memories.
Wow Marilyn! You still remember quite a few names, I’m lucky some days to remember my own!!! LOL. Then again I’m probably a bit older than you! I hung out in these places in ‘71, ‘72 and ‘73 and probably a lot of the people were the same ones you hung out with! Strange isn’t it?! I then went to live in other cities in Europe (Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Rome, etc.) I came back to Paris in ‘78 then ‘79 to live once again, but it wasn’t the same; new friends, new hangouts, etc.