Thousands of people gathered on the Champs-Élysées for a free giant picnic organized by a committee of local merchants and businesses fighting to halt the slow decline of the boulevard long known as “the most beautiful avenue in the world.”
Once a favorite promenade for Parisians, the Champs-Élysées has been gradually abandoned in recent years by the local population, as popular stores and cinemas have given way to luxury boutiques and the avenue has become the preserve of wealthy tourists.
“It’s a way of telling Parisians: ‘Come back to the Champs-Élysées,’ to show them that the avenue is not just reserved for high-end shopping,” declared Marc-Antoine Jamet, president of the Champs-Élysées, which has 180 members. committee that organized the event.
Around 273,000 people applied to take part in the “big picnic”, with 4,400 selected to sit with up to six guests each on a 216 meter long red and white checkered picnic blanket, described by the organizers as “the largest in the world”. tablecloth”.
Eight partner restaurants – including the revered brasserie Fouquet’s, a haunt of French film and music stars for decades – offered meals for two distinct courses ranging from ham baguettes to Caesar salads, crudités and macaroons.
“Thousands of people picnic on one of the most famous avenues in the world, within sight of the Arc de Triomphe, it is a real popular and gourmet celebration,” declared the guest of honor of the event, the former head of the Élysée Guillaume Gomez.
The picnickers were enthusiastic. “The sky is blue, the sun is out, we are sitting in the middle of the Champs-Élysées. We’re very lucky, aren’t we? » Fabien, who came specially from the Paris region with his wife Michelle, declared this to BFM TV.
“And the picnic is really good, I received a Ladurée macaron,” said Léo, 14.
The committee has repeatedly warned that the emblematic avenue has “lost its splendor” over the last 30 years, victim of changing consumption habits but also of crises including the yellow vests (“yellow jackets”) protests and the pandemic.
Last year, she transformed the Champs-Élysées into a mass outdoor dictation festival with 1,800 desks arranged along its length. Another exercise aimed at “re-enchanting” Parisians with the avenue, the setting for countless films.
Yet many years ago – as the French-American singer Joe Dassin crooned in a famous song in the late 1960s, when the avenue was at the height of its popularity – “You will find everything you want on the fields. -Élysées”.
The avenue’s last cinema, the UGC Normandie, opened in 1937, will close next month, the third cinema to close in recent years amid falling ticket sales and what the UGC called of “significant change” in the demographics of visitors to the Champs-Élysées.
As entertainment venues, bookstores, record stores and clothing stores have disappeared, they have gradually been replaced by luxury and high-end sporting goods stores, for which an address on the avenue retains a power of d considerable attraction, particularly among tourists.
French luxury group LVMH – owner of Louis Vuitton and Dior – paid more than a billion euros for its recently acquired flagship store on the Champs-Élysées, according to real estate agents, with surveys showing that a quarter of all visits to the avenue are now carried out. dedicated to luxury brand shopping.
Ronan Guevel, who has lived near the avenue for more than 20 years, told France Info radio: “When I was young, we loved going out (to the cinema) on the Champs. There must have been seven or eight of them on the avenue. Now the last one is leaving.
Another cinema was recently replaced by a Lacoste sportswear store, Guevel said: “The stores and places that Parisians used to use have been replaced by brands that can be found almost everywhere. The Champs-Élysées are losing a little of their soul.”
With more than 1.3 million people strolling along the avenue each month, property prices have soared, forcing smaller, less profitable, independent shops and establishments to hand in their keys in the face of rents that increased by 15% in the last year alone.
“Real estate speculation is the big issue,” declared Paris city councilor Nicolas Bonnet-Oulaldj. “The price per square meter is simply too high. We are going to have to appeal to the government to help us regulate and limit rents in this part of the city.”
Paris City Hall is working on a €250 million plan to transform an eight-lane urban highway into an “extraordinary garden”, but the bulk of the work is only expected to begin after this summer’s Olympics.
Some minor improvements to the avenue are also being made before the Olympic Games, with terraces redeveloped along its entire length and more space reserved for pedestrians.
The Champs-Élysées committee itself is due to present an 1,800-page report on Monday on 150 suggestions for reimagining the boulevard, aiming to “guide a more radical and more comprehensive transformation” of the neighborhood, Jamet said.
News Source : www.theguardian.com
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