Paris, June 28, 2024, by Socrates George Kazolias

Over the past 40 years, the working class population of Paris has been gradually pushed further and further outside of the city as the new rich take over. One of the last areas in southern Paris is holding on by a thread: La Butte Aux Cailles.

I started coming to Le Temps Des Cérises restaurant when it was first opened by a collective of anarchists in 1976. At the time La Butte aux Cailles was a run-down, working-class area, with cheap hotels that rented rooms to North Africa immigrant workers, a PMU horse betting café and a couple of bars.

The idea the anarchists had was to open bars around the theme of the song Le Temp Des Cérises, written by Jean Bapiste Clément in 1868 and which was made popular by the Paris Commune in 1871.

It was fitting for the anarchists, inspired by the events of May ’68, to choose La Butte aux Cailles, a site where the Communards made a bold stand against the Versailles troops on May 24-25, 1871.

The Association of the Friends of the Paris Commune–1871 shop and office can be found here, on the rue des Cinq Diamants.

Bars were opened with names taken from the song such as the Gai Rossignol, Merle Moqueur, et La Folie en Tête where the anarchist Radio Libertaire broadcast from live every Sunday for years. 

Today only a few are left. Twenty-five years of gentrification have destroyed the working-class neighborhood; chased out the migrant workers; the hotels have been converted into lofts and apartments for young intellectuals, the new bourgeoisie, and a wealthy community of retirees; replaced is the PMU by a faceless, neon, modernized restaurant, called Nénesse. 

La Butte has lost much of its soul to the Bobos but for a few exceptions, such as the Kabyle owned ‘Le Diamant’ bar which still allows you to bring your own food. A jolly Kabyle named Momo mans the bar during the day, chatting with fellow North Africans working in the area, while young professionals bring their computers to work over a café crème and wealthy retirees gossip or read in the sun. At night it turns around with a youthful, student, crowd and loud music.

Le Temps Des Cérises restaurant is another one of these exceptions which has kept its dark, conspiratorial, atmosphere from its early days. When I first started eating my lunches here in 1976, they had only two limited daily menus; one called le bourgeois fauché (the penniless bourgeois) and the other le prolétaire.

Today their menu is a varied, but simple, French, Creole, and Mediterranean cuisine with prices comparable to the new wave restaurants which have opened, but they still offer students special reduced prices from time to time. A sign inside tells you to “Turn off your phones, God Damn it!” Leftist literature and political flyers are found at the door and progressive newspapers and magazines hang on a pole inside.

La Folie en Tête has remained a dark hole in the wall and hasn’t changed since the 1980s except its crowd are better off, its prices as high as anybody else’s, Radio Libertaire no longer comes, but they still make one of the best P’tit Punch in Paris. Since the Covid lockdowns, they have been allowed to put tables on the street in front of the bar. It is on the rue Buot, just down from La Place de la Commune de Paris, 1871, where the Association by the same name holds a block party the last weekend of September, demanding, still today, that those condemned after the Commune be legally ‘rehabilitated.’ The Place is said to be where the Communards had one of their barricades.

Guided tours are held daily around La Butte aux Cailles which is well known for its graffiti art. It is one of the last places you can see many of the stencils by the late Miss.Tic.

As the area gentrified in the late 90s and throughout this century, the anarchist theme seems to be changing towards a more Yuppie friendly and/or post-Soviet look. You can find the Sputnik bar on the rue de la Butte aux Cailles and just down from La Place de la Commune de Paris is the Soyuz pizzeria while at the foot of the rue de l’Espérance is the beer specialist, la Bierocratie.

Just up from the Soyuz is the l’Espérance which closed a couple of years ago. The ground floor was a very affordable restaurant and bar with a great cous-cous, 11 to 14 euros, and a daily special for 12 euros. The three floors above were the last boarding rooms for immigrant workers. This Paris will not be coming back.

In a strange twist, those who have moved to La Butte and gentrified it, chasing out its working-class residents and clientele, knew they were moving to a dynamic quarter with a vibrant nightlife. This hasn’t prevented them from writing petitions to get the authorities to crack down on the ‘noise.’ The pubs are resisting to keep their terraces open and allow people to drink on the street, but at the same time telling clients “to keep the noise down!.” One may ask why they moved here in the first place? It was so much more human before.

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Yves Montand sings Le Temps Des Cérises — on YouTube