Paris, July 3, 22026. By Socrates George Kazolias

Le Temps de Cerises celebrates its 50th Birthday.

In 1976, a group of Anarcho – Syndicalists, with visions of the May-68 revolt still dancing in their head, decided they would take over a run down, working-class, area in the 13th Arrondissement of Paris: La Butte aux Cailles. They opened a series of bars, each named after a stanza from the 1848 Revolution theme song: Le Temps des Cerises, and a restaurant by the same name.

As a result of the past 30 years of slow gentrification at La Butte, little is left of the initial project and area. Gone is the Bar-PMU where poor workers would gamble their meagre pay checks on the horse races, now replaced by a modern Brasserie, which I find soulless, called Nénesse, catering to well-off professionals and other Bobos; gone are the buildings which rented rooms to migrant workers and low cost apartmens; and gone are most of the song-themed bars.

There is still La Folie en Tête, known for its Tit’Punch. In the early years, the Anarchist pirate radio, Radio Libértaire, broadcast live from here every Sunday, well into the 1980s. But the clientele is mostly gone. Le Merle Moqueur still exists and hasn’t changed much in 50 years. The others have vanished, replaced by modern bars with loud music and gutless ambiance.¹

The Last Hold Outs

There are still a few old working class places left however; bars such as the Kabyle café, Le Diamant, where you can bring your own food and it still caters to some migrant and French workers as well as the new gentry. Momo shows the same respect and dignity to all. L’Espérance, just across from La Place de la Commune de Paris, 1871, seems to continue to rent out cheap rooms to migrant workers and serves Tangine and Cous-cous, but under new ownership. I think the quality of the Cous-cous was better before.

The Association of the Friends of the Paris Commune, 1871, still have their barricade on Rue des Cinq Diamants. They have been fighting for the rehabilitation of the communards and promoting the Commune since 1882 and don’t look like they are ready to quit.

Their major victory so far was getting Paris to rename Place de la Butte aux Cailles to Place de la Commune de Paris, 1871. The last weekend of September, they organize a giant block party (here, here, and here) to celebrate the Commune.

A Cooperative which Refuses to Compromise

“The restaurant was almost anecdotal in its original form,” Guy Courtois, who joined the Le Temps de Cerises in 1979, said in an interview five years ago. “We especially took advantage of the opportunity, of a empty local which was offered to us, to set up shop in a quater with a very bad reputation, but in which, in those years, arose a euphoria, the desire to remake the world.”

The space was bought with donations from like-minded people who wanted the project to see the light of day. Courtois stressed what atmosphere they wanted to create: It had to be “as if you are eating at home on a big table with everybody body else and at a low price.” Heated political debates were also a main course on the menu.

(You can see the 50th anniversary video and an interview with Guy Courtois on their Facebook page here.)

The paintings that accompanied the two original menus are still on the wall where the menu is written on the giant blackboard. The decor, tables, and paint haven’t changed.

Le Temps de Cerises remains what it set out to be: a Société Coopérative Ouvrière de Production. I first started eating at the restaurant as soon as it opened in 1976. At the time there were only two menus: The cheaper Le Prolétaire (The Proletarian) and Le Bourgeois Fauché (the Penniless Bourgeois), at reasonable prices for low income earners and with a limited choice.

Today they have expanded their menu, the carafe of wine is still drinkable, and their prices are reasonable: 20-30 euros. Those who work in the restaurant are overwhelmingly members of the cooperative. In the spirit of their beginnings, they even offer students one-euro meals on the weekends and made a special effort for the down-and-out during Covid.

You had better turn off your cell phone and tablet before entering or you will get an earful.

It doesn’t seem so long ago that the bars and restaurants were full of cigarette smoke, so much so that even heavy smokers like myself at the time, had to go out for air. Today smoking is limited to the terraces. City Hall has allowed most of the bars and restaurants to maintain their Covid curbside terraces. However, Le Temps de Cerises is only allowed about a meter-and-a-half on the sidewalk along the building; only enough for one table and two people to eat together.

I regret my old Paris is mostly gone and the new Paris has become a gentrified Disneyland, with original facades but no soul behind them. They say that every generation has its own Paris. It does my heart good to find some pieces of my Paris, like Le Temps de Cerises, still exist 50 years later.

1. To be fair, the youth, their faces in deep in the screens of their cell phones, rather than looking at the person they are with, seem to love these new bars and their ambiance. God, weren’t we lucky not to have cell phones? ↩︎