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.