STAGE 2: AUTEUIL
riding for race horse retirement
The goal was 40
kilometers (25 miles). It should have been longer,
since I’d be crossing the city twice at its widest
part and also doing extra
north-south loops along the way. But Paris is not
Los Angeles.
The theme is monuments and landmarks. The goal is
reaching Auteuil race course, which houses a
protected monument, the old grandstand where
horseplayer Ernest Hemingway used to sit in the
1920s. (While I looped the right bank, Alan would
loop the left, we’d would converge at Notre-Dame
cathedral, and cycle on to Auteuil for the Grand
Steeple-Chase de Paris (French Gold Cup). (To see a
photo album of our journey, click on
http://picasaweb.google.com/108694285236596100288/Prologue2AuteuilRacecourse?feat=directlink)
The favorite would be odds-on, and favorites had won
50% in the last 20 editions, so it was not a
bettable race. The theme of race horse retirement
emerged because two 11-year-old horses had come out
of retirement, winning comeback races after a year
and a half away, and were competing in this
pugilistic race, covering three miles and 5/8 and 23
hurdles, including the feared rail ditch, 1.6 meters
high and 4.1 meters long. Also the Grandstand River
jump, where you can stand within a few feet and
watch 14 horses fly over it. Pugilistic because
horses don’t only lose this race: they get knocked
out.
Only one 10-year old had won the race since 1963;
never an 11-year old. I’d root for these two George
Foremans of racing but not bet on them.
I
planned for 23 obstacles in my bicycle ride (hills,
broken glass from Saturday-night partying, crossing
the unforgiving Bastille traffic circle, etc.).
Paris Réalité Those not interested in the Paris
travelogue, please skip this part and go directly to
Auteuil grandstand and the big race.
I
begin at Clichy, 8:30am, 4 furlongs outside the belt
road, the only freeway in Paris. It’s a no-mans’
land around the belt road. During work days, you see
fully-equipped vans occupied by prostitutes plying
their trade beyond retirement age. The sex workers’
labor union in France has failed to successfully
advocate for these women.
Up the long hill of Avenue de Clichy and in and
around the bourgeois bohemian Les Batignolles
village-neighborhood. I passed a former residence of
Emile Zola, as well as 15 Rue Nollet, the apartment
building where the great American poet Langston
Hughes lived in 1924, while working as a bouncer in
a nearby nightclub.
This is also the quartier where the impressionist
painters got together at the Café Guerbois, now an
unattractive shoe store.
From here, Place de Clichy, another dangerous
traffic circle, I turn east, onto a glorious bicycle
path within a boulevard promenade. The outer street
is lined with XXX shops and the Moulin Rouge, even
seedier than the old Times Square. It’s only 8:45am,
a true Sunday morning sidewalk, occupied by
down-and-outers.
The scam here later in the afternoon: they sell the
unwitting passerby a Chanel but they switch bottles
when wrapping, she opens it up later and finds cheap
cologne instead.
The bicycle path continues past the hill of
Montmartre, where you can see the puffy white Sacre
Coeur cupola looming above, between
trinket-store-infested side streets.
The boulevard promenade ends at Barbés, where the
underground Metro emerges to become an el. This
neighborhood is featured in a friend’s novel called
African Aliens. This is also the setting for the
horse racing-police-corruption movie, My New
Partner, starring Philippe Noiret.
Just across the street from the el station, you can
buy contraband cigarettes from corner venders. Under
the el, 3-card monte tricksters. Squad cars roll by
but the underground economy thrives.
Continued >
