Small Towns in the Big City

At dinner last night, an old dance-floor buddy from Fire Island who has lived here for two years and I tried to figure out why Paris, despite all its obvious hassles, is so seductively agreeable as a place to live.

Eventually we realized the answer: because it's like New York used to be.

When I moved to New York in 1991, and for decades before that, New York was a city of settled and closely knit neighborhoods. You got to know the shopkeepers and a few of your neighbors; you could easily get recognized as a regular at small restaurants in your area; you ran into a surprising number of people you recognized on the street.

People who had never lived there were surprised to hear it, but New York in those days was less an impersonal city and more a network of interlaced small towns.

That's much less the case now, when those mom-and-pop stores have been replaced by chains. You can be a regular at Starbucks or Duane & Reade, but the counter staff turns over so fast that none of them will be around as long as you will. So that personal touch is gone.

But Paris is still a city of small-town neighborhoods and mom & pop stores. When I walk into the cafe near my office, the counterman knows what I drink and starts making it as soon as he sees me. It would be the same way at the bakery if I didn't insist on trying something different every day. And the butcher, and the vegetable store where the lady likes to joke about American vegetables.

And that makes it a very nice place to live.

I miss the old New York.