Euro Notes: Cafe Culture Under Threat in France

Oh, no! Due to the rising economic pressures, cafes are closing all over la belle France, and its famous, celebrated cafe culture is suddenly looking vulnerable.

(Add too the fact that smoking was recently banned in French cafes. Sic transit gloria mundi -- or at least a venerable and beloved (if not too healthy) way of life. )

Here are a few piquant quotations from cafe owners opining about their current plight:

Daniel Perrey, 57, owner of the Café du Crucifix in Crimolois, blamed social change, saying: “Sadly, it is the end to a way of life. The culture is changing, and we feel it.” . . . The cafe, he said, is a kind of public living room, especially in small towns and cities, and it is suffering as habits and laws change.

“We need the cafe to have an equilibrium between the village and the world outside,” Mr. Perrey said. “Without the cafe, you lose the conviviality. You lose your mates. Business agreements are made behind the zinc” of the bar.

“We have to be very careful,” Mr. Perrey continued. “If we standardize everything in France, and we study everything, and forbid everything, we destroy respect for our culture. We need to preserve the cafe bar. What is a village but a cafe, a school, a pharmacy, a bakery and a city hall?”

If we standardize everything...If we forbid everything... haven't I been saying for a long time now that the nanny state habit is harmful? Here's one more reason why it is.

The most absolutely damning lines have to be these:

In Paris, Bernard Picolet, 60, is the owner of Aux Amis du Beaujolais, which his family started in 1921 on Rue de Berri. “The way of life has changed,” he said. “The French are no longer eating and drinking like the French. They are eating and drinking like the Anglo-Saxons."

The French are turning into ... Anglo-Saxons? Mon Dieu! The horror! Leave it to the French to insult the Brits and Americans even in the middle of their own cafe cultural crisis. On the other hand, my favorite lines come from this disgruntled cafe owner, who used the opportunity to bash the government-bailout-mania that reigns in Europe as well as (now) in the US:

Edouard Etcheverry ... [is] the owner of L’Express, a crowded bar and restaurant on the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris.

He pointed at a customer sitting alone at a table drinking a glass of tap water. “That’s our new customer!” he shouted. Then he turned to a group of bank employees at another table and said, “You see, they got 386 billion euros from the government, but they can’t spend a cent when they come here!”

Poor Monsieur Etcheverry!