The Low Cost of High Chairs

Flea Markets are Irresistible; No Safety in Going Without Money

In Paris, there is the ...big... Flea Market, the Marche aux Puces, every Sunday at Porte de Clignancourt. It is about five blocks, as the drunk staggers, due north from rue Ramey. So they are in the same 18th arrondissement together. The Marche aux Puces isn't some thrown-together neighborhood village thing, it is more like a second-hand low-ball mall in north Paris. It is the 'roi' of French flea markets and it has a large GNP.

The rue Ramey is a street on the north-facing slope of Montmartre. It runs diagonally from just behind the Mairie (city hall) of the 18th, southeast, to where it joins the rue de Clignancourt. The flea market starts at the corner of the rue Custine and runs uphill for a couple of blocks. If you want to sell your junk there, I think you go down to the Mairie and get a license for a stand - no big deal - and Roswitha wanted to be right on the corner at the rue Custine. The highest-traffic corner I guess.

She had made it sound like a do-or-die matter. The stuff on the stand was not allowed back in the apartment. For a very good reason, it turned out.

At noon on this Saturday, it was a perfect day for a flea market; it was not only not raining, the sun was shining and it was even warm and this could make people a bit frisky with the change purse.

Coming down the shaded rue Custine to the corner, there was no indication of any flea market nearby; it was just the ordinary rue Custine, that is, if any street in Montmartre can be really ordinary. At the corner, then full in front, the rue Ramey: very much more ordinary than the rue Custine. Could have even been in the south 15th arrondissement on the other side of Paris.

When you first see something like this it looks like an anarchic mess. All these tables in the parking lanes, junk everywhere of every description, people jammed on the sidewalk in front of the regular shops, and large crowds in the middle of the - in this case - not so-wide street; banners overhead - just a mass confusion of stuff instead of order, serenity, calmness. A flea market.

There are people who drool at the sight of one, and cannot actually ever pass one by, without plumbing the depths, searching for gold, treasure. Me, in twenty years, I have not been once to the Marche aux Puces, which is world-famous and surrounded by traffic jams, which I have been through. That shows that I have true resistance to junk. Junk causing traffic disturbances is truly worthless. I think of it like this: my home is already full of junk; why could I possibly want more?

Roswitha got her wish. She was set up at number 29, rue Ramey, two stands from the corner. The lady in the yellow coat was trying to make up her mind about something; I was trying to say hello. It's all gotta go, I thought, I better not say hello for too long. We did the 'air-kiss' thing, actually touching - oh shame - and I looked around for a camera eye-angle.

That's when I saw it. The chair.

150 francs, cash and carry; or sit in the sun.

150 francs for a 3500 franc new-price chair. A chair for me to sit in while I write this very piece: after years of torture on that flimsy cheap plastic and fake-plastic no-cushion garbage I have, or the one Dave sat on and broke before that. This chair was leather, worn; it had a sturdy five-leg foot, one wheel missing; and it had a high back for staring at the ceiling and arm rests - I've forgotten what arm rests are for, it's been so long since I had any; it was a dream chair for $15.

I hooked the lady who was cooling her heels in it out of it, gave it a trial sit, and bought the thing. It turned out it wasn't Roswitha's, but a friend's. I only had walking-around money and no cheque on me, but we came to an arrangement, as they say in France.

I did not go to the rue Ramey to buy a chair. I went there with free hands, to hello Roswitha, and continue on to the 'Fete de Vendanges.'

The rule number one and two of flea markets is cash and carry. You already know about no cash. Another arrangement was made. To carry the chair one block up the rue Ramey, turn right and one block up the rue Nicholet, and up to the hallway outside Roswitha's apartment. I would come on Sunday and take it away. At the building, up two flights of stairs to the elevator. At the elevator; it was one of these tiny cagey affairs; the chair, wonderful but bulky, would not fit it any way. So then, up seven floors to Roswitha's apartment. I did not count the steps and I did not look at the numbers ascending; it was pointless.

And the next day? Do you think the door would permit a cheque to be slipped under it? Do you wonder how I am to remove the bloodstain from my shirt? Do you want to know what happened to the car's bumper when it snagged on the concrete no-parking block? No you don't.

I am sitting in my chair writing this, a bit low, but I am sitting my new chair that I got at the flea market in the rue Ramey in Montmartre. My apartment got considerably smaller with this new junk, but I am sitting nice.

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Updated 10/95