Sex shops with porn arcades behind the curtain are generally the same across the world. Even by those standards the ones on St Denis are rough. I’m working on a long form piece about these types of places and nothing in Europe has the dangerous feeling of those shops.
We stayed just off Rue Saint-Denis a couple years ago. There are still sex workers on the streets during evening hours near the corner of Blvd. de Bonne Nouvelle. In following years we’ve walked through and I recognized a few of the same ones. Mostly older, subtly available demeanors, a touch of world weariness in their eyes. The 1963 movie, Irma La Douce, is about a prostitute played by Shirley MacLaine who works Rue Saint-Denis. Directed by Billy Wilder, exterior scenes were shot in the area.
Sex shops with porn arcades behind the curtain are generally the same across the world. Even by those standards the ones on St Denis are rough. I’m working on a long form piece about these types of places and nothing in Europe has the dangerous feeling of those shops.
Also, we saw the exhibition Splendour and Misery: Images of Prostitution 1850–1910 at the Orsay around the same time.
I’m so jealous! What an interesting way to learn about the Belle Epoque through this lens.
We stayed just off Rue Saint-Denis a couple years ago. There are still sex workers on the streets during evening hours near the corner of Blvd. de Bonne Nouvelle. In following years we’ve walked through and I recognized a few of the same ones. Mostly older, subtly available demeanors, a touch of world weariness in their eyes. The 1963 movie, Irma La Douce, is about a prostitute played by Shirley MacLaine who works Rue Saint-Denis. Directed by Billy Wilder, exterior scenes were shot in the area.