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French Cafés Succumb to the Credit Crunch

Posted by Kerry Saretsky, November 29, 2008 at 2:00 PM

"There are things that, right now, we can't afford; there are other things that we can't afford to lose."

Photograph from Marcelo Alves on Flickr

It seems to me that France is devolving into America. I say devolving because, over the last however many centuries, the French have silently declared themselves the possessors of a superior culture, and we Americans have unreluctantly concurred. But now it seems that French culture is trotting doggedly on the heels of America. First Coca-Cola, then the smoking ban, and now the recession.

The New York Times quotes café owner Bernard Picolet as claiming, "The way of life has changed. The French are no longer eating and drinking like the French. They are eating and drinking like the Anglo-Saxons."

That doesn't only mean that they're drinking Coca Light instead of Café au Lait, but that they are eating on run, taking less time to linger over a cigarette and a café, taking their baguette to their desks and eating it as they work in a smoke free environment. Does that sound American? Seeing as how there is a bagel sitting next to my computer right now and a sign in the hallway that reads "No Smoking unless You are on Fire," I say guilty as charged.

I recently wrote that the great Dijon mustard company Maille is shutting its Dijon factory doors, meaning that Maille Dijon mustard will no longer be produced in Dijon. A shot in the foot, which is now followed by the shot in the heart that, as the New York Times asserts, French café culture is dying. The number of cafés in France is at less than 25 percent of what it was nearly 50 years ago, and now that the French are feeling the credit crunch, cafés lie empty and expectant, without the convivial clouds of smoke that mingle neighbor with neighbor in this Boston Common of the French town and city.

Yes, it is terrible when individual livelihoods are stymied due to the economic stumbles of the world. But I find something irrevocably tragic about how a global crisis can strip away the individuality of a nation. As our countries become more and more alike, as more and more of us drink Coca-Cola, and fewer and fewer of us, worldwide, have dollars or euros to spend, I would hate to see those commonalities preclude our differences.

The French are a proud people—proud of themselves, proud of their land, proud of their, to use a French word, niche. They define themselves beautifully according to their accomplishments as a people over the course of a shared history. At the supermarket Champion, which is frequented often in place of traditional market squares, the price flickers on the screen in euros, and then, proudly, in francs. I love America; but I also love its borders. I don't want to see a strip mall selling bagels and nicotine patches replace the market and its surrounding cafés in Aix en Provence.

There are things that, right now, we can't afford; there are other things that we can't afford to lose. No amount of economic boon can bring back the intangibles of culture that we are forced to toss by the wayside. I hope that as France navigates global waters that it has the courage and the vision to invest—not only in currency and in banks and in mortgages, but in itself and its history and its culture and its mustards and cafés as well.

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Tags: cafe society, cafes, France, the economy