Fear

It occurred to me that I live my life here without fear. When I say "fear" I mean one of danger. My life is full of any number of small fears, the type of fears you face as an outsider, not confident in your language capacities yet. But I had yet to face any sort of the uneasiness I might get when I walk down a "bad" street in the U.S. until last week. Walking down Boulevard de la Villette to meet McCall and Finney for a drink was the first time I had any inkling of nervousness or fear since I've been here.

European cities are completely different to American cities. In America we have the phenomenon of "white flight"--the exodus to the suburbs. European cities revolve around the city center. The poor are forced to the "suburbs" in Europe while the rich clamor for the city center. That isn't to say that there aren't "bad" parts of European cities, it's just difficult in a sense to "experience" those areas as you might in America. Our "ghettos" are often inside the city which, to a certain extent, increases contact with those neighborhoods.

Evidently I found the edges of a neighborhood teetering on the cusp between dereliction and regentrification, between poverty and trendy. As I walked along the boulevard my realization should have been along the lines of "poverty doesn't equate criminality," but it wasn't. My realization was, "hey, I'm in France. What's there to be scared of?" Unfounded or not, I (and assume America in general) have the conception of France as being a bit soft. The stereotype is one of pacifism and capitulation, not of confrontation.

The most analogous example I can refer to is naturally Seinfeld. There is an episode where Jerry and Elaine go to the opera (Pagliacci, the tragic clown) and as they are waiting on Kramer and George, Jerry gets into an confrontation with a man. Afterwards Jerry remarks that, "I like hanging around this opera crowd. Makes me feel tough." If my mindset of safety could be summed up it would be much like Jerry's, inflated and without a real basis.