SHORT #10: The Paris Apartment

Ten years ago, no one who lived here could have imagined this transformation

They are not particularly notable apartments by most measures in this city. A few of the actors from the theater live here, but mostly, the apartment dwellers represent a cross section of city workers. There is a butcher and a lawyer on the fourth floor, an acupuncturist and programmer on the third floor, two college kids, a kindergarten teacher, and a paramedic on the second floor. An artist and his grandmother on the ground floor. There are more, but those are the ones who I have met.

Their commonality, one guesses, is that they appreciate live theater. This is not the kind of appreciation however, where they all actually go to the performances downstairs. It is rather that, while taking their morning coffee, or having dinner, they enjoy the sounds of the actors and the occasional musician, echoing up the tiles, walls, and through the railings.

On Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday afternoons, the actors perform. On a fine Summer day, the performances take place outside in the long courtyard, formed on three sides by apartments, rising four stories, with a balcony ringing each side.

Ten years ago, no one who lived here could have imagined the scene as it is today. In those days, the space in between the apartments was a car park. A row of cars on either side, parked up tight against the building. Now there are three trees, several benches and tables, an espresso kiosk, and the theater company. Though after the matinée performances, they tend to open an informal café also. On the fine days, when the performance was especially good—or maybe, when it was especially bad—the slightly drunken chatter and smell of crepes or gratin or fried duck lingers on into the late evening.

I said that no one could have imagined all of this, but, well. Someone imagined it. Obviously.

It was ten years ago to this day, that the playwrights and actors guild had imagined it. One of them knew someone, who knew someone, who lived here, and she brought everyone to the apartment association meeting that night with a plan. Well, it was not really a plan, but more of a story. They are theater people after all. At the end of the normal course of arguments during the apartment association meeting, in which the apartment dwellers squabbled amongst themselves, about parking spots or stray cats or garbage bins, the actors and directors then stood up, introduced themselves, and presented a new story about the apartment. The parking lot would be a park, they said, and the ill-used storage space under the western wing of the apartment would be the theater and learning space for young actors. The apartment courtyard would be alive.

No one knows how such a radical transformation was approved. Some think that maybe it was because of the argument earlier in the meeting, about parking spots, and the small hope that if the parking spots disappeared, so would the arguments over them. Others say that it was simply the lift in mood felt by those in attendance, when they imagined a lively space for performing artists in their own little corner of the city. Whatever came over the residents that night, the vote was unanimous.

Tonight the actors rehearse downstairs, and the smell of crepes and coffee rides a gust of wind up the balconies, bringing with it a tinge of melodramatic drama, scripted elation, or rehearsed arguments about parking spots.

Thanks for reading The Possible City. I’m Patrick, and every week or so I write and illustrate a short story to help us imagine more equitable, resilient, regenerative cities through art and nature. If you enjoyed this one, please subscribe and share it with others.

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