Darcy's Paris Blog

Observations on driving and radio

Nothing too eventful other than traffic being horrendous today. I can’t work out these traffic patterns at all. If I ever have a wreck here, I know where it’s going to be, though. There’s one roundabout where I exit the highway to get into the city, and there are lots of streets that radially intersect here, which means lots of cars trying to get to another one of those streets with not a lot of time to change lanes. (That’s a little bit misleading, actually, since there aren’t any lanes marked; you just drive in the direction you need to go. Gets a little dicey, though, when some people drive in a nice curve following the roundabout, while gung-ho others cut a straight line across the circle to wherever they need to go.)


My long car time today, though, has given me time to ponder their radio preferences here. #1: They love American rap, R&B, hip-hop, and pop. Love it. I’d say 2/3 of the music they play falls into one of these categories. I’ve also heard the occasional Juanes or James Blunt song, but mostly it’s American-imported. I actually read in my book on living in France that the government-owned stations dictate that a certain percentage of songs they play be in French. #2 (follow on to #1): They have a Michael Jackson fetish here. I’m not kidding. Somebody’s redone a lot of his songs from the ‘80’s with some kind of different beat behind them, and they’re all over the radio. But it even starts before that. I’ve heard a lot of his originals on the radio here, all the way back to Jackson Five stuff – and this is on the stations here that are otherwise playing the American hip-hop stuff. Very strange.

One other observation about driving here is the scooters and motorbikes. They’re everywhere. Those of you who’ve been here (or some parts of northern California) know what I’m talking about. Apparently it’s legal here for them to split the lanes, so they’re actually driving down the stripe. Yes, it makes them a lot faster than the cars in traffic, and you can park them anywhere in the city (even on the sidewalk,) but it also makes it damn hard to change lanes when you’re always worried about one of them zipping up behind you. Some of them are pretty aggressive, too, with their driving, and it makes me wonder how much they think about getting in a wreck in one of those things. You get in a wreck driving one of those things vs. even, say, a SmartCar – and you lose. They’ve got all kinds of contraptions to keep you dry on them, though – everything from blankets that attach to the front that you put over your lap, to basically a big plastic roof that covers the length of the bike. Seems that everyone here’s got one, but it’s still not for me.

posted by Darcy @ 9:13 PM