Parisians put own spin on a defiant landmark
January 21, 2002 - The Boston Globe
PARIS - France bid adieu to its national currency, the franc, this month when it greeted the euro. Last month, Richard Reid boarded a flight here and allegedly tried to blow up the plane with explosives in his shoes.
The French presidential elections are less than 100 days away, and the country’s doctors and lawyers here are in the midst of national strikes.
So what are Parisians talking about most? A Ferris wheel.
La Grande Roue, Paris’s 200-foot-tall Ferris wheel, has been spinning on defiantly in Place de la Concorde, two weeks after surpassing its allotted two-year stay.
Its continued presence and its uncertain future have become a political spider web and the talk of the town. Last night La Grande Roue was scheduled to grind to a halt, but Parisians are still spinning forward the debate over where it goes and how much it will cost the city.
Nearly everyone has an opinion about La Grande Roue. Tourists have enjoyed the wheel and the view it offered from the top - it’s taller than most city buildings. Residents, however, are split: Some would like to see it stay; others find it campy and poorly placed for a long-term stay, or just out of tune with the city altogether.
Guillaume Martel, a 17-year-old Parisian, liked the wheel when it arrived for the year 2000 festivities as a temporary exhibit.
‘‘But aesthetically, it’s all wrong where it is,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t like the idea of it becoming `The place where the Ferris wheel is.’‘’
The wheel’s owner, Marcel Campion, had refused to remove the attraction because he believes La Grande Roue is every bit as much a Parisian landmark as the Eiffel Tower. He called in political allies and proposed other equally controversial sites in Paris as alternatives; among them, the Tuileries, Le Jardin de Luxembourg, and Le Champs de Mars, just behind the Eiffel Tower. The government, meanwhile, proposed its own list of options, all of them on the outskirts of town. It now appears that its next home will be Parc de la Villette in the northeast corner of Paris.
Originally given a one-year stay in Place de la Concorde by former mayor Jean Tiberi, La Grande Roue was granted a renewal for another year that officially ended on Jan. 7. But it kept spinning. Four days later, a judge ordered that the wheel be brought down within 48 hours, or Campion be fined about $13,000 a day.
Campion retaliated by threatening what he called, vaguely, ‘‘fireworks’’ if anyone tried to close down and dismantle his attraction. Whether the fine will be paid remains to be seen.
Not only did La Grande Roue keep spinning, but Campion offered all Parisians free rides last Sunday, and has declared 2002 La Grande Roue’s Year Against Cancer. About 1,000 circus workers came to Paris last week to protest - and clog traffic - in support of Campion.
City officials are now considering a plan to buy La Grande Roue and move it. Campion wants almost $3 million for it.
Campion has been involved in other local controversies. In the 1990s, he brought a traveling fair into the Tuileries gardens under the cover of night and opened it to the public by morning, only to negotiate the terms for his stay with the city afterward.
Because of these public squabbles with the government, Campion has enjoyed something of a following.
‘‘The French enjoy supporting someone who goes against the powers that be,’’ said Michel Maffesoli, a Sorbonne sociologist. ‘‘They like someone who’s a little insolent, someone who doesn’t like rules.’‘
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
