To have found certain parts of Paris edgy

@Fnssc He wasn't mugged though you said he was "afraid he was going to be mugged" when he was going to brunch no less.

Seriously I have been going out in Peckham for years at all hours and have never been mugged.

Indeed the one and only place in London I have been mugged is Holborn.

Over all I was pleasantly surprised there were many more gangs of men hanging around ten years ago .
Indont means the sellers touting just big groups of men "hanging and staring " urinating freely etc.

This time the only place I felt distinctly uncomfortable was barbes metro near momatre

I’m a Brummie too. Still think it’s ace but some of the poorer areas are now just awful (where I was raised has changed like that in some parts.)

But then I see a lot of development too.

Still love the city and would be living there if I could actually find a job in my field!

Yes that’s definitely true but have lived in Bham all my life and it’s gone downhill so much, it’s sad.

This is me and Barcelona. Hate it.

Most cities are like that. Birmingham is ace.

Great parts and not so great parts. Like any other city.

He wasn’t mugged. His feelings are not reality. I used to go to Peckham frequently, for the gym, the library, to see friends, to socialise and never once thought I was going to be mugged.

Especially not going to “brunch” 🤣

This is so accurate. When I lived in Paris decades ago, the available cuisine was almost exclusively French, with handfuls of Vietnamese places. Some good Senegalese (if you knew the right neighbourhoods) and of course the Merguez snack vendors all over. Whereas in the UK at the same time, in any major city you could get cuisine from all over the world, despite both France and the UK seeming to have similar numbers of people of various immigrant heritage.

I was shocked to visit in the last few years and see just how much the food scene had changed.

And other things, at the time a lot of my French friends who were black / Arab planned to leave France for countries such as the UK, Canada, the USA even other European countries as their skin colour would be less of a barrier in progressing in their career but now that has changed massively too. I see that even with our Paris office.

And even interracial couples seem higher in number there whereas my ex and I would be remarked on quite frequently there (not necessarily negatively - but being a mixed couple was seen as worthy of comment) when in the UK, well in major cities in the UK nobody cared.

Definitely agree with you that they do seem to be about 10-15 years behind us in that regard and I have often pondered why that is.

I don't think they deserve to get mugged.

I had an ex from Marseille too although I never got to visit with him.

It seems to me as if Paris is roughly a generation behind London when it comes to racial integration.

Back in the 90s when I first started going the dominant culture was definitely white French, and people of immigrant backgrounds were definitely very much marginalised.

Now some POC are starting to have a seat at the table, and there is more of a sense that Paris is a multicultural city, but there's still loads of pushback (cf many of the winning candidates for the recent mayoral elections in the banlieues are POC, but they've had a lot of online racial abuse).

It's why I find it weird that PPs found it strange that I had a masala dosa in Paris. It's a city of a hundred cuisines and cultures now.

Will nobody think of the finance bros 😱

I love Marseille. Leave London on the early eurostar and you can be enjoying a glass of rose in the port by lunchtime.

Marseille is great and has been cleaned up a lot in the centre win recent years. There are still a lot of challenges with drugs and gangs. There are also some areas I would be wary of at night as a non local. But overall it is a great place to visit.

My DD used to go to Marseille quite a lot as her ex-partner lived there. She loved it too! Said it was full of life and character, musicians in the streets, etc.

@Fnssc yoir securities trader friend went to Peckham for brunch? Aye right. Sure he did.

Your posts would take a lot less time if you just said you were scared of black people.

I first went to Paris in 1994 on a French exchange and the only thing I still remember is that Paris smelled of wee.
I went back for a wedding in 2006, a very fancy suburb and that also stank of wee.

Cool your jets. There are definitely some ropey bits in the northern districts (13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th arrondissements) and if you end up there you must have got seriously lost but the areas around vieux port and Le Panier and coastal areas are great.

I was having dinner with a friend (he trades securities at a major investment bank) and said he once went to Peckham for brunch and thought he was going to get mugged.

I loved Marseille too.

Marseille is the most dangerous city in Europe. Even more than Birmingham. No way in hell will I go there.

I've been out at night in both Peckham and Brixton and they are buzzing with new bars and lots of people out having a good time wth no trouble

Paris is racist as fuck, that’s the dodgiest thing about it

I love it too. The only bit of Marseille I thought was properly unnerving was the restaurant/bar where they filmed that dumb Colin Firth proposal scene in Love Actually, because people kept coming in to take photos.

Funnily enough, we lived in one of the areas @Fnssc is raving about for a decade. It's livelier now than back when we lived there, but I really disliked it at night because it was so deserted everywhere except the main streets.

I love Paris. Never stayed in Belleville, but I've been there and it's definitely on the grittier side. Lovely park and an awesome little Chinatown.