{"id":855,"date":"2007-06-19T05:00:25","date_gmt":"2007-06-18T19:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=855"},"modified":"2009-03-17T08:31:13","modified_gmt":"2009-03-16T22:31:13","slug":"paris-signs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=855","title":{"rendered":"Paris &#8211; signs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Signs communicate a lot about a culture &#8211; both in terms of what they say, and how they say it. Signs show the boundaries of a society&#8217;s identity, marking the limits, or reflecting on the limits, such as where a sign has been altered, or where non-official signs are placed, such as graffiti and stencil art.<\/p>\n<p>Paris is a place with style &#8211; its street signs are not merely utilitarian, but are artistically designed too.<\/p>\n<p>This sign was designed in the 1920s<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image847\" src=\"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/streetsign.jpg\" alt=\"sign\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This one also gives the significance of the name &#8211; in this case the first female musical director of the orchestra.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image848\" src=\"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/streetsignevrard.jpg\" alt=\"sign\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Not all big yellow &#8216;M&#8217; signs refer to a scottish restaurant &#8211; this one points out the entrance to the Metro station &#8211; the underground subway train system<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image849\" src=\"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/yellowM.jpg\" alt=\"sign\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And in a city where motorbikes dominate the traffic &#8211; and the parking, it&#8217;s interesting to see that mopeds here are have their own separate identity &#8211; even in the process of saying &#8216;No Parking&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image850\" src=\"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/noparkingbikes.jpg\" alt=\"sign\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Some signs point to good food \ud83d\ude42<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image851\" src=\"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/goodsausage.jpg\" alt=\"sign\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Others, such as this stencil sign on a footpath present a warning against\/of racism. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image852\" src=\"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/foreignersout.jpg\" alt=\"sign\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This one loosely says <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Foreigners, don\u2019t leave us alone with these \u201cfrench\u201d that are full of fear of the other, and superiority feeling.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> &#8211; thanks to &#8216;Frenchguy&#8217; who left a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>A Google translation yielded:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Abroad (Foreign visitors). Do not leave us alone with these &#8216;French&#8217;. Beef fear another ox&#8217;s sense of superiority<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It seems ambiguous, and it is difficult to know whether the &#8216;beef&#8217; refers to Frankish french or immigrant French. Either way this place clearly still has some  issues with multicultural integration &#8211; unofficially of course. [NB  see comment by &#8216;French guy&#8221; below &#8211; I could be reading this incorrectly, I would love to think this was an internationalist message as this guy reckons &#8211; please confirm or otherwise which is the most accurate translation \ud83d\ude42 Thanks &#8211; Jerry]<\/p>\n<p>Other stencil art is truly charming &#8211; like this one in Montmartre&#8217;s artist district<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image853\" src=\"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/stencilart.jpg\" alt=\"sign\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Just beyond this sign were quite a number of portrait artists touting for the tourist euro &#8211; several of them were quite good too.<\/p>\n<p>And the French are proud of their (relatively) tidy streets (aside from the animal droppings). This sign tells people not to throw their rubbish under penalty of a fine. By order of the sanitation department of Paris.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image854\" src=\"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/dontthrowrubbish.jpg\" alt=\"sign\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s just a few of the myriad signs that adorn Paris \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Cheers<br \/>\nJerry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Signs communicate a lot about a culture &#8211; both in terms of what they say, and how they say it. Signs show the boundaries of a society&#8217;s identity, marking the limits, or reflecting on the limits, such as where a sign has been altered, or where non-official signs are placed, such as graffiti and stencil [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}