6 septembre 2014

On Saturday, I went to the flea market (la marché aux puces = (literally) the market of fleas) with Natasha, Justine and Audrey. I was expecting to find some cool vintagey stuff for a reasonable price. That was definitely not the case. Everything was super expensive and I was never one for buying used items anyways... I did buy a pair of new black flats for only 5€ but... it's pretty uncomfortable to wear and it definitely feels like I only paid 5€ for them haha. So there were distinct sections of the market. One part had actual stores (refer to the pictures below), another part was just a bunch of tents and booths set up in a parking lot, and the last part was super ghetto. It was mostly under a highway overpass and it looked like people just spread out blankets selling their old stuff. EXCEPT I'm pretty sure 95% of the stuff they were selling were stolen. This is definitely the part of Paris I was told not to go to when we first arrived haha. I didn't take any pictures of the last two parts of the flea market because I was afraid of being robbed. No joke. My friend ended up buying two bags and a really nice pair of Ray Bans (gold rim, circle glasses). I was interested in buying it but 1) I didn't really want to buy stolen merchandise 2) I didn't have cash on me and 3) I don't think circle glasses will look good on my round face haha Oh and just so you know, circle glasses are hyper chic here.

There were lots of little vintage photo shops. They were divided into the strangest subjects (i.e. birds, children kissing, Japanese vintage, etc.) lol

This just looked interesting to me

Ooh shiny!

Yay clothes

Yay stores and shopping

Everything in this photo was just about or over 50€

So you think this mannequin is creepy? Well, the shop owner looked like a guy straight out of the 1800s and I'm not sure if the clothes in the store were meant for humans or for life-size dolls... I'm pretty sure most of the mannequins also had real teeth.

Um and we saw this. Very random.

But not quite as random as this space ship? I thought we could go in but the entrance was blocked :( You can kind of see the inside in the picture, and it looks pretty cool!

Everything is better in Paris. I mean, just look at this dog. Much regal. So majesty. Very dog.

And this masterpiece. I was blown away.

I encountered, firsthand, a lot of racism today. So there were four of us: one white girl, one Indian girl, one Chinese girl, and me. A lot of times, we kind of just walked in a line because we had to squeeze through the crowd. Most of the time, Audrey was at the front and shop owners would say hello or try to get her to take a look at their merchandise OR not say anything. No big deal. Seems pretty normal. But when Justine and I pass by, they just say "nihao" and start laughing. One man started screaming "Pakistani! Pakistani!" to my friend Natasha. And at one point, a man tried to grab my arm and pull me into his shop or something. I don't know. I don't really know how to describe it but it just seemed like they felt entitled to harass me, Justine and Natasha more so than Audrey (although we were all harassed a little bit because we were just a group of girls) because we are people of color. I am glad that this is the only place I've experienced this degree of racism since arriving in Europe, but I was still pretty irked by it. At least get my ethnicity correct :(