Thursday, September 01, 2005

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Paris, August 31st, 3:10 pm, 1st arrondissement.

17 comments:

  1. Is he homeless ? mentally ill ? What is that glass enclosure ? Who is standing outside the glass door ? Someone once said (and i don't know the exact quote): when it comes to the homeless everybody is stepping over and around the issue.

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  2. j'aime bien que vous nous montrez pas seulement les "beaux et belles" de Paris....mais vous nous montrez la vraie Paris dans toute ces formations. Du terrasse de café au sans-abri...Du grand palais à la fourrière. C'est une des choses la plus interessante de votre blog. Merci! :)

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  3. What is that ? Do people really like to sleep on the floor in Paris ? Looks really dirty to me. Must be quite noisy and painful too. I remember seeing the same thing in New York City one time. People must have lost their mind in big cities !

    Drew

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  4. Come on Drew...nobody likes to sleep on the floor. I'm no expert on the homeless but too many people have fallen through the cracks for various reasons (unemployment, mental illness, substance abuse, lack of social/family/govt. support...). And also because rents have become too high in big cities.

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  5. I`m sure that he doesn`t likes to sleep on the street. But he`s a homeless...

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  6. looks to me that the person standing still, hence is using the phone - because dev, it's a phone booth.

    makes it even more striking. like the other is using the phone, as should be, while the bum is "sleeping" in the adjacent booth. and nobody cares.

    sad, but so real.

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  7. Yes Charlus, you're absolutly right. It's a telephone booth and the legs you can see are the ones of a guy making a phone call. Thye man on the floor is "simply" a homeless person trying to get some sleep.

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  8. One thing I can't understand is that France is one of the richest countries in the world but do has homeless people, like US and some other rich countries too. What are those countries doing with their money ? And think about what can happen in poorest countries...
    We live in a very strange world...

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  9. An amazing photo, Eric, and I agree 100% with Matteo's comment too.

    Homelessness is a serious dysfunction of large urban areas, and it is a very complex phenomenon that I am not equiped at all to analyze. But I think that, sometimes, the downward spiral into poverty or/and mental illness sucks you so fast that you can't react and you end up on the street.

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  10. I live in a large city in the US and believe it or not but the very first time I saw a homeless person was in Paris (1987). In my city homelessness wasn't around prior to that the word wasn't even used. I blame Ronald Reagan for bringing us homeless. He cut the hell out of funding for State run hospitals and the consequence of that was people who could not live on thier own where left to their own devices.
    The other first I saw in Europe was armed guaurds (very large guns that I had never seen before)at airports. I rember flying into rome and Athens and being shocked.
    The world seems to be getting smaller :(

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  11. I just came across this article as it relates to the discussion. I knew things were not perfect in Paris but I had no idea about the refugees living in camps in the suburbs. How can we, all of us, allow these things to happen our countries? We all have so much.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4208612.stm

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  12. Who else thinks that Russia bears walking the streets, and the vodka flows like water?
    And anyone can know that in this country the most beautiful girls?

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  13. Интересная мысль, возьму на заметку.

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