Flâneur | Hacker News Reader

Flâneur

en.wikipedia.org

There's a sense in which this is endemic to Paris: as a city which evolved from a medieval one, with narrow ad-hoc streets snaking all around, it lends itself uniquely to wandering, in a way that New York City, for instance, with its grid system of numbered streets, could not. Walk a straight line in Paris, and you're likely to end up where you started, because of the way the streets curve and intersect. Walk a straight line in New York, and you'll just end up in New Jersey, in some parking lot, questioning all the life choices you made that led to that moment.

otoh New York's grid system of numbered streets is an encouragement to wander who knows where with some confidence that you can shortcut and backtrack.

Hmmm... Many parts of the old Paris have been entirely destroyed to make way for gigantic streets / boulevards of Hausmann.

I went to Paris quite some times and although there are places with narrow streets, Paris doesn't strike me as a city made of tiny streets where you can easily get lost.

It's not as cookie cutter as N.Y. or L.A. but Paris is an artificial city too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...

> and you'll just end up in New Jersey, in some parking lot, questioning all the life choices

It might have not been intended, but I find this passage quite poetic, and of course full of some sense of... Melancoly, perhaps. Thanks for writing it.

As a flaneur at heart, I assume some day I will retire to be an Umarell [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umarell].

Hah, I just started reading The Story of Diva and Flea[1] to my 5-year-old and "Flea" describes himself as a Flâneur. Still trying to figure out the right way to pronounce it...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Diva_and_Flea

The "fla" is pronounced with french a sound, as in "ah". The "eur" sound as in "murder"

https://youtu.be/XEIvtm4FegI?t=26

flah-neur

and the feminine version mentioned briefly in the article, flâneuse

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/08/25/radical-flane...

Flâner in french literally means to loiter in english and is illegal or discouraged in the anglosphere.

There's definitely a modern-day digital/online version of this idea.

A Wikistroller, perhaps.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com