For Parisians, Olympic summer brings frustrations but also joy

PARIS — In the park, people in T-shirts imprinted with red Phryges lounged on beach chairs and watched gymnastics on the big screen, while children equipped with scaled-down sabers lunged their way through free fencing lessons.

One of the petite, newbie fencers, age 4, ended her bout with a dazzling grin.

“This is what we want to see — we want to start making more Olympians,” said Bernard Aussedat, who was supervising the lessons in Parc Monceau on behalf of a local fencing club.

“This is good for Paris, good for sport,” he said.

The Olympic Games are reverberating everywhere here this summer. The influx of athletes, officials and spectators from around the world has altered moods and rhythms. Whether this is good or bad for Paris may depend on your vantage point.

Some Parisians have experienced the Games as security and transportation headaches. Some fled town early to avoid the disruptions, feeling that these Olympics were not geared toward them. Others stuck around, sacrificing a traditionally sacred vacation period in the hope of Olympic tourism profits. In some cases, they have ended up disappointed.

But the Summer Games have also brought a bit of joie de vivre back to Paris. They have energized downtrodden neighborhoods and instilled pride in the Olympic hosts — a sentiment reinforced by the face of multi-medal-winner Léon Marchand plastered on newsstands throughout the capital.

“At its base, Paris is not a sporty city,” said David Silvain, 41, who came out to watch women speed cyclists race through the 7th arrondissement last weekend. Yet the Olympics are a “beautiful event,” he said, cheering “Vive la France!” as a French cyclist zipped past.

Paris is usually sleepy in late July and August, the time carved out for French summer vacations. Residential neighborhoods typically feel deserted. Finding an open bakery can require a bit of a hike.

And this particular summer began in a bit of a funk, with elections that underscored France’s divisions.

Geopolitical tensions, and security concerns, put the country further on edge in the lead-up to the Olympics.

The Opening Ceremonies, held along the Seine on July 26, were ambitious and stunning — the first to take place outside a stadium. They also involved huge risks for a country that has been the frequent target of terrorist attacks. To temper the threat, authorities barricaded off the Seine in the week leading up to the ceremonies, restricted traffic and instituted a system of QR-code screening for people who live and work along the river.

Thomas Girault, 32, was among the Parisians who decided to leave. He said his publishing company, along the Seine, had advised employees not to come to the office, and he expected the Games to bring a lot of noise.

But as he prepared to leave town, he noticed a strange calm in his neighborhood of Denfert-Rochereau. “I’m surprised,” he said in an interview on the eve of the Opening Ceremonies. “I thought it would be much more chaotic.”

At Brasserie Moliteuil, down the street from the Parc des Princes stadium, waiter Sabrina de Staël said her boss hired extra staff for the summer, thinking that proximity to the Olympic soccer venue would translate into a surge in customers.

But just days before the competitions kicked off, police told restaurants near Olympic venues that they couldn’t put tables outside, de Staël said — effectively shutting down the terrasse, the outward-facing sidewalk seats that are a staple of summer life in Paris. The brasserie, mostly empty during the opening Israel vs. Mali soccer qualifying match last week, lost money as a result, she said.

The massive police presence around the city unnerved her, too, de Staël said. Paris has deployed tens of thousands of security officers, including French and foreign police, private contractors and soldiers, during the Games. Soldiers wearing fatigues and holding rifles patrolled upscale streets on the Seine’s left bank this week, marching past tourists sipping rosé.

Past incidents of police brutality have sparked protests and strained relations between minorities and police officers.

“You go outside your flat and you see a policeman. It doesn’t make me safe,” de Staël said.

By Monday, even as security measures around sporting venues remained, the quays of the Seine were coming back to life. Metal barricades had largely been dismantled. Vendors who sell art on the riverbanks reopened their stalls. As a heat wave baked Paris, tourists wearing sports jerseys licked ice cream cones and snapped selfies in front of landmarks decorated with Olympic rings.

The Olympics have upended Paris tourism, changing where visitors go and what they do.

Shopkeepers in Saint-German-des-Près said the wealthy clientele from the United States and the Middle East who usually descend on the neighborhood have stayed away.

The Louis Vuitton store was empty on Monday afternoon. Les Deux Magots, an old haunt of Picasso and Hemingway where visitors typically line up to sip coffee, was noticeably quiet. Olympics spectators seemed to be spending their time and money at sports events instead.

The restrictions around the Seine diverted other customers, said Philippe Rouzaud, the manager of Brasserie Lipp, an upscale restaurant that saw its daily business drop by more than half in recent weeks.

“There’s a huge deficit here,” Rouzaud said. “We’re hoping that there’ll be a few more people, but we don’t know how things will work out.”

The prospect of Olympic crowds and premium pricing appears to have deterred some people from visiting Paris this summer. Air France-KLM and Delta blamed the Olympics for lower-than-projected air traffic to the French capital. Low occupancy prompted some hotels to offer last-minute reduced rates.

The Paris tourism office lowered its Olympic-period projections from 15 million to 11 million people — though the latest statistics show 650,000 people arrived during the first days of the Games, a bump of roughly 17 percent for French visitors and about 15 percent for foreigners compared to the same period in 2023.

Paris officials promised from the start that these Olympics wouldn’t be just for tourists — they would be open to Parisians, too, and offer long-term benefits.

The city has set up “Paris beaches” where locals were supposed to be able to swim in newly clean waterways on Sundays during July and August. But after consecutive rainy days, authorities said the water was too polluted for swimming last weekend.

“They say that next week we might be able to go swimming,” said Estelle Sirey, 24, sitting in a swimsuit on the edge of Canal St. Martin, one of the designated swimming zones. “I’m still a bit disappointed.”

Paying host to the Olympics has thrilled other residents.

“The city is shining with a new light during these Games,” Julien Dambre, 27, said, as he lounged with friends on colorful new beach chairs by the canal.

For some previously neglected Paris suburbs, the Olympics have brought fresh investment, rare visitors and brushes with athletic greatness.

Saint-Denis, an area north of Paris with high crime and poverty rates, was already home to the Stade de France. For the Olympics, an aquatics center and the Olympic Village were built in the community. Residents here complain about traffic jams caused by blocked-off roads around the venues; on Sunday, police stopped local cars to usher buses for athletes through to the stadium.

But residents praised the newly paved roads and the street cleaners suddenly deployed daily. Here, several said, the influx of police made them feel safer. Authorities also gave out free tickets to some Olympic events.

The thousands of athletes, Olympics organizers and security personnel who have descended on the Olympic Village over the past week injected star power and international tourists into neighborhoods that rarely see either.

Said El-Ghomari, 42, a telecommunications technician who lives in Saint-Denis and is working for the Games, showed off the country pins athletes had given him.

The Olympics “changed the usual population here,” said Diane Noumba, 43, as she sat with her 4-year-old son in a nearby park, watching athletes and volunteers bustle past. “On this passage here, there are diverse populations, different rhythms to life in the neighborhood.”

On Sunday morning, American sprinter Gabby Thomas — favored to medal in the 200-meter race — sipped coffee with her boyfriend at the local cafe-bar, now decorated with balloons and Olympic flags.

A few blocks away, the boulangerie closest to the Olympic Village was packed with police and sports officials ordering lunch. The Games have brought “a real boost to the business,” baker Najah Wided said.

“It brings a little bit of joy because normally it’s very, very quiet around here,” she said. “Everything is going really well these days.”

Gretchen Reynolds contributed to this report.