Quote:
Originally Posted by jd3189
Interesting. If you have been to Paris, what neighborhoods there would you say are analogous with both London and NYC?
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I probably don't know
all of Paris well enough to do this. We have our parts of it that we like and go back to (mostly eastern central Paris), unless we're there for longer.
With that said I don't think anyone would be shocked by the comparison of the Le Marais to NYC's West Village or London's Chelsea and Notting Hill. That one is the most obvious to me.
Pigalle in Paris is sort of like Soho in London, which is a bit tougher to compare to NYC. Maybe Meatpacking mixed with Chelsea and a bit of Lower East Side. Or maybe these days NoMad is a comparison, with it becoming newly trendy and full of restaurants. But you need the clubs, sex shops and burlesque as well (there's a reason the Box, the trendy burlesque from London's Soho, opened their NYC locale on Chrystie St and the Paris one in Pigalle).
Eastern Paris like eastern London like eastern central NYC (i.e., Brooklyn) is the more hipster part, so you could definitely compare the upper part of the 11th (around Avenue Parmentier) and the 19th with Williamsburg and Hoxton.
The 2nd as Midtown or the City (but the bit around St Paul's, not the eastern part), and the 1st is also part of Midtown for NYC, but more like Mayfair/St James in London. The 8th is perhaps the Upper East Side equivalent; in London that's Belgravia and part of Knightsbridge (unofficially Hans Town), down to Sloane Square.
I'd like to say Montmartre is a bit like Hampstead, but although they're both on a hill and have literary traditions, the former is much more central and feels different. Hampstead has a lot of open space (something which Paris lacks in general) and feels quieter and more residential. Part of that may be the crush of tourists that Montmartre constantly faces.
The Left Bank as the Upper West Side? Historically less prestigious (vs the Right Bank or Upper East Side), but more academic, artistic and literary.
This is a fun game, but like I said, very difficult. Kind of useful when looking for a place to stay, too. To be clear though, to do this one needs to focus mostly on the types of
activity that goes on and the types of
people who live/work/play in an area for comparisons. If one starts looking at the built environment instead, you could never compare most places to NYC, or anywhere in the US to Paris, etc.
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