Paris, Thursday, 23. March 1995. 12:00-12:30 CET/MEZ The French Ministry of Météo announced at dawn that today is springtime on the Champs-Elysees. Although the day started off somewhat cool at zero degrees C., the Ministry spokes- mademoiselle confirmed that it would probably be spring all day and might even become warmer than Patagonia by noon.

This correspondent was able to confirm these claims of a sometimes reliable Ministry press statement by going outside. Spring was indeed gloriously present on the most famous boulevard on the planet at noon today - which is GMT minus one hour until next Sunday.

Hundreds of thousands of office workers, visitors, shoppers, street sweepers, tree-fixers, Japanese businesspeople, 'chomeurs', school children, petty functionaries, les flics, illegal parkers, aging movie stars, and pickpockets were on hand to bask, gawk, snap photos of each other, window shop, look for parking places that disappeared 18 months ago, sell trinkets, shoot major production videos, eat French and foreign takeout junky food and real genuine sandwiches, and generally goof-off on Paris' newly re-decorated Champs-Elysées; boulevard of dreams and tears, and broken heels; desires, nightmares, monumental vistas; while cooly determined parking-ticket ladies in their distinctive 'designer' not-unchic Cornflower-blue costumes, performed their disagreeable duties with aimable good humor.

After a winter of unrelenting grey and everlasting wetness, not to mention stupifingly boring politics; the mood of this mob of the moment was positively giddy. Wih a bass-line laid down by idling motors of thousands of vehicles, occasionaly punctuated by brief 13,000 rpm 86 valve screaming Kawas, the piccolos of scores of motorized cameras, the gentle shuffle of sneakers, loafers, sensible shoes, boots, stilletto heels, and roller skates, the orchestra of the boulevard was indeed joined today by the fluty peeps of just arrived sparrows, if they were not in fact noises made by trinket sellers.

The whole scene was made more than perfect by the scents of pizza, frites, diesel, perfume, cigars, exhaust from both overheated surface verhicles and seriously overheated disk-brakes rising from Paris' premier métro line underneath: the ultra-slam-fast Défense-Vincennes line: in sum, an agreeable and totally Parisian stink.

On the Internet, the netzis like to rave about multimedia as if it were the world's eighth wonder. But it is nothing nearly as multi compared to the sensory excesses of the... of the Champs-Elysées on the first real and truly sunny day of the year: March 23rd, today.

Check it out world: the Champs-Elysées is open! You can be in it, near it, over it, under it, but best of all, on IT.

This first 'street' report was originally published in Norman Barth's 'The Page Pages' on Thursday, 23. March 1995. This and other reports done for the Paris Pages can still be found online at Norman's huge Web site devoted to Paris.