Les Bobos

With thanks to King Negrito for providing a great translation and helpful imagery to Renaud's song for this article
From I V Y paris: Hot on the heels of ARTE TV's Bobo (Bourgeois Bohemian) programme Dwell magazine has just published an article about Belleville, an area that has been colonised depuis longtemps by the Bobos, mostly those from good families who migrated East in search of space and authenticity (which is rapidly dying away because this had such an effect on property prices).

"Change, too, starts small. Some describe it as gentrification, others as the inevitable rhythm and flow of local economies. Belleville, in Northeast Paris, is fertile ground for these transformations—it has a hefty stock of turn-of-century industrial buildings, as well as gross monstrosities of public housing blocks erected in the 1970s. This neglected outcrop of the capital has long been home to itinerant workers, first from across France in the late 19th century, and now from all over the world—North Africans (both Muslim and Jewish), sub-Saharan Africans, Chinese, and South Asians.

The burgeoning neighborhood’s latest stream of migrants come from the land of bourgeois bohemia. Today Belleville is full of bobo artists, admen aspiring to artiness, young craftsmen inhabiting the former workshops of old craftsmen, and people who simply appreciate the neighborhood’s cultural kaleidoscope.

Read more on I V Y paris