"Le Gay Paree", we are not

So, the Tour de France came through York this past weekend, the second of three English stages this time around (of which two in Yorkshire). And because I'm sorry that I've been delayed in posting (travelling, among other things, to Aberdeen for a French conference--what?), that's what we're going to talk about for lack of more substantive material!

You see, York got really into this, especially once England wasn't in the World Cup any more. Bunting everywhere. Yellow bikes everywhere. And more strangely, French flags everywhere. OK, I get it--but what I found really funny was the following attempt to "Frenchify" one of our local streets, St. Leonard's Place, thusly:

Yep, that's a copy of a Parisian street sign (which I will readily admit are a lot classier than the British black-and-white, let alone the American). Not that the entirety of the Tour takes place in Paris, either, but ok, whatever. What's hilarious here is the precise execution.

Firstly, "boulevard"? What? Actually this street might be as close as we get in York (it's actually as close as we get to London, really, never mind that the building so decorated is abandoned), but this street just ain't it. It curves, for a start, and that's exactly what the boulevards were not meant to do when Paris was being reinvented in the nineteenth century. Also, it's like maybe 200 yards long, tops. One hundred? Not to mention that "place" would be entirely legit French--heck, that's where we borrowed it from. But hey, whatever.

Weirder: Second arrondissement? This makes sense in Paris, and I suppose you have to find something to fill in the little circle-y bit, but we don't have those here. Why second? If anything, since the street is in the formerly-Roman-fortress bit of York, it should be the first arrondissement (the civilian town across the river was clearly second-rate at the time). My best guess is that it's because we're the second stage on the Tour? Otherwise, someone must have got out the random number generator, or maybe just really liked that bit of Paris a lot. I don't know.

Finally, my favorite things about Parisian street signs are that they teach you a bit about history. Take, for example, the following (entirely coincidentally from the actual deuxième arrondissement):

Whenever a street is named after a person (as well as events, perhaps places, etc.), the sign itself tells you more. Marcel, we can see, was prévôt des marchands in the fourteenth century--although this only hints at his role in the uprising of the capital in 1358-9 (seriously, look it up, it's crazy stuff). You get to know a starting-point, get to place them in time, ground yourself in history. So cool.

Which brings us back to the "Boulevard St Leonard". 1944-2014? This is not what those numbers do.

A quick search reveals what I had immediately suspected--St. Leonard did not, in fact, die just this year! (For the record, the fact that the medieval hospice of St. Leonard is just around the corner is a good clue). In fact, he was a 6th-century saint from France. "m. v 559" would be appropriate text for the sign in York. But instead, we get the end of WWII, and today. Did they even know what the numbers usually mean?

Now, I think they were trying to do some sort of commemoration (strangely competing with the WWI centenary there), because there was a giant old airplane parked on top of the theatre across the street--which was admittedly kinda neat. And I believe that Yorkshire soldiers were, like soldiers from many other places in Britain, involved in the liberation of France. But that's got nothing whatsoever to do with this street, and sticking these dates on the sign like that is just... confusing, actually. It makes it seem like this street somehow mattered in WWII, and has stuck around since then? I just don't get it.

And actually, as a French saint, St. Leonard's got some cool cross-Channel connections to be pointed out too.

At any rate, the cyclists have gone now, and I'm sure the signs will be going soon too (the plane has left, for instance). Then I can stop being slightly weirded out by the whole thing.