What's the beauty in Poubelle?
Poubelle means garbage in French.
Years ago when my cousin Julie (Sacha's Buddamere who will be at Chelsea's wedding), came to visit us in France, she commented to my husband that the French language had beautiful sounding words for mundane objects. Take the word pamplemousse it rolls right off your tongue it means, grapefruit. Or the word gendarmerie its counterpart in English is miltary police. Or the word POUBELLE which translates into English as a garbage can. In "Beauty and the Beast," the Walt Disney version Beauty is called Belle which means Beautiful in French. The French word for garbage has beauty dumped right inside it.
In Paris, Saint-Ouen Marche aux Puces (flea market the largest in the world) was created at the end of the 19th-century. At this time Paris was walled. Outside the walls of Paris, where construction was prohibited, there were open fields. The poor shopkeepers went there to sell their wares due to three major reasons:
1) Because of the cholera epidemic in 1832, new regulations prohibited markets in the center of Paris.
2) Paris was going through major revamping by the mastermind Haussmann.
3) If you lived or sold outside of the city's wall you needn't pay any taxes.
Now, there was a man named, Monsieur Poubelle who created the idea of garbage cans and garbage pick-up service. 30,000 ragmen and women made their living off the garbage of the very rich. They set up in the zone where construction was prohibited they sold rags, metal, food and whatever else they found in the poubelles.
People got in the habit of coming to Saint-Ouen to buy second-hand goods.
In 1920's organized markets were opened with the demolition of the walls of Paris.
Poubelle. Someone's garbage "can" be beautiful.
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