Looking at my vault, found some older pictures on paper and even if the quality won’t be good they should be in my blog. This was early on when visiting from FL US and coming to the curious spots in my eternal Paris such as Pigalle and the sex shops. Nostalgia sets in and here I go on the other side of Paris !!! Hope you enjoy the post as I.
Pigalle is the name of a quartier or neighborhood of Paris, located around Place Pigalle, it includes the streets located on both sides of boulevards de Clichy and Marguerite-de-Rochechouart, and spans the 9éme and 18éme arrondissements or district. It got the name because of sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle.
If you can easily believe that organic stores and trendy bars have replaced sex shops and hostess bars in Pigalle, the neighborhood remains despite everything the High place in Paris: Sex-shops, Cinés Pornos, but also hostess bars. Yes, hostess bars are endangered. But that does not prevent the neighborhood from keeping its soul. Even if, here, the trendy places where Hispters are crowded like mushrooms, new places dedicated to sex have also appeared for a few years: Peep Shows in the American (strip tease), sex shops that develop pore and more in love stores or love hotels, swingers bars … Yes, Pigalle will always remain Pigalle. My best recollection of it stays in the movie Zazie dans le métro,done in 1960 by Louis Malle.
My best was to stop by here out of curiosity many years ago and still standing ! The Sexodrome de Pigalle , 23, boulevard de Clichy 9éme Deemed to be the biggest sex shop or Love Store in Paris and the world, you will absolutely find everything in Pigalle’s sexodrome: from sex toys to lubricants via sexy lingerie and aphrodisiac vibrators. Whether to enhance your naughty massages, your BDSM games, your solo pleasure moments, etc., the hypermarket of sexual objects has fun reselling. It even has an erotic bookstore department for the most esthetes! It is disproportionate! 4 floors, 3000 m2 of DVD, cabins, gadgets etc. First step, admire the facade, more kitsch and crazier than this odious museum of eroticism located a few meters away. In false windows, scenes are staged … with class, judge instead: two women’s models make up the posthe by offering their rump modestly dressed in a thong … A woman massages a man when other couple simulates a blowjob! A whole poem! The funniest thing is that the models are animated, like cheap automata … It is far from the small hopping rabbits of the shop windows during the holidays, but that has its little effect! The interior is flashy, neon lights, mirrors, suggestive music , Millions of DVDs ended with a tired eye … Then ,the Peep Show, the small private theater and the hundreds of video cabins. We will notice that the specialty of each cabin is reported on the door, Ah the magic of Paris! The sexodrome has equipped itself with a new Hammam sauna space and gym.
The official Sexodrome : https://www.sexodrome.fr/
A trendy fauna has therefore replaced the interlope fauna. They meet with Moune (La Clique du Baron), at Le Mansart (the team at Jeannette), and in other night bars that invest all the old girls, sometimes keeping the storefront and the name to play on the transgressive side. This is the case, rue Frochot, of the Dirty Dick, a dark and mysterious facade, which hides inside a harmless property with Hawaiian cocktails. The brand new Pigalle cafe in place of Chào-Bà, also plays on clichés, with photos of naked casseroles and posters from the beginning of the century. Pigalle has become sopi, ” South of Pigalle “, like Soho in New York. In Pigalle, the sex shops are becoming increasingly rare. While there were 132 in 2005, there were only 65 sex shops in Paris in 2023. Today, it is also the district of music instrument stores (guitars, keyboards, recording …). There are many, boulevard de Clichy, rue Victor-Massé and rue de Douai. The district is served by the metro station of the same name, at the crossroads of lines 2 , and 12 , as well as the Anvers stations (line 2), Blanche (line 2) and Place de Clichy (lines 2 and 13).
A bit of history I like tell us that Pigalle became a place of lust in the 18C, during the reign of Louis XV. At that time, Pigalle, it was a green plain. It then built small houses that were called “Les Folies”. They were huts where the aristocrats were beating with actresses and courtesans. In the 19C, manners changed, the girls paid in literary breweries. Then there were the cabarets like the black cat, the red mill, the Japanese Divan where the stripping was created. The bourgeois came to have a good time there. After, between the 1920s and 1950s, Pigalle belonged to the Corsicans. And in the 1970s, with the sexual revolution, there was a boom for porn cinemas, sex shops and peep shows. Completely surrounded by the light-shop light signs. The names give off a certain poetry: the Pussy’s, the Toys Palace, the G -spot, the galactica, the fantasy sex, the new girls, the rebecca rils … it feels like Las Vegas. Without the Viva. The crowd in the streets is increasingly drunk and compact, and it speaks in all languages. It grew with a few more sex shops and specialty bars, nightclubs, the famous cabarets, the multicolored and neon signs that give the image of a red-light district. The history of Pigalle, as a red-light district, began in 1881 with the opening, in premises previously occupied by a post office, of the cabaret Le Chat noir de Salis located at the current 84, boulevard Marguerite-de- Rochechouart where Aristide Bruant worked. Pigalle’s golden age was between the 1930s and 1960s , In 1889, another cabaret, the Moulin-Rouge, moved to the bottom of the Butte Montmartre and quickly it was followed by many restaurants and bars.The district is immortalized by artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Maurice Neumont, and Salvador Dalí.
The Paris tourist office on the quartier or neighborhood of Pigalle : https://parisjetaime.com/eng/transport/quartier-pigalle-p1928
The Paris tourist office on sexy Paris ::: https://parisjetaime.com/eng/article/sexy-paris-a335
The City of Paris cultural site on what to do in Pigalle : https://www.sortiraparis.com/en/what-to-visit-in-paris/walks/guides/161896-what-to-do-in-pigalle-our-tips-and-best-addresses
There you go folks, a walk of nostalgia from my very earlier trips to my eternal Paris. The wonders of Paris, the most beautiful city in the world, I say, that still rings a bell to my ears on each stretch of meter I take on this world. This is a unique area and worth the visit daytime or even nightime for the most daring, Anyway its Paris !! Again, hope you enjoy the post on the other side of Paris !!! as I.
And remember, happy travels, good health, and many cheers to all !!!
Paris1972-Versailles2003 