A bistro in Paris. Photograph: Daniel Janin/EPA
Standing at the behind of his wooden club in the low-lit surrounds of the last bistro in Fontenay-Saint-Père, Valéry Letouzey flashes a diseased grin of annoyance when asked about his abating batch of pastis. "There was some," he says, reaching behind to the wine shelf and peering in vain inside an emerald bottle of aniseed 51. "But right away it"s all gone." He replaces it on the shelf, and shrugs. There"s no martini, either.
Times are tough for Le Fontenoy, the usually multiplying cafeteria in this encampment in north-central France that once had three, as well as a butcher"s, a boulangerie, a grocer"s and a restaurant. Now, as becoming opposite day to day and new laws shift the residents" attribute with an earlier internal fixture, the destiny is seeking bleak. It is a bistro with no kitchen, a former tabac with no cigarettes, and Letouzey"s coffers are as dull as his bottle of pastis.
In a last-ditch try to save the cafeteria he deems "the amicable couple of the village", the dynamic enthusiast has launched an online interest for donations that he hopes will move in sufficient income to keep the commercial operation afloat in the short term. If he does not get the ¤10,000 (£9,000) he has asked for, he warns, "we"ll be dead. It"ll be quick."
The fundraising mission at Fontenay-Saint-Père, about 35 miles north-west of Paris, has captivated substantial media attention. But the onslaught is usually the tip of the iceberg. Last year, in the île de France segment alone, about 2,000 bistros and cafes went under. Across France as a whole, about are 35,000 still open. In the 1960s there were 200,000.
Last week Le Parisien, the capital"s each day newspaper, released a musical instrument call for the hard-hit bistro, notice on the front page that time was using out to save the "fast disappearing" citadel of "jambon beurre baguettes, egg mayonnaise, jokes, discuss and list football".
But opinions are at large separated on how to go about this. Many, together with the government, feel that it is up to the industry to conform according to the needs of multitude and that any commercial operation that cannot keep up with the gait of shift does not merit to survive.
Bernard Quartier, boss of an industry organisation representing cafes and brasseries, believes the responsibility is on owners to yield their commercial operation with new services, such as arrangement sporting events on radio or charity coffees for the symbolically low cost of one euro. (Parisian commercial operation can often design to compensate roughly 3 times as most for an espresso.)
Quartier believes that owners can infrequently arrangement an intransigence that does them infinite monetary harm. "It"s unimaginable that in 2007 60% of cafes still weren"t offered diet coke," he said.
But whilst the need to conform is at large acknowledged, others feel this proceed is short-sighted. For them, the total outcome of a smoking ban, a drink-driving crackdown, the attainment of supermarkets and a drawn out faith on mobile phones and computers for human communication has done the forces operative opposite internal establishments as well great for particular congregation to withstand. In sequence to resist, they say, the state needs to step in, and soon.
"They have to be subsidised," pronounced Monique Eleb, a sociologist who has complicated in abyss the purpose of cafes in French society.
She believes that those bistros that fool around a purpose in the internal encampment should great from state appropriation to keep them afloat. Otherwise, she warns, France will lose a consequential piece of the amicable fabric.
"[In cafes] debate is free and there"s a place for everybody … The patron has the sense of existent amidst humanity," she told Le Parisien, adding that vigour to conform to the needs of the open in the 21st century – quite immature people – had led to an temperament predicament for most normal venues.
As they woo new clients, they lose the old ones, and the idea of carrying a functioning, essential commercial operation is chased at the responsibility of a multiplying amicable facility.
The latter indication is usually what Letouzey is perplexing to do with Le Fontenoy. And, whilst he has done concessions to the complicated universe by installing free wireless internet, he believes that if his cafeteria survives long-term it will be since of an stretched purpose in the village. He plans to follow the difference of Balzac and have firm the bistro"s purpose as "a council of the people" by holding some-more concerts at the weekend, supposed cafeteria philo sessions for debate, and fairytale readings for children. A great bistro, he explains, is somewhere "open to everyone, a forum, a place of exchange, where you can encounter people and, either you"re a lady or a man or a kid you … can live in undiluted harmony."
"Maybe it sounds a bit utopian," he says, "but … close the cafeteria and neighbours won"t encounter each alternative any more. They go to work, they go home. Not each next door neighbour is going to have the bid to proceed others."
Even in those singular businesses – often in Paris and alternative big cities – that are still going strong, this amicable dimension is on the wane. Yannick Bel-Ange, a bartender at the renouned Bistrot du Peintre in the south-east of the capital, says that even as his law has increased, the venue"s village suggestion has diminished.
"As shortly as it"s good outward everybody is on the patio and the club is deserted," he said. "People are some-more individualistic. There are still a little people who come in to have a discuss over a splash or a coffee but they are rare. That"s multitude becoming opposite … People have less time for each other. In Paris, that is; in the provinces it"s different."
For the hundred or so regulars of Le Fontenoy battling to save their bistro it is positively different.
"It"s a place where I come a lot, usually to chat, encounter friends, speak about the days, the personal stuff," pronounced Tony Carrier. "I recollect when there were places similar to that all over the village, and right away this is the usually one. It would be a genuine contrition if it closed."
Pulling together to organize fundraising concerts and encampment events, the bistro"s congregation have done transparent their faithfulness to a construction that has served for years as their internal lieu de vie – place of life. That"s not going to change, they contend – even if there is no some-more pastis.
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