gorgik9
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If you have some interest in 19th century French literature you might know that there is a novel by Émile Zola titled Au Bonheur des Dames (eng. trans.: The Ladies' Paradise or The Ladies' Delight) published in 1883 as the 11th installment in Zola's gradiose series of naturalist novels about life in contemporary France, Rougon-Macquart.
The historical background for this novel was the very first modern department store, Le Bon Marché, started in 1852 by Aristide Boucicaut.
But the real point I want to make is to question the following: If there was a ladies paradise, was there also a paradise for men? And what kind of building or place could that be?
I'd say there was a gentlemen's paradise - what poet Arthur Rimbaud in one of his poems called "the narrow stone kiosk"; necessarily narrow (well compared to any department store...) but not necessarily of stone; it could be made of - among other materials - cast iron, sheet iron or wood.
I'm talking about the Public Urinal or Pissoir, an invention just as French and as essential to modern city life in Europe and the US as the department store.
I think the public urinals became essential for modern urban gay sex life, the kind of urban gay street promiscuity Samuel R. Delany writes about concerning New York in the 1950s - 1960s in his autobiography The Motion of Light in Water
The first public urinals were set up in Paris, France, in spring 1830.
The historical background for this novel was the very first modern department store, Le Bon Marché, started in 1852 by Aristide Boucicaut.
But the real point I want to make is to question the following: If there was a ladies paradise, was there also a paradise for men? And what kind of building or place could that be?
I'd say there was a gentlemen's paradise - what poet Arthur Rimbaud in one of his poems called "the narrow stone kiosk"; necessarily narrow (well compared to any department store...) but not necessarily of stone; it could be made of - among other materials - cast iron, sheet iron or wood.
I'm talking about the Public Urinal or Pissoir, an invention just as French and as essential to modern city life in Europe and the US as the department store.
I think the public urinals became essential for modern urban gay sex life, the kind of urban gay street promiscuity Samuel R. Delany writes about concerning New York in the 1950s - 1960s in his autobiography The Motion of Light in Water
The first public urinals were set up in Paris, France, in spring 1830.
