I love and hate Marseille in almost equal measure. I love the camaraderie, the architecture, the relatively open society but I hate the squalor and the mindless hooliganism.... and the high taxes. I feel no less safe than in Shepherds Bush, West London. There’s been a strike for more than a week by the rubbish collectors, the tourist places are still clean enough but the residential neighbourhoods are covered in rubbish and at night you can see rats. So in this one picture you have creative Marseille with imaginative street art and its music, also the shiny motorcycles and the hundred year-old plane trees under the famous blue sky. But also the bins overflowing and the old paint on the dirty buildings.
Note the shop behind the bin, it’s selling “Home Hygiene”. Poubelles la Vie is a pun on Plus Belle la Vie, the primetime soap on French TV3 about life in Marseille; poubelles = rubbish.
Faces blurred - this is France
See also « Plus Belle la Vie »