Petanque, Paris

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This is a current pic of Square Gaston Baty - what was once described as Henry Miller's "little triangle of the Square du Maine"
across the street from one of my hotels in Montparnasse (du Parc) after they cleaned it up and put in a petanque / boules court.

Being a cross between a naive-romantic american tourist and a curmudgeon, I miss the way it was in Oct. 2001:
overgrown, lush, and deserted save for me and the leftovers from a homeless person who spent the previous night on a bench with some bread and a cheap bottle of rouge.

What does remain is a sculpture of Chaim Soutine by his buddy and fellow artist Arbit Blatas, not shown in the pic.

Equipment: Bring your own boules. Square Gaston Baty is one of the many small Espaces Verts in Paris that make it such a great city.

I just wish they would have left this one alone.

Back in '01 when it was an overgrown mess,
I swear you could sit down on one of the inner benches after midnight, and
(if you were sloshed enough), Henry's ghost might park right next to you.

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. "

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I found these pétanque (or ‘boules’, your choice) players along the covered section of the Canal St Martin at République, in Bde J. Ferry. Chances are though, that you will find other players wherever there is a park with an area of smooth fine gravel – not just in Paris, but throughout France. Forget soccer, this probably comes closest to being France’s national game.

Players have two steel balls (no humour intended) and there are usually two players a side, giving four balls a side. The idea is to throw your balls (boules in French) so that they finish up closer to a jack than those of the opposing team – yes, knocking their balls out of the way is very much part of the game, so tactics become important. The thrower stands with feet together and lobs the ball with an underarm backhand toss. Sometimes, to sight better, the toss is done from a squatting position (as in the main photo). Scoring is done by counting the nearest balls from the jack until the next nearest belongs to an opponent. This continues until the set is won by the first side to reach 13. It’s all a very serious business, which attracts keen onlookers (second photo).

Equipment: I think that, if there was a car sticker, it would read "Pétanque players have balls of steel".

Champ De Mars is the name of that large park in front of the Eiffel Tower. On a nice spring day there's a good chance you'll come across a game of boules being played by a group of old men. One fellow throws a small red wooden ball called a "cochonnet" (English translation: "piglet") about 20 meters and then the group tries to toss their big steel boules as close to the cochonnet as possible using what I observed as a variety of different tossing techniques.

The group I watched also had a nearby bench of colorful characters who appeared to give commentary on each individual's play. It's amusing to watch the contrast in style as some try to lob with a high backspin on the ball and others stay low to the ground and roll their boule like a bowling ball.