OK, here is the sports/journalism connection in this post:

A bistro on the place just up the street from here was showing a basketball game on a television, inside.

We moved out of the Marais yesterday and over to the 17th arrondisement.

The 17th is a much more sedate neighborhood than is the manic Marais. Solidly middle class, and very French. People with real jobs and real lives inhabit the handsome apartments on the Hausmann-designed streets.

But you don’t come to the 17th, if you’re a tourist.  It’s in the northwest part of the city, a bit away from the major points of interest. The Champs is south, and the Louvre is south and east and the Eiffel Tower is even further south and on the other side of the Seine. Montmarte is probably the closest tourist area, to this part of the 17th, and it’s a bit of a hike. Though the Arc de Triomph might be about the same walking distance.

So, if you’re a tourist, maybe you stay in the 17th, in a little three-star hotel, but as soon as you have your morning croissant you’re almost certainly headed somewhere else.

Also, what little there is to do right here in the 17th is reduced even further by three salient facts.

–Today is a legal holiday. Assumption, to be specific. A religious holiday. And even though France is thoroughly secular, it still likes to celebrate religious holidays because, well, they’re days off from work, and the French love their days off.

–It’s a Saturday. A significant number of businesses in residential neighborhoods, like this one, aren’t open on Saturday. Any Saturday.

–It’s August. And a significant percentage of French businesses close for much or all of August. Particularly in the residential neighborhoods that don’t plan on tourist-driven business.

So, I just took a stroll around the place, and looked up the six streets that radiate from it … and it is the definition of dead. A handful of restaurants were open. Mostly right on the place –and near the Metro exit. An Indian-Pakistani restaurant. The Monoprix (grocery), and Picard, a frozen-food shop that must be selling a lot of ice cream, about now. Well, that’s what I bought, anyway.

It’s 90 degrees here today, and Paris doesn’t handle that sort of heat well. At all. Imagine a city of sweating, crabby and sunburned tourists … stuffy and hot subways and buses … and locals who are hunkered down inside their non-air-conditioned homes. That’s what it is like, here in the afternoon.  Paris at 90 degrees and direct sun is not nearly as charming as your mind’s eye might see it.

The place to be, if you must go out, is in the shade on the sidewalk of a bistro with a glass of rose and, perhaps, some glace (ice cream) in your future. Or you can find one of the limited number of climatisation (air-conditioned) restaurants, and go inside and have a late lunch. If you can afford it, you also should move about via taxi, because the taxis are infinitely cooler than is the Metro — which can be nightmarishly hot and smelly on a day like this.

Probably the best plan, unless you’re here for only a few days and have to see the Louvre right this minute … is to stay inside and not come out before, say, 9, and then go for a light dinner and some wine as the sun goes down and the temperatures drop into the the balmy 70s. The atmosphere will be perfect, then. Even in the 17th.