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— REVACHOL CRAWLS UP MY MARROW AGAINST THE RIVER OF HOPE.
In past centuries, migratory animals carved a single line of dirt in the low and flat field that ran against the western edge of the river. When settlers from Mundi landed through the pale, they took that river inland to find verdant green for farmland and native cattle for milk and meat. They built strong wooden carts to bring these resources back north. The heavy wheels dug two thick lines that ran parallel to each other the whole way back to the sea.
This is the way a street is born: what once was grass becomes dirt path, then stone track, and finally is paved with concrete. Farmers and ranchers use it to transport goods to the harbour. Merchants set up shops and taverns to cater to the carriage drivers. Then, the merchants that stay build houses to go home to. It was given a name after the cowherds that frequently made the journey and enjoyed its taverns: Rue du Bouvier.
Down in Faubourg, the southernmost sign of Rue du Bouvier stands hanging on a wooden post at a three-way intersection. A packing facility sits at the base of it, and lorries full of meats and produce leave at all hours of the night for export. The smell of exhaust hangs heavy over everything, as it always does.
Across the street there is a petrol station with a long row of diesel pumps with two set aside for personal carriages. A man smokes at the pump, shielding his eyes from the rising sun by squinting northward. Yesterday’s summer heat still radiates off the black asphalt.
And in the parking lot, a group of twelve teenagers fasten their bags to their backs and start walking.
— THEIR MINDS HAVE MADE THIS TRIP EVERY TIME SOMEONE TELLS A STORY. NOW IT IS THE BODY’S TURN. FIVE GENERATIONS OF MEMORIES BECOMING SIX.
They laugh as the sun rises, tossing fruits back and forth for breakfast. This stretch of road is familiar to them for now, but the nature of the journey is to walk north into myth. Stories they’ve heard about all of their lives will be retold to them; older siblings gloating, parents reminiscing. The sights and sounds and mischiefs, the happinesses and tragedies.
It is a tradition as old as the stones that hold them: to walk the spine of Revachol until you lose yourself in it. A pilgrimage to Boogie Street.
Boogie Street is the name given to the stretch of road within the bounds of Jamrock. In the mouths of new immigrants whose first language was not Suresne, Bouvier Street became a place of movement, dance, and disco.
Everyone knows Boogie Street. Its name defies the borders of the pale. It has been the Vision of Cool and Grit for the past three decades. Only the hard can live here, and only the hard do. And here they are, twelve teenagers standing in the afternoon heat where a mass of concrete and stone turn into something with a soul. Names of places they know, but have only imagined. The Skylark Diner. Rafik’s Grocery Emporium. The old fountain in La Place de la New Nouveau with its war-blasted second tier. Remember the final scene in A Love Dies Walking, when Ronaldo Gautier stands in the florescent lights of the grocery sign, smoking his lover’s last cigarette with a blood-stained hand?
And, of course, the name that sent a buzz through the group with every mention. The Paliseum. The many-floored club of music and dance and love and light in the darkness. There is no evil in the Paliseum – only sines syncing to each other through the pale. Pepi Popikarnassos, Arno van Eyck. The actress Marietta Kapaleva photographed outside of its graffitied steps. Everyone’s father has that print up in the garage. And tonight, Augusta Meinhard is conducting the party.
It’s a palace of legend, and they’ve been let in through the queue. Flashing lights of every colour bounce off the bar. Men and women dressed in sequins dance on tables to a thick, vibrating bass. Others from Jamrock, people from east of the river, people from beyond the pale. A group of eight teenagers from Faubourg dance to roaring drums and beats. The other four are up on the balcony arguing with a lawyer from East Revachol about corporal punishment. He never stops smiling.
Is it just as fantastic in person? Are the lights just as bright? Inside the venue and out, Boogie Street is a sparkle of fluorescent sound as soon as evening draws its purple light across Revachol. Couples walk hand in hand through the chaos. A group of people scream in delight as one of them breaks into dance. A woman plays a drum on the corner with a single-minded fervor, sweat dripping from her face.
— A QUICK TWIST OF THE SAME FACE IN A NEW LIGHT: FROM FANTASY TO FEAR.
Two men hold each other by their collars, red in the face. A policeman stumbles over himself, refusing to give up the bottle of vodka in his hands. The beggars who plead for a centime or two. The alleys that stretch into the dark.
Seeing Boogie Street in action is much different than hearing about it.
After the blinding Paliseum, after the respectable go to their homes, the party in the street turns away from the light of the main road and down a thin alley. Porto Rosa is always there, if you only open your eyes to it. The last réal is spent on a bottle of red wine. A wristwatch is gambled away in exchange for a tiny bag of powder. Nobody smiles anymore.
The dirty engine of a delightful machine fires on all cylinders in the early hours: something has to keep the bright lights on. Men move back and forth from a thin doorway with unmarked boxes, loading them into the back of a carriage labeled Rafik and Son’s Grocery Delivery. Thick, spicy smoke fills lazy basements as the lost smoke it from pipes. Above, couples dance on their backs under the red light.
Six teenagers from Faubourg split off from the group for the night and have their pockets emptied by a man without a wristwatch.
There are ghosts here of men and women who have not left Porto Rosa in so long that even Boogie Street is a memory. Three kilometres to the east, a woman has long stopped looking for her father. The night’s musicians pack up their equipment from the Paliseum and leave out the front door as the staff locks up the front gate. They can always leave, for now.
— THEY DO NOT KNOW THE DEPTH THAT FUELS IT ALL. THEY DO NOT SEE THE CONTENTS OF MY BLOOD.
And yet, when the grey morning light breaks through, the neon signs flicker off. Back on Boogie Street, a woman wakes her son to go to school. A butcher holds a honey cigarillo between his lips as he sweeps the broken glass and discarded needles off of his sidewalk.
Those who live in the apartments above Boogie Street have a certain way about them. They move with the current instead of against it. They know that current like they know air. Children become used to sleeping through the songs and screams below. And if a sudden chill of the wind ushers them quicker down the street and past a winding alley or dark window, well, that’s advice everyone learns to follow the easy or the hard way.
The street smells like tobacco and coffee and exhaust fumes. A grocer tips his hat as a boy waves to him, running late for school. He likes looking out for the young ones, the locals. A future exists where nothing exists at all. Another future exists where they grow up to work for him.
— THEY DO NOT KNOW MY NAME, BUT THEY KNOW MY EMBRACE THE MOMENT THEY ARE BORN.
A group of four teenagers wake up to the morning. Most of their friends have already turned back, satisfied with the delights and fed up with the tragedies. They pull on empty backpacks and keep walking north.
The proper end of Boogie Street is a topic of hot debate among the Faubourg pilgrimmers. Where exactly does it go back to Rue du Bouvier? Where does the soul of it all end? Every group begins to dwindle as the road goes on. Some go only as far as the Paliseum, others until they run out of money. Fair few continue on until the anticlimactic end, when the road begins to splinter into the many ports and marinas of the bay. To go east to the Greater Ravachol Industrial Harbour or west to Martinaise; there is no official opinion on where to go to reach the truest end.
The real just feel it – the soul flickers off. The party is over. Everyone else went home without you.
A group of pigeons stand in a puddle on the street, their purples and greys reflected in the shimmering water. A carriage passes by, and they scatter reluctantly into the morning light. From the other side of the fable, where the heart stops beating, two teenagers turn back to sneak onto the back of the first bus south. Another two point to the west, and keep walking. There’s a church out there that’s supposed to have a good scene.