Nathalie Guerin, 35, opened Le Festi'Val bar and cafe in Saulieu, France, two years ago full of high hopes. But beginning this summer, business started to droop, and in October, she said, "It's been in free fall."
"Now there's no one," she said, standing in a somber room with a few sad holiday decorations, an idle pool table and one young man playing a video game.
"People fear the future, and now with the banking crisis, they are even more afraid," she said, her eyes reddening. "They buy a bottle at the supermarket, and they drink it at home."
Guerin's plight is being replicated all over France, as traditional cafes and bars suffer and even close, hit by changing attitudes, habits and now a poor economic climate. In 1960, France had 200,000 cafes, said Bernard Quartier, president of the National Federation of Cafes, Brasseries and Discotheques. Now it has fewer than 41,500, with an average of two closing every day.
"The bar of a cafe is the parliament of the people," as Honore de Balzac wrote, but it is being less frequently visited these days, especially by the young.
Not only are the French spending less and drinking less, cutting down on the intensity and quality of the debates, but on Jan. 1, after much huffing and puffing, France extended its smoking ban to bars, cafes and restaurants.
Daniel Perrey, 57, owner of the Cafe du Crucifix in Crimolois, blamed social change, saying: "Sadly, it is the end to a way of life. The culture is changing, and we feel it."
The cafe, he said, is a kind of public living room, especially in small towns and cities. "We need the cafe to have an equilibrium between the village and the world outside," Perrey said. "Without the cafe, you lose the conviviality. You lose your mates. ...
