Paris - Friday, 9 June - Tonight the World Cup starts in Munich so a good many of Europe's hundreds of millions of football fans are settling in for a cozy month of intensive ball sports on TV with its attending drama, both sportive and domestic. Good weather is here too and while mumbling grumbles echo from TVs by open windows the streets are abandoned, as undomestic stand-up fans gather in bars and cafés and pay for drinks by the glass and wide-screen reception.

But on a day when the sky has been solid blue for a rare change and the temperature has finally crawled up to 'fit for June, over 25 degrees - say, 28, d'accord! - there is a certain type of person more interested in another kind of giant freebie. By any name this is the sunset show, being played by an original cast in a one-night stand called sundown.

There are some people, hardly a bottle or a sandwich in sight, who are camped on the quay between Saint-Michel and Pont Neuf. They are in shadow because Pont Neuf blocks the setting orange rays while streaming a few through its arches across the Seine to the quay on the Ile de la Cité.  A restaurant barge passes, folks dressed for dinner on its roof. It's Maxim's 'Bateau Ivre' with a load of ties and summer dresses.

A couple are perched on the downstream parapet of the bridge, which is all orange and yellow, thanks in part to its recent scrubbing. They have what's left of the sun full in the face. Below, on the quays, it looks like there is sitting room only for not many more, many with the fixings for whatever a picnic is called going on for 10 pm.

It is mainly on the left bank quays where the sundown fans have lodged. The sky is going more orange as the sun dips behind the Louvre's Flore Pavillon, turning it and its chimneys into a black silhouette and the surface of the river into a glazed sheet of mauve. The barges and peniches, and bateaux mouches, slide through the water, carrying more fans of spectacular sunsets.

It's too late for low rays to be pasting the interior courtyard of the Louvre but there is a crowd hanging out there, maybe waiting for sunrise. Out on the quay tops of buildings high enough on the island and on the left bank are still glowing, especially the diamonds of their windows. It is the best angle for seeing all of the Pont des Arts, lined with photos on display - each with a light spanning from right to left banks.

The old footbridge is one big picnic, in the center, along the sides. You have to step over elbows and bottles to get through. A bateaux mouche passes underneath and the slots between the boards sparkle, and then it blasts its big lights on the quay and the trees with fresh leaves become electric green. The colors look like a bad movie where they lost control of them. Orange, purple, and too green.

So far the bridge lights aren't on, just the lights for the photos. It is darker than it seems under the big sky, which just won't quit. The street lights are still off too. Away from the river, through the arch into the rue de Seine, it is almost pitch dark. Here on Friday night it is closed, except at the Palette where the usual hubbub is out on the terrace, lit only by the feeble yellow lights of the café. Far overhead the sky has shifted from marine blue to ink and the near-full moon is sailing out of sight over Montparnasse like a silver peso.

Photos and Text, Copyright © 2006 - Ric Erickson, MetropoleParis