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Bedrooms used as bars, and underground clubs in former coal mines, an eclectic gateway between suburbia and Paris is satisfying a new wave of bohemian nightlife- seekers right now. Huw Oliver

Just 15 or 20 years ago, the Canal de l’Ourcq didn’t have a great deal going for it. Sweeping down through the northeastern suburbs and into the city, this former major

industrial artery was originally intended to supply the center with fresh drinking water, later becoming an important means of transporting goods in and out. But when all this activity ground to a halt, the surrounding neighborhoods soon fell into disrepair.

Like many former docking yards across Europe, things have drastically changed around here in the past few years. Stroll along the canal at night now, and in between all the formerly dilapidated warehouses and outsize canal boats, you’ll come upon hundreds of young bobos – ‘bourgeois bohemians’ – merrily drinking wine and lager, legs slung over the water’s edge.

You can easily see the appeal: the canal is open, spacious and bears little traffic on its banks. A far cry from the homogeneous cream of the central Haussmanian boulevards, its graffitied 20th-century architecture is charmingly hodgepodge. The ebullient nighttime atmosphere is more reminiscent of one of Amsterdam’s main liquid thoroughfares than anything else in Paris, and what’s more, the green-white glimmer of the water can be really quite striking.

All of which is to say, it’s no surprise the bar entrepreneurs are already piling in. First came the trend-setting Pavillon des Canaux, a quaint old town house in which you can now enjoy cocktails in a mock-up bedroom or bathroom, and then expansive craft-beer bar Paname Brewing Company, with its two sun-drenched terraces that overhang the canal. The latest popular opening is Mediterranean-themed bar Café Odilon, which is slightly farther north, towards Paris’ periphery.

Odilon owners Scott and Céline Phillips are long-term residents of the area and envisage the bar as a meeting point for both locals like themselves and the nomadic young bobos. The

Phillips see the glowing success of bars like theirs as part of a clear trend to venture farther northwards at night, even beyond the ring road that surrounds central Paris and into the banlieues (suburbs).

“This is the year the banlieues are joining Paris, and our bar – along with [swish bistro bar] Maison Becquey – forms part of that junction,” says Scott Phillips. “Now, there’s basically a path of bars all the way from Canal Saint-Martin right up to the banlieues.” The canal is, as per its original utilitarian function, essentially acting as a social tie between Paris and its suburbs.

The tendency Phillips references, that young people are exploring farther and farther north, is borne out by the current clubbing trends as well. Underground club promoters Collectif Mu, for example, are not the first to capitalize on this hunger to scout out scenes in suburbs like Pantin, Bobigny and Aubervilliers. Mu recently set up La Station, a club, bar and music venue in a former coal station near Porte d’Aubervilliers, which has now joined the trendy likes of 6b, Périphérique and Halle Papin in successfully reeling party-hard Parisians from the center. “People are tired of the more conventional venues inside Paris,” says Thomas Carteron, Mu’s head of development. “The idea was to create a venue that acts an interface between Paris and its suburbs, encourage locals to explore beyond the city’s limited clubbing circuit, and also offer banlieusards a cool place to hang out right on their doorstep.”

A lot of these suburban venues only have provisional six-month or year-long contracts, so it’s unclear whether these parts will remain appealing to clubbers for long. What is clear, as Scott Phillips puts it, is that “[his] area and the banlieues are really changing for the good.”