The Strangest Roundabout I’ve Ever Seen in France

There is a spaceship in a roundabout outside Nantes, and the astronauts are holding cakes.

This is where Philippe Katerine decided to cover a 1980 disco hit.

TL;DR: A 1980 disco hit performed with complete sincerity and style gets ironically re-staged decades later at a spaceship-themed roundabout full of regional snacks. This is also France.

YOU’RE OK

Ottawan were a Paris-based disco project formed in the late 1970s by producers Daniel Vangarde and Jean Kluger. The faces were Jean Patrick and Annette Eltice, performers with real stage presence, although Eltice doesn’t appear so confident in the T’es OK video below.

Perhaps she had a preview of the video effects that they would use later.

In 1979–80 Ottawan broke across Europe with D.I.S.C.O. (Eltice seems utterly confident in the D.IS.C.O. video) and You’re OK — the English version of T’es OK. They also did Hands Up (Give Me Your Heart), which I always thought was an Abba song when I was growing up.

T’es OK — Ottawa (1980)

Neon outfits. Inverted background images? Unironic vintage video effects that clearly show the technology was developing and yet it all works and moves with genuine disco confidence. Budgets were modest. Ambition was not. Ottowan had a few hits, but they were massive.

And they’re still performing.

[ed note: for some reason, their site is only available in English and Russian. Many Russians still have a thing for disco, it seems…]

T’ES OK

Decades later, Katerine covers it at the Rond-Point de l’Espace in La Haie-Fouassière, just outside Nantes.

Watch that here on Daily Motion (which doesn’t allow embeds, it seems):

[ed note: I haven’t been able to find the video anywhere else …and I love that he has 6 followers (as of this writing) on his Dailymotion page, as if the internet forgot to update his fame.]

Built in 1994, the roundabout features a flying saucer and three astronauts holding local products: a six-pointed fouace cake, a bottle of Muscadet, and a Petit Beurre LU biscuit. Local artists proposed it as a civic monument. The town agreed.

It is not parody, maybe. It is regional pride — in fiberglass.

Katerine performs T’es OK there slightly off, slightly flat, knowingly absurd. Where Ottawan was sincere, Katerine does a tribute, but awkwardly, but that’s his whole brand. It works

Swings & Roundabouts

France has nearly 43,000 roundabouts, more than any country in the world.

The UK is second with nearly 26,000 of them. Apparently, fewer people are killed at them and they’re cheap to build. Once French engineers signed off on them, they started popping up everywhere.

The US has about 10,000 from what I’ve been able to find & it seems Carmel, Indiana, calls itself the roundabout capital of the world with about 150 in the town. But France has roughly four times as many as the entire U.S., despite being about 1/15 the size geographically.

Decoration is another matter - thousands are decorated somehow. Since the 1990s, the traffic circle became a municipal branding tool.

Things you can routinely drive past:

• A 10-meter wine bottle
• A giant Camembert wedge
• A remarkable number of concrete cows or other farm animals
• fishing boat
• miniature displays that are sometimes unclear and then oddly distracting while driving past
• Decommissioned helicopters and planes
• Oversized farm tools
• Miniature fishing boats and equipment
• A helicopter
• abstract metal fish and so many other questionable pieces of art
• Grapes the size of cars

If you have an idea to design one of France’s many roundabouts, it seems like all of this is handled at the local level, so get chummy with the local mairie. I’ve been considering some kind of village scene made entirely of the very creepy crossing guard children statues that they have here.

I have seriously considered organizing guided tours. A kind of Roadside Attraction France.

Let me know if anyone’s interested. Roadside diners and roadside attractions: France edition

The problem is practical: they are all in the middle of the road. And being roundabouts, they are designed for cars, not pilgrims. Walking out to admire the civic cow feels both culturally appropriate and slightly fatal.

local flavor

If you have an idea to design one of France’s many roundabouts, all of this is handled at the local level, so get chummy with the local mairie. And they take unsolicited submittals all the time…

I’ve been considering some kind of village scene made entirely of the very creepy crossing guard children statues here. Something out of history that could be misconstrued as children’s safety messaging, the storming of the Bastille or a celebration of France’s bicycle culture, something…

If you have any ideas, I would love to discuss them.