LETTER FROM PARIS:Areas known for their nightlife are residential districts too, and this means constant friction, writes RUADHÁN Mac CORMAIC
THE PURVEYORS of Parisian nightlife are in a funk these days. Talk to anyone who runs a bar, a club or a music venue in the city and you’ll hear the same trio of afflictions: takings are down, closures are up, the scene is flat.
The old reputation for free-wheeling, bohemian tolerance is a vestige of another time, they say; nowadays, Paris likes the quiet life.
At the root of the problem is l’embourgeoisement, the encroaching gentrification of the city’s busiest nightspots, and with mounting noise complaints, fines and closures, many venues are struggling to stay afloat.
"Paris, European Capital of Boredom," ran a recent headline in Le Monde, the least excitable of the French dailies.
“I have lots of friends who have moved to Berlin in the last few years, especially people who are into their music,” says Éric Labbé, who runs a specialist vinyl shop near Beaubourg that is popular with DJs.
“They find it more interesting to work in Berlin. The rules are more relaxed. If you want a licence to stay open here beyond 2am, you’d nearly have to put aside a year and a half.”
So concerned are bar and club owners, DJs and musicians that a group of them has begun an online petition that they plan to submit to the mayor of Paris next week.
The petition calls for more tolerance from residents and city authorities and says it would be “dangerous hypocrisy” to imagine that the Parisian night can thrive “without disturbing the perfect tranquillity of a single resident”. The law on noise levels “is about to relegate the City of Light to the rank of European Capital of Sleep”, it warns. Almost 15,000 people have already signed the petition.
Of course, Paris hasn’t succumbed to narcolepsy just yet. Emerging from a small music venue in northeast Paris the other week, our eardrums whistling and the crowd still giddy, the scene was an antidote to the industry’s dejection.
It was an icy Wednesday night, but all the bars were overflowing, the couscous restaurants were still letting people in and the whole street was aglow with that sense of laid-back, self-confident ease that many peripheral parts of the city do so well, and which contrasts so strikingly with the more stolid centre.
But what had many people out on the street that night – the smoking ban introduced in January 2008 – also explains why the simmering tension between venue owners and residents has begun to boil over.
“The problem has got worse in the last few years,” says Gérard Simonet, one of the organisers of a network of 10 residents’ associations set up last week to take the fight to the bars and clubs.
He says it’s intolerable that people in so many parts of the city have trouble sleeping.
“There are more and more people in certain parts of Paris in the evening . . . More people means more noise. And because people are not allowed to smoke in bars and nightclubs, they make a lot of noise outside.”
Simonet has little time for the industry’s complaints, alleging they’re just a ruse to increase business.
As Labbé points out, tensions such as these are not unique to Paris. But because the city itself is so compact and densely lived-in, every quartier known for its nightlife is also a residential district, and this results in constant friction.
“It’s also connected to the fact that people are increasingly going to the police when they have a problem – they’re seeking legal remedies instead of trying to sort things out face-to-face,” he says.
Mindful of the income the city earns from the 26 million tourists who visit every year, civic authorities have been watching the unfolding debate anxiously. According to a report on Paris’s “nocturnal competitiveness”, commissioned by city hall last year, a comparison between London, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Berlin left the French capital languishing in last place.
Among the factors it cited were tough regulations, poor late-night public transport (the Métro stops at 2am at weekends and the night bus service is patchy) and prohibitive prices.
That has led city hall to launch a new website to promote Parisian nightlife, while talks are due to take place soon with bar and club owners to see what can be done to improve their lot.
One of the ideas on the table is for designated “party zones” across a few streets somewhere in the city. Another endorsed by Labbé is for the city to provide financial aid for small venues to install better sound insulation, enabling city hall “to defend cultural activities while preserving peace and quiet at the same time”.
It’s the sort of elegant logic that might cause a Parisian bureaucrat to give a (considerately muted) cheer of approval.