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Journalism of Courage
The neighbours do not like the Zero Zero bar,the graffiti-plastered dive on an otherwise sleepy stretch of Rue Amelot. It is not so much the look of the place,they say,nor any particular distaste for its youthful clientele. It is the noise.
The neighbours have been known to pelt the Zero Zeros patrons with eggs and to dump water on their heads from balconies. One once attacked the revelers below his window with a garden hose.
Its insane,the neighbours take us for crazy people, said Nicolas Dechambre,26,a co-owner and bartender at the bar. The club has paid close to $12,000 in fines for street noise in the past year and a half,he said,and has been closed by the police for a cumulative period of nearly two months,the result of complaints from neighbours.
Paris,its not the City of Lights anymore, Dechambre said. It goes to sleep at 11.
Faced with mounting noise complaints,fines and closings,many Parisian bars and concert halls are struggling to stay afloat. DJs and musicians have also been abandoning the French capital.
The generalised law of silence that is battering down upon our events and our living spaces is soon to relegate the City of Lights to the rank of European capital of sleep, a group of music promoters wrote in a recent online petition,to be submitted to the mayor of Paris and several government ministries on January 31. The more than 14,000 signatories call for,above all else,more tolerance from residents and officials: It would be dangerous hypocrisy,the document says,to let people think that the Parisian night could or should thrive without disturbing the perfect tranquility of a single resident.
A headline in the newspaper Le Monde last month deemed Paris the European capital of boredom. To combat that image,the city has set up a Web portal,Paris Nightlife,to promote its 7,500 bars,nightclubs and concert halls,an effort to reglorify the night,said Audrey Epeche,a tourism advisor.
Club owners say the issue is the citys accelerating gentrification. Real estate values have more than doubled here in the past 10 years,and residents increasingly demand peace and quiet,the club owners say.
