The beating
Oddly enough the 1er arondissement in Paris seems to be infested by a lot of muggers and hooligans… something one would not expect from the very center of such a grand city. There is very much the athmosphere of banlieu. Never mind, on our first night here we had a good time partying on a boat on the River Seine. However, when we got back to the 1st district (where the friend I am visiting here has a small flat, somewhere near the Centre Pompidou), we decided to be hungry and eat some Panini stuff (something typical about Paris night food supply seems to be that there is only Panini). One of the regulations recently introduced by the Prefecture, however, is complicating things, easy as though they may seem regarding the paninism of late hour nutrification.
Between midnight and 4am you are not allowed to take away food. You must remain within the premises of the establishment where you bought the food, else there be trouble.
And so it happend. Some hungry frenchmen were ignorant of that rule and went away with their food, only to receive beating by some bouncer whose job it were to keep food-wielders inside the box shaped sales room of the feeding station.
Oh how they squealed, flying paninis and fists, pushing and beating, and greedy hands trying to salvage whats left of the object of anger.
If it was not so scary a vision, people getting really freaked out and violent, I would have laughed my head off. (By the way, managed to stay in the spectator role)…
