Ever since we interviewed six Parisian kids of different ethnicities about the 2006 riots in Paris and about their varied experiences with the police, we’ve been paying close attention to what’s been going on down there. One of the factoids that caught our attention was the report that approximately 100 cars get torched on an average night in France. According to the French newspapers it’s unemployed and under stimulated adolescents that roam wild, toasting vehicles left and right. This trend is said to have started in Villiers-le-Bel, Paris’s most notorious suburb. This fall we spent some time in Paris, and couldn’t resist the opportunity to visit Villiers-le-Bel. Here’s what went down.
We’re closing in on the potentially most dangerous suburb in northern Europe…
We had been looking for misery for about two hours when we ran into these little rascals. We were in the very centre of the suburb, so according to the reports, this is where the shit should hit the fan. When we asked the kids where the ghetto was, they gave us these slightly skeptical looks.
While we were desperately looking for symptoms of suburban marginalization we found this cat. Like the children, it showed little to no understanding for our quest to find vandals and car wrecks.
By the time we took this snapshot we’d close to given up. We had come to terms with the fact that our stay in Villiers-le-Bel would be less war zone than visit to The Nickelodeon Boarding School for Good Children.
Can you find the hobo?
Eventually we ran into this cougar. She knew quite a lot about the hard knock life and sort of gave us what we’d been looking for: doomsday prophesies. She also grasped the opportunity to warn us about the local fils de pute, aka sons of whores. “They’ll take all you got!” When we asked how we’d recognize the fils de pute she said, “They drive cars. All drivers are sons of whores.”
When we’d gotten as far as to the local police station, which, according to media, has been “burnt down” by “vandals” we were starting to suspect that Villiers-le-Bel was a huge bluff, and that the riots had all been made up. Obviously, it isn’t the French youth that is under stimulated, but the Parisian journalists.
The only manifestation of youthful rebellion we could find was in the form of grief scribbles dedicated to the boys that died when they collided with a police car during the riots in 2007. “R.I.P Larami and Mouchin. We’ll never forget you.”
WIM WIKLUND AND MARIA DIDRIKS
Reader Comments
April 2nd, 2009
Guys!!!! This was like 2 years ago. Now there’s no really youthful rebellion like that in Paris anymore…
The “guetto” is now in the Paris’ universities, at the moment all the student are angry. About what? I don’t really now.
April 2nd, 2009
Protest are going down in France at the moment (we have these every spring, its the season - almost ‘traditional’ should i say) because people refuse that universities and other higher education institutions be privatised, i.e. not free.
because we have a socialist government, people won’t accept education as something to be payed for. it should earned through ‘merit’ but this is a fucking waste of time when you have 300 people who want to become medics and only 20 are allowed to go to the next stage. with this system most people waste up to a year or more of their lives because they are not allowed to progress, and this results in frustration and imbalance between offer and demand in the system.
the issue is complex but what is certain is that amidst this turmoil, the ‘casseurs’ (chavs) join the protest for a bit of fun without a clue of what it actually stands for and start breaking stuff. it happens at EVERY protest, the only difference is that in Paris they rally so many it actually hits the news.
April 2nd, 2009
it must be really rough since the police station is barred up except for the front doors, but what criminal is going to think of using the front door?
April 2nd, 2009
It’s a shame France if full of the French. Otherwise it’d be a nice place. Is it any shock that they blew things out of proportion???
April 2nd, 2009
yeah, this does seem almost too tame and i can’t believe how tiny the police station is. that being said, i think you should have gone somewhere that is more like a city in the suburbs… where is the 93rd quarter? that’s supposed to be the worst. there isnt any myrtle/murder ave. vortex of death here, but africans aint nuthin to fuck with anyhow. go back at night, with a spy cam and maybe speak english.
April 2nd, 2009
i solved it!
cars are being set on fire… the only hobo is the woman who says that drivers are sons of whores…
it was the cougar!! she escaped from the police pen! (prob bc the cop went out to rollerskate)
April 2nd, 2009
You should definitely have been there at night,but the French Media (not all but most) and politics are so bored that they turn any average teenager in a drug consuming sex craving vandal. If on top of that you’re black or muslim you’ll be tagged as a blood thirsty immigrant.
In France, when you’re born in France but black or arabic, you’re not French, you’re “issue de l’immigration” or “d’origine étrangère”…
The trouble is, some people believe what the media say and then vote for Sarkozy (especially in lost shitholes where people are white, French “de souche”,and define themselves as good citizens.)
The hobo is right, tous des fils de pute
April 2nd, 2009
this looks almost delightfully pleasant place. la place de conchord est fantastique, nous sommes des dynamos.
April 3rd, 2009
haha! murder ave.
April 3rd, 2009
Fuck i love france (n’est pas l’homo)
April 3rd, 2009
we have a socialist government in France? You mean…now?
April 3rd, 2009
U SUX
come in france I’ll show u ghetto
April 3rd, 2009
I’d love to come IN France Rod. I’d jizz all over the fuckin place
April 3rd, 2009
YEAH! Wipe your bellend on Switzerland.
April 3rd, 2009
ahah fuck this shit
not a dangerous place at all.
There are real ghettos near Paris, worse than you think… i wonder if you’d really have the balls to get there…
April 9th, 2009
French ghettos must be fucking terrifying!! Brrr.. so scurred! I wonder what these pussies would do somewhere in the South Bronx or in most of Brooklyn.
April 9th, 2009
Even the ghetto I came from looks nice in daylight, but at night during an economic downturn it turns into a war zone with the Bill having to come in a convoy. This is what is going to happen in large parts of London later this year, early next year when poverty grips the masses.
April 9th, 2009
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Red_Road_flats_1.jpg
April 9th, 2009
I really want to make a baguette/gun joke but its just not happening.
April 9th, 2009
“There is no hell, there is only France” Frank Zappa
April 9th, 2009
WATCH ‘LA HAINE’ it explains… les émeutes de 2005 dans les banlieues françaises sont des violences urbaines qui ont commencé à Clichy-sous-Bois le 27 octobre 2005…
April 10th, 2009
..and then there’s the ghetto’s of istanbul where even the architecture sux, and you can get lynched for the wrong look.
April 10th, 2009
The french students are angry about the same thing all angry students are angry about, that their parents are successful enough to have got them to a good university and now they’ve got no excuse to be retards.
April 11th, 2009
nah its just a french facade, they do protests like every week, i was in pairs for like 6 days and i saw 2 protests, and they were really well behaved , the inform the police before hand and when the time is up they all go home in a nice orderly fashion.
they do all this crap to just get off work, they have like strikes like on thursdays so they have an extra long weekend,
and by the way university is free
and dental care
April 14th, 2009
all this proves is the people who went there couldnt be asked to spend real time to get to know whats going on and obviuously werent really that interested in the subject they went to research. shit!
April 15th, 2009
Loosers