Paris attacks: city mourns the lost youth of its ‘Generation Bataclan’

Friday night’s terror attacks centred on the ‘bobo’ district of Paris’s 11th arrondissement, known for its bars, clubs and diversity. Susannah Butter and Phoebe Luckhurst report on a community in shock
Paris mourns: a vigil outside the Bataclan on Saturday night
Corbis

The front page of today’s Liberation newspaper is given over to a single image: a group of young people gathered to mourn their friends at a vigil this weekend. The headline reads simply “Generation Bataclan”. Inside is a wall of images of the 132 victims of Friday’s terrorist attacks.

Among them is Nick Alexander from Colchester, 36, killed at the Bataclan concert hall while selling merchandise for the Eagles of Death Metal, and Valentin Ribet, a 26-year-old graduate of the London School of Economics (LSE), who had been working in Paris for the law firm Hogan Lovells and was interested in electronic music. Both were among 89 murdered when four terrorists burst into the concert and opened fire on the audience with Kalashnikov AK-47s before three of them detonated suicide vests. Hundreds more were injured.

The area around the theatre is quiet today. Schools are shut and the lights are dimmed in the usually busy restaurants and bars, many of which have closed as people absorb what has happened.

But on Friday night it was a very different atmosphere. As usual people were going for after work drinks at wine bars like Jacques, where the owner claims to have the largest moustache in Paris and grows his grapes in house, to exhibition openings at private galleries, to see new music at gigs.

A 21-year-old who knows the area says: “People will come at around 5pm, drink, go to a gig and then back to the bar until around 4am”. It was warm for November, with smokers spilling out onto bar terraces. Haxie Meyers-Belkin, a 26-year-old British journalist who lives there, was at a restaurant nearby which she says was “full of people my age”.

As Parisians try to regain a sense of routine, many are discussing the significance of the terrorists targeting the 11th arrondissement in eastern Paris. Known locally as a “bobo” district — a French term that means “bourgeois bohemian”, it is the same area of the city where the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was attacked in January.

In Left-wing daily Liberation, culture journalist and Vogue contributor Didier Peron writes: “By attacking the party locations in Paris and Saint-Denis, the terrorists targeted the hedonistic lifestyle of a generation already marked by ‘Charlie’.”

He says it is telling that they did “not attack a tourist stronghold (Beaubourg, the Champs Elysées, the Louvre) or established community such as the Marais but an area that is “both bourgeois, progressive and cosmopolitan — certainly being in advanced hipsterisation”.

Laurent Joffrin, Liberation’s editor, adds: “In attacking bars, restaurants and a concert venue, meticulously chosen targets, in a young ethnically mixed neighbourhood for the most terrible carnage in the history of France, murderous Islamism wanted to kill the liberty to live as one wishes.” He describes “a generation in the sights of the killers, the children of the baby boomers who infuriate the fanatics with their calm independence with regard to tradition and prejudices ”.

Paris tributes from around the world

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In the past five years, the area around the Bataclan club has gone from being quiet and residential to a vibrant social centre. Property prices have soared, with a two-bedroom apartment costing around €350,000.

The manager of the nearby Hotel Voltaire Republique says: “It is now like what the Saint Germain area used to be — a centre for young people. Prices are going up because there is so much going on. It is full of bars and people who like going out. The people who live here do a bit of everything — there are creative people, people in finance, young families. Tourists come too and they like the mix of cultures here, living in harmony.”

The Bataclan itself draws a mixed crowd. Built in the 1860s as a Chinese style theatre for vaudeville shows on Boulevard Voltaire, it seats 1,500 people who come for comedy, music and theatre. Jeff Buckley recorded an EP there in 1995, Live from the Bataclan. When gunshots broke out on Friday night, many of the audience who were watching the Eagles of Death Metal thought it was part of the show. One hour later, security forces stormed the venue, and all four of the attackers were killed.

Hugo Sarrade, aged 23, was also killed at the Bataclan. He was a student at university in the French city of Montpellier and was in Paris for the weekend to visit his father. Quentin Boulanger, a 29-year-old who had lived in Paris for several years was there, as was Guillaume B Decherf, a journalist with Les Inrocks magazine. Marie Lausch, 23, and her boyfriend Mathias Dymarski, 22, died at the Bataclan. Their friends held a vigil over the weekend. British band The Vamps have paid tribute to two French members of their record label who were killed at the Bataclan. Marie Mosser, 24, and Thomas Ayad, 32, who worked for Universal, were confirmed as victims. Ayad was a 34-year old from Amiens in northern France. He played hockey for an amateur club, which held a minute’s silence for him yesterday.

Residents argue that the attacks targeted a very specific Parisian way of life: the winding streets are populated by galleries, record stores with open mic nights, restaurants and cafes, and boutique clothing shops.Most of them are closed today and some of them bear signs saying, “Dear friends, we haven’t got the heart to be open tonight”.

Meanwhile, East Side Burgers posted on Facebook: “We are closed. Take care #nopasaran [they shall not pass]”.

The area is still a little scruffy around the edges but gentrifying rapidly, it is populated by liberal students and young workers: a mixed bag of ethnicities and professions, largely undiscovered by tourists.

Muslim bookshops sit alongside synagogues, Moroccan cafés offering shisha pipes, Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants. It is the site of the oldest market in Paris, La Marche Belleville, an open-air market selling fruit, vegetables and other fresh produce.

Middle-East expert Jean-Pierre Luizard told Mediapart: “In the districts attacked one can see young people socialising with those who go to the local mosque,” and Peron suggests “this is what the attackers want to break up”.

Social media have been used both to share news, grieve and show solidarity and unity with the hashtags #jesuisterrasse and #memepaspeur.

The hashtag Bataclan has been used more than 58,000 times on Instagram since Friday evening. Some of the posts are tributes, others are attempts to find missing friends. Many Parisians visited the 11th to try and take in what had happened: one group who had been dining at La Belle Equipe tried to find out whether the waiter who had served them had been killed. All weekend, crowds have congregated in Place de la Republique, just a few streets from the Bataclan concert hall. Last night, there was brief panic when someone let off firecrackers at a vigil, and crowds ran, suspecting another attack.

Meyers-Belkin describes the mood now as one of “quiet defiance”. “Life goes on. We’ve been through this before with the Charlie Hebdo attacks — there’s a protocol. You’re in shock, you mourn, and you get back out there and keep doing what you di d, buying overpriced glasses of wine and smoking, because that’s the way Parisians do it. Nothing will get in our way.”

The manager at Hotel Voltaire Republique says: “Most people in this usually harmonious area are revolted by the terrorist attacks. It will take some time but people are determined to continue with their lives and not give in to panic.”

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