Articles - Paris

Article in the Washington Post
Alexandra Brunais

Special to The Washington Post
Monday, September 18, 2000


PARIS –– It is 10 p.m. on a Friday, and the excitement is tangible as the Rollerblading crowd mills around the cobblestone traffic circle known as the Place d'Italie. Everyone is impatiently awaiting the three shrill bursts of a whistle that signal the start of "Friday Night Fever."

Finally, the whistle blows, and the throng--maybe 10,000 strong--rushes out of the circle and along a spacious avenue. Spirits are uniformly high; volunteer marshals in bright yellow T-shirts glide in and out of the crowd offering friendly little taunts: "Are you so tired already? Faster, faster, faster!"

The parade even has its own police escort on little rubber wheels: a dozen uniformed, geared-to-the-teeth officers who have undergone special security training that includes how to jump down flights of stairs on inline skates while handcuffed.

Some of the skaters carry whistles, flutes and gigantic French flags. One man is playing a bullfighter's theme on a trumpet, causing many in the crowd to raise their arms and scream in unison: "Ole!" Some have stereos blasting Latin music strapped to their backs, while others are bouncing about in what vaguely resembles a high-speed salsa.

The throng whizzes into a residential street where the three-mile-long parade halts to perform a ritual "wave." People come out onto their balconies in pajamas, wondering if they are witnessing the second French Revolution.

A man on the second floor gapes in disbelief as he sees a couple of hundred heads look up at him: "Sing us a song! Sing us a song!" they shout. He grabs the railing smiling, shaking his head, looking as if he wants to run for cover.

Since 1993, Paris has been the scene of this weekly three-hour, high-speed, bone-jarring city tour by night on inline skates. An average evening draws 12,000 skaters; peak attendance is estimated at about 28,000.

"Friday Night Fever" draws people of every age, every social class and every race. The 15-year-old from the suburbs rubs shoulders with the 40-year-old city banker.

"I participate . . . because of the atmosphere that spreads all around Paris," said an enthusiastic Sebastien Kher, 25, a commercial agent for an Internet firm. "The fact that you can use the streets the way you want, you can look at the traffic lights with scorn and go straight ahead is simply terrific!"

His friend and co-worker, Franck Parienti, 24, added: "It's really great to do a sport right here, outdoors, in the middle of the city. You feel like you're really at the heart of things."

Boris Belohlavek, 29, a computer engineer and president of Pari Roller, the nonprofit association that organizes the activity, says the reason for the large turnout is simple. "You spent all week in the office; Friday night you want to get it out of your system. And we are not talking just teenagers; it's businessmen. They put on their sports gear and scream at the top of their heads like 12-year-olds. They're happy."

Article in the Sunday Times (London)
Guy Ralls

June 11, 2000

It's 9pm on a Friday night, and I'm sitting, feeling rather apprehensive, on a bench in Paris's Place d'Italie. In about an hour's time, the plan is to strap on a pair of in-line skates, point them downhill and start a 17-mile roller-coaster dash around the supersmooth streets of Paris.

If all goes okay, I'll arrive back here by about 1am. If not, I'll probably end up in a French hospital explaining why I didn't get the right forms from the post office for medical care abroad. Oh, and I'll be doing all this, apart from the hospital bit I hope, with about 20,000 other skaters.

"But Parisians are notoriously bad drivers," I hear you say. And playing chicken on the road with them - especially on roller skates - would be a tad reckless. Well, yes. So, with stunningly simple logic, the Parisian authorities have decided to ban cars from the roads - on Friday nights, at least, and along a predetermined route that is published on the internet.

And - this is the best bit - the in-liners are accompanied by 80 skating marshals and medics, eight police outriders and 10 policemen on skates. Ambulances and support vehicles bring up the rear, and they're all linked by radio. Welcome to Friday Night Fever, the weekly in-line bug that Paris just can't shake off.

I leave my bench and start picking my way through the square. It is just beginning to fill up with bladers cruising in, both in groups and on their own. They're checking their skates, chatting in groups, smoking or boosting their energy levels for the trip with last-minute snacks. McDonald's is full of people skating through it with trays of food.

On one side of the square is a van full of police on blades, and a row of police motorbikes. Their job is to stop the traffic so the many-wheeled entourage can pass. I imagine the Met trying to stop cars leaving London on a Friday night for this.

With 40 minutes to go, I walk into Le Levant cafe to meet Boris Belohlavek, the founder of the randonnée organiser Pari-Roller, to find out just how he's pulled it all off. When I arrive he's there with his "international" team of marshals, organised specifically to look after tourists doing the skate. Despite us being in a crowded bar, there's not a drop of alcohol on the table.

"It started in 1993, when I began touring the streets with a few friends," Boris says, sipping coffee. "Seeing Paris on skates caught on very quickly, and soon we were into the hundreds. Then one Friday the police stopped the randonnée and asked who the organiser was. I found 300 fingers pointing at me ..."

Boris was bundled into a panda car and driven to the préfecture de police. To his surprise he wasn't charged, but "consulted" - and by the end of the meeting he and the police had decided on the blueprint for Friday Night Fever.

Back in London, skating on the roads had once seemed like a good idea to me. For a very short time one Saturday afternoon, anyway: normally content to do all my skating in Hyde Park, but confronted with pavements overflowing with people and the need to get from Marble Arch to Bond Street before the shops closed, I'd put on my blades and set off down an open tract of Oxford Street. After covering the first 400yd in about a minute, I'd pulled up at traffic lights next to a cabbie. "You shouldn't be allowed on the road because you don't pay tax," he grumbled, completely seriously, through Frank Butcher-style tinted glasses.

I joked that we shouldn't pay tax because we didn't pollute. "And going on the road should be okay as long as drivers keep an eye out for us."

"I won't," he'd hissed. Right, then. You can argue with a cabbie, but not with his cab - at least not if you're on skates. Suddenly, skating on the road didn't seem like such a good plan.

Until now. As we all file out of the cafe, the crowds have swelled to huge proportions. There's virtually a carnival atmosphere: a few guys have hip-hop-pumping ghetto blasters strapped to their backs (no doubt rather heavy after a few miles), and there's a good deal of roller-jiving going on. One wristbanded, Fame-inspired roller skater is even dancing with a King Charles spaniel on his shoulders, and its ears are whirling around like helicopter blades. Most people have helmets on, but some have flashing lights mounted on them. Safety considerations are not going to stop the fun.

I lace on my skates and join the crowd behind the row of police bikes that will speed on ahead to close the roads to cars. They race off; someone blows a horn and Boris leads the charge. I'm suddenly amid a human current swirling its way across the cobbled surface of the square. Not the best surface to reacquaint myself on. Then, directed by the Pari-Roller staff, we veer right onto the perfectly smooth Tarmac of Les Gobelins and accelerate - downhill.

Looking around, I almost feel like I'm on a ski run: the other bladers are crouched, goblin-like, as we belt down the hill at about 20mph. But pretty soon I'm reminded that we're on a hard road, not pillow-soft snow, as the first accident occurs: a skater topples over while trying to stop with his heel brake, and a macabre Mexican wave of raised hands runs up the hill to warn those following about the crash ahead.

We pass the Jussieu Métro in less time than the train could have made it, then we catch our first glimpse of the Seine as we roll over the Pont de Sully. Sweeping into the Place de la Bastille, we have a clash with motorists, but fortunately it's a good-natured one. The skaters opt for the smooth pavements around the central monument rather than the cobbled road, which is just as well, because as we pass it a sole scooter rider breaks loose from the police-restrained traffic. He buzzes the wrong way round the square, waving like a streaker at a football match, and for the express amusement of everyone watching, makes no effort to avoid being pulled to the ground by a policeman chasing after him on skates.

As we slide into République, pedestrians line the streets hooting as we pass. I meet Vanessa, a model from Amsterdam who has done night skates at home but is on her first visit to Paris. "It's such a great way to see a city," she says. "If you use subways you never really see the bigger picture, just a collage of little ones. Tonight I feel I'm getting the same feel for Paris as I would in a week on foot."

There's a definite feeling that you're on a swift conveyor belt that is whisking you past the sights - there goes the Opéra-Garnier - and the illusion is only upset if you come a cropper. And if you do, you can kiss goodbye to seeing the friends you may have been skating with for a while: they will be swiftly carried away with the flow.

I "bump into" a skateboarder, Igor, who's lost his two friends in exactly this way - he's riding a new, long kind of skateboard (a "longskate", according to the chants of kids around him), but had taken a tumble when his board was clipped by an errant blade. He's not hurt, though, and he's not too fussed about losing his friends either. "You get separated quite a lot during the randonnées. The key is to stay mobile," he says, using his thumb and little finger to mimic a phone. Then we hit an open, downhill stretch and the attraction of riding a 4ft "longskate" becomes clear - flexing his knees, Igor carves a series of wide, snowboard-inspired turns and accelerates into the night.

The Paris-by-conveyor-belt experience continues: the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs Elysées, the Pont de l'Alma as we again meet the Seine. The bridge was built to commemorate Anglo-French co-operation in the Crimea - crossing over it, an 18-year-old Parisian, Frédéric, asks me: "Is it true that the English hate the French?" I stammer diplomatic denials, while he mutters something about the Eurostar terminating at Waterloo.

Then the Eiffel Tower is upon us, lit up like a Christmas tree, and the rest point at a square in the Parc du Champ de Mars. Here, Pari-Roller has supplied a lorry of free water, and the "sports-cap" valves on the bottles mean they double as supercharged water pistols - running, or rather rolling, water fights are underway.

After 20 minutes to recharge, we're off again. We skate to the beats from a sound system echoing under the Métro flyover in Grenelle Garibaldi; then, hurtling towards the end of the Rue de Rennes, we're directed by police into a long sweeping turn past the 1,000-year-old towers of St Germain des Prés. As we cruise along the Boulevard St Germain, revellers leaving the bars try to rush across the skaters in groups as if they're playing British Bulldogs.

Towards the end of the randonnée, I nearly meet my maker, one Claude Bernard. Actually it's not a person - not living anyway - it's a street name. It's also the last, and steepest, downhill stretch before arriving back at the Place d'Italie. I go so fast that the vibrations from my skates make my vision go blurry. Luckily I don't fall, but a few people tonight have done. Making our way back up Les Gobelins, I meet Alice, Pari-Roller's medical officer. "We've had a lot of accidents tonight, maybe 20," she says. "Six people have had to go to hospital." Still, with 20,000 people skating, the odds of getting hurt badly are a pretty safe 4,000-1.

Having skated all the way up Les Gobelins to the Place d'Italie, just to prove I can do it, I backtrack to Les Gobelins and take a seat outside a bar. The randonnée is over, but some people still have excess energy to burn: they're holding onto car bumpers, hitching rides up the hill and then bombing down again. The boot's on the other foot now, though - it's the bladers who risk being arrested.

Sinking a well-deserved beer with a few other bladers, I hear that there are to be at least four more randonnées this weekend, including a full marathon and a randonnée to Versailles. Time for another beer then - I'm going to need all the energy I can muster ...

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