In preparation for the 2024 Olympic Games, the city of Paris removed and then replaced four book boxes from booksellers on the banks of the Seine on Friday evening. The city of Paris went to great lengths this Friday, November 17, to dismantle four book boxes of Parisian booksellers installed on the banks of the Seine. This was a feasibility test for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. For security reasons, the Paris police prefecture demands the dismantling of nearly 600 of the 900 green book boxes before the opening ceremony on July 26, 2024, which will take place on the river. In front of a small group of dismayed booksellers, around twenty city agents, aided by a moving company, spent several hours removing the boxes after carefully emptying the hundreds of books stored inside. A crane then lifted each of these large wooden rectangles, often weakened by years and bad weather.
The boxes that were removed had been secured to the quay for fifty years, but the oldest ones are 150 years old. “It’s like pulling teeth! All this for four hours of ceremony! What wars did not manage to do, the Olympics will succeed: make us disappear,” laments Michel Bouetard, secretary general of the Association of Booksellers. Others worry about when the boxes will be reinstalled. “All of this is disproportionate. If they remove them, we never know when they will come back,” warns Jérôme Callais, president of the association. “But if they persist in wanting to remove them, we will go to court.” “I think we will not be able to work for a month or two after (the ceremony, NDLR), it’s not true, they will not reinstall the boxes the very next day,” assures one of the booksellers.
Many of the 230 booksellers have no other income. “It’s a shame, it’s stupid, it’s suffering that is imposed on us that is not necessary because booksellers are as fragile as their boxes, some have nothing else in life,” warns another. Some Parisian elected officials came to support them. “We are against it, all this is decided in order to be able to advertise on the quays,” exclaims Corine Faugeron, president of the Ecologists group at the Paris Council.
Others call on Emmanuel Macron. “I met him when he passed by the Quai des Grands Augustins in mid-October. He told us ‘I am aware, I defend you, you are part of Paris.’ But he is superior to the prefect, he can tell him to let us stay,” exclaims Francis Robert, a bookseller for 43 years. “Why remove them, since security barriers will be placed 1.50 meters from the quay?” adds one of his colleagues. Around half past midnight, the boxes were put back on the parapet and the books placed back inside, as planned, and without any apparent damage.
The city of Paris planned a debriefing conference on Saturday morning to review the dismantling test, which took three hours. The large-scale operation will require the hiring of a contractor.
