Suspended three meters above the ground, a bouquiniste’s ancient book box sways gently, torn from the parapet of the Seine quayside by a large crane truck. On Friday night, the city of Paris went to great lengths to dismantle four of these emblematic boxes of the capital, a feasibility test before the Olympics.
For security reasons, the Paris police prefecture is demanding the dismantling of nearly 600 of the 900 green wagon-colored boxes before the opening ceremony on July 26, 2024, which will take place on the river.
In front of a small group of dismayed bouquinistes, about twenty city officials, aided by a moving company, spent several hours removing the boxes, after carefully emptying the hundreds of books piled inside.
The boxes that were removed had been attached to the quay for fifty years, but the oldest ones are 150 years old. “It’s like having a tooth pulled out! All this for four hours of ceremony! What wars haven’t managed to do, the Olympics will: make us disappear,” laments Michel Bouetard, general secretary of the Bouquinistes Association.
“All of this is excessive. If they are removed, we will never know when they will come back,” warns Jérôme Callais, the association’s president. “But if they persist in wanting to remove them, we will go to court.” Many bouquinistes have no other income, “what will they do if there are several weeks of inactivity?” he worries.
On Saturday morning, the Paris City Hall declared itself satisfied with the progress of the test. “We now have the certainty that we can move, that is to say, deposit and then replace the boxes under good conditions and within a reasonable time,” said Pierre Rabadan, deputy in charge of sports, to journalists.
