The Black Market of Belleville...

... Illegal, yet so real :

It is a pretty wild and mobile market, generally displaying between the Ménilmontant
and the Belleville subway stations but, sometimes, it can unexpectedly spread until
the Place du Colonel Fabien.





Several hundred residents - exasperated by the noise, and the dirt that devastate the
boulevard when hawkers leave the ground - marched on May 21, between the subway's
stations of Couronnes and Belleville, to denounce the illegal market that plagues the
neighborhood.



Every day, a large number of hawkers settle on the pavement, deploying an incredible
array of items - recoverd from the trash as well as stolen - like secondhand shoes and
clothes, old transistors, pots and broken appliances, cell phones and computers...
and so on.


The City Council and the police headquarters didn't seem, for now, to have found a
solution to put an end, once for all, to the illegal occupation of the public space.

Then, the urban cleansing services... well, they keep cleaning.
___