Pariss renowned Latin Quarter bookshops feel the Covid-19 squeeze

Battered by Covid and online sales, one of Paris's best-known book sellers Gibert Jeune is to shut up shop in the city's historic literary and intellectual heart, a stone's throw from the banks of the Seine where the family-owned firm started out over 130 years ago.

The planned demise of the Gibert flagship shop in the Place Saint-Michel, as well as others nearby, follows the loss of the Boulinier shop last year.

On the Left Bank of the Seine, Paris's Latin quarter houses the Sorbonne. It has been a haunt of scholars since the middle ages and boasts dozens of booksellers.

https://www.sparkblue.org/content/download-here-flash-season-7-episode-2-2021-hd-online-full-free
https://www.sparkblue.org/content/free-watch-raya-and-last-dragon-2021-hd-online-full-free
https://www.sparkblue.org/content/watch-now-mauritanian-2021-hd-online-full-free-engsub
https://www.sparkblue.org/content/watch-here-girl-basement-2021-hd-online-full-free
https://www.sparkblue.org/content/online-123movies-moxie-2021-hd-online-full-free

But today with its slew of franchised stores -- Levi's, Celio, Sephora -- along the Boulevard Saint Michel running from the banks of the Seine to the Sorbonne, critics charge the area has become just another bland global retail strip.

The iconic Boulinier, a fixture on the same boulevard since the 19th century, was forced to move its main store to smaller premises last June due to rising rents.

Faced with competition from online sales and internet giant Amazon, 43 percent of the quarter's bookstores have vanished in 20 years, according to figures from the urban planning agency Apur.

The Latin Quarter, the centre of a 1968 student revolt, remains a major university hub, although fewer than 10,000 students are now said to live there.

Gradually, the centre of Paris is becoming gentrified, dominated by tourists while university faculties "decentre", increasingly gravitating toward the suburbs, says Francois Mohrt, a town planner at Apur.

Smallest buck the trend

https://ja.instructure.com/eportfolios/394/Home/THE_FLASH_SEASON_7_EPISODE_2_HD_WATCH_ONLINE_FULL_EPISODES
https://ja.instructure.com/eportfolios/395/Home/DOWNLOADSeRiEs_The_Flash_Season_7_Episode_2_Online_Free
https://ja.instructure.com/eportfolios/399/Home/The_Flash_Season_7_Episode_2_Full_Episode_Online
https://ja.instructure.com/eportfolios/400/Home/WATCH_AMC_The_Flash_Season_7_Episode_2_HD_Online_Full_Episodes
https://ja.instructure.com/eportfolios/402/Home/Watch_FullEPISODES2_The_Flash_Season_7_Episode_2_Online_Full_Series
https://ja.instructure.com/eportfolios/406/Home/WATCH_CW_Superman_and_Lois_Season_1_Episode_3_HD_Online_Full_Episodes
https://ja.instructure.com/eportfolios/407/Home/Watch_TheCW_Superman_and_Lois_Season_1_Episode_3_Online_Serie
https://ja.instructure.com/eportfolios/408/Home/Watch_AOT_Attack_on_Titan_Season_4_Episode_13_Online_Serie
https://ja.instructure.com/eportfolios/409/Home/Watch_ABC_The_Good_Doctor_Season_4_Episode_11_Online_Serie
https://ja.instructure.com/eportfolios/410/Home/Watch_TNT_Snowpiercer_Season_2_Episode_7_Online_Serie

As France's first independent bookseller, the Gibert group's flagship shop has been in the Place Saint-Michel for as long as anyone can remember.

It plans to close four of its six Gibert Jeune shops located not far from the Notre-Dame cathedral.

Surrounded by already half empty bookshelves, one of the 69 employees whose jobs are due to disappear told AFP: "It's brutal, but we didn't expect to last 10 years."

In 2020, the pandemic emptied the Place Saint-Michel of tourists. Then Bruno Gibert, a former head of the group, sold the building housing the largest bookshop.

In an attempt to help, the city authorities via their semi-public company Semeast are proposing rents slightly below market rates and relocation with a focus on a model that works -- small local bookshops that can also offer refreshments, according to official Olivia Polski.

The initiative is based on the discovery that in Paris, as in the rest of the country, it is local bookshops which are offering the sector a glimmer of hope. 

According to the Union of French Bookshops (SLF), independent bookshops have since 2017 returned to growth, despite a slight decline in 2020, down 3.3 percent, due to three months of closures during the Covid lockdowns.

Small booksellers, with turnovers of less than 300,000 euros a year, are making the most progress with sales jumping by 15 percent in the past year.

Receive essential international news every morning

https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/teacherguide/60459945ae09210d5691cd84?lang=en
https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/teacherguide/60459a450edaf00b7db92fa9?lang=en
https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/teacherguide/60459ae36c24870ba837798f?lang=en
https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/teacherguide/60459bbe6c24870ba83779e8?lang=en
https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/teacherguide/60459c815110be0b76fe0150?lang=en

For the SLF's Guillaume Husson "there is a social aspect which is essential today if you want your bookshop to work".

And it's that human relationship between the bookshop and its customers that is one of the most important things book lovers are seeking from "smallscale sellers", he added.

The same lesson has not been lost on the Gibert group. It will keep its six-floor shop next to the Sorbonne but rules out any new opening in the Latin quarter.

And it is considering opening bookshops of "less than 150 square metres" in outlying Paris districts and possibly in the suburbs, although "the basic question of rents will have to be addressed first", said general manager Marc Bittore.

Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the top religious authority for most Shiite Muslims, hosted the head of the world's Catholics, Pope Francis, on Saturday in the shrine city of Najaf.

The two elderly, respected men of religion met at Sistani's humble home in the shrine city of Najaf early on Saturday, the second day of the first-ever papal visit to Iraq. 

The 84-year-old pontiff is defying a second wave of coronavirus cases and renewed security fears to make a "long-awaited" trip to Iraq, aiming to comfort the country's ancient Christian community and deepen his dialogue with other religions.

He landed at the Najaf airport, where posters had been set up featuring a famous saying by Ali, the fourth caliph and the Prophet Mohammed's relative, who is buried in the holy city. 

"People are of two kinds, either your brothers in faith or your equals in humanity," read the banners.  

A convoy of cars carried him into the Old City, which was under extremely tight security. He stepped out in one of Najaf's tiny alleyways and an AFP correspondent saw him cross the threshold into Sistani's office. 

No press were allowed inside the meeting as the 90-year-old grand ayatollah is highly reclusive and almost never seen in public.

The visit is one of the highlights of Francis's four-day trip to war-scarred Iraq, where Sistani has played a key role in tamping down tensions in recent decades. 

https://www.slipstreamti.com/forum/what-s-your-favorite-show/full-watch-the-flash-season-7-episode-2-hd-online-full-episodes
https://www.slipstreamti.com/forum/what-s-your-favorite-show/full-watch-that-time-i-got-reincarnated-as-a-slime-season-2-episode-9-hd-online-full-episodes
https://www.slipstreamti.com/forum/what-s-your-favorite-show/full-watch-superman-and-lois-season-1-episode-3-hd-online-full-episodes
https://www.slipstreamti.com/forum/what-s-your-favorite-show/full-watch-the-resident-season-4-episode-8-hd-online-full-episodes
https://www.slipstreamti.com/forum/what-s-your-favorite-show/full-watch-ncis-season-18-episode-9-hd-online-full-episodes

It took months of careful negotiations between Najaf and the Vatican to secure the one-on-one meeting.

"We feel proud of what this visit represents and we thank those who made it possible," said Mohamed Ali Bahr al-Ulum, a senior cleric in Najaf.       

Pope Francis, a strong proponent of interfaith efforts, has met top Sunni clerics in several Muslim-majority countries, including Bangladesh, Turkey, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. 

Sistani, meanwhile, is followed by most of the world's 200 million Shiites -- a minority among Muslims but the majority in Iraq -- and is a national figure for Iraqis.

"Ali Sistani is a religious leader with a high moral authority," said Cardinal Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, the head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and a specialist in Islamic studies.

Sistani began his religious studies at the age of five, ascending through the ranks of Shiite clergy to grand ayatollah in the 1990s.

While Saddam Hussein was in power, he languished under house arrest for years, but emerged after the US-led invasion that toppled the repressive regime to play an unprecedented public role. 

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/the-good-doctor-s-4-e-11-full
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/the-flash-s7-episode-2-full
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/hd-the-flash-s7e2-free-tv
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/superman-and-lois-s1e3
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/t-t-i-g-r-a-a-s-s2-e9-full
https://241876.8b.io/
https://241873.8b.io/

In 2019, he stood with Iraqi protesters demanding better public services and shunning external interference in Iraq's domestic affairs. 

On Friday in Baghdad, Pope Francis made a similar plea.

"May partisan interests cease, those outside interests who don't take into account the local population," Francis said.

Sistani has had a complicated relationship with his birthplace Iran, where the other main seat of Shiite religious authority lies: Qom. 

France has been alarmed over recent weeks by a spate of killings of young people in gang violence in the Paris region during the school holidays. Experts say that the role of social media and the economic effects of the Covid-19 crisis are major factors behind this phenomenon.

This came just a few days after two 14-year-olds, a boy and a girl, were killed in the suburban county of Essonne to the other side of Paris. They were stabbed to death in two different brawls between young people from rival gangs.
 
“It’s not surprising that the most serious problems take place during the school holidays, because during this time they have to go without the forms of social support they usually rely on, such as sport clubs and youth centres,” Yazid Kherfi, a former robber who turned away from crime and has worked in youth crime prevention since 2012, told FRANCE 24.
 
In response to this spate of killings, the French interior, justice and education ministers convened on March 1 to officially put the government on alert against this phenomenon.

https://riska65wa.medium.com/pariss-renowned-latin-quarter-bookshops-feel-the-covid-19-squeeze-6b039acd3df1
http://corsica.forhikers.com/forum/p/42113
http://www.shadowville.com/board/general-discussions/pariss-best-known-book-sellers#p469276
https://minimore.com/b/CEYbv/1
https://cimonya.cookpad-blog.jp/articles/578077
https://jsfiddle.net/Buayadarat/4p5emrut/
https://paiza.io/projects/TEXncDIkPaZlGDKr93KtvA?language=php
https://onlinegdb.com/deBwwoWu_
https://ideone.com/xHOFjY
http://paste.jp/d61c633b/
https://pastelink.net/2psb6
https://paste.ee/p/Xjama
https://pasteio.com/xV8w4LTwMIJK
http://notes.io/NGGK
https://www.wsearch1.com/link/129646/rtwertyreyrurtutyityi
https://www.posts123.com/post/1360440/pariss