I Love Gemmayze

After a protest by sleep-deprived Gemmayze residents, the Ministry of Tourism shut down 14-20 pubs, restaurants and clubs in the area. Years of all-night party goers and loud valets chasing parking spaces that don't belong to them had proved too much for the area's locals, and on March 29 they took to the streets in their pyjamas, demanding their right to a quieter area and not to have their parking spaces usurped. In a shocking response (the government actually did something! So there can be law and order here!), all bars became subject to a curfew of 11:30 on weekdays and 1am on weekends. Some even alleged that the bar/club owners of rival area Monot had organised the protest in an attempt to divert customers their way.

This new regulation did not go down well with Beirut's fun-loving crowds at all. One Beirut blogger, Fink Ployd took it upon himself to create the ILoveGemmayze website, print hundreds of the above sticker, and organise a counter-protest to reopen Beirut's best-loved wateringholes. The result? Most bars have been reopened, and Gemmayze's residents are back to their old familiar suffering.

As much as I love Gemmayze, I sympathize with its residents. I live in Hamra above a club, and there are also two other bars/clubs on my road. Whilst the club below me doesn't bother me at all (thanks to soundproofing and its older clientele), the ones across the road are often blaring out loud music at all sorts of hours. Luckily we don't have the valet phenomenon here yet, so we are spared the yelling of the parking men. The shouting I do hear is from partiers leaving the clubs, and from a bunch of punks who hang out in the skanky alley behind my house, which someone, probably one of them in fact, has spray painted and aptly named "PISS ALLEY". Those teenagers are the biggest annoyance, especially as one in particular is fond of driving his growling motorcycle up and down the alley at all hours of the night. That thing makes so much noise I think he rides it on purpose to piss everyone off. So I can understand the grievances of the Gemmayze dwellers. Its not fun to be kept awake by drunken buffoons tripping up on the sidewalks, speeding off in their cars after 8 vodka/redbulls, smashing bottles, shouting and laughing.

Yet the fact that most of the bars have reopened shows that the government hasn't properlly addressed the problem. They should be demanding an end to the stupid and show-off pratice of 'valet parking', stopping people from drink-driving, and encouraging them to use public transport by increasing bus services and extending the hours that buses operate. Having said that, I seriously doubt that even with buses operating, the Lebanese would dare get on them. I can't really picture the Armani jeaned, D&G shirted man choosing a run-down bus over his pimped-out Porsche. It seems that half the fun of going out in Beirut is that you are seen in your car...