Concrete to be first 24-hour French club
Paris has granted permission to Concrete, a stationary boat club on the Seine, to keep its doors open 24 hours on weekends. It is the first club in France to be able to do so.
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No more last calls for Concrete club-goers. After a year and a half of meeting and negotiating with city officials, Concrete co-founder Aurélien Dubois has announced that his club will be able to stay open for 24 hours on weekends.
Until now, Concrete, docked on the quay of Paris’s 12th district, was obliged “to close at 6.40am, and to stop serving drinks an hour and a half before then,” Dubois said in an interview with French website Trax.
No longer. Now music can continue bumping, and drinks can continue flowing, without interruption at the weekend.
Dubois specified however that his venue “will continue to close around midnight or 2am on Sunday, because we know that people work the next day.”
The club must meet certain conditions in order to hold on to its 24-hour licence. It must cooperate with police to fight the sale and consumption of drugs on site, respect neighbouring residents and businesses, and hire more personnel to ensure the venue’s longer operating hours, according to Paris official Frédéric Hocquard, who also spoke with Trax.
Hocquard explained that this authorisation is part of the city’s larger strategy to expand “night tourism” so as to rival other “24-hour” European capitals like Berlin and Amsterdam.
The city official wants Paris to be able to “adapt to different lifestyles, because there is a demand for events that go all night long, so that people can continue partying.”
Dubois expressed optimism for his relationship with Paris officials going forward. “It sends a good message, it shows that politicians have understood the force and the importance of our field of work in regards to tourism and culture.
“I have a feeling that our administration and institutions have really opened their minds,” he added.
The club will celebrate accordingly the weekend of 1 April, with the event “Samedimanche”, which will kick off at 10pm on Saturday and finish off around 2am on Monday.
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