ATith the pandemic, the playgrounds have become somewhat the equivalent of the China Sea, in terms of both traffic intensity and geostrategic issues. Taken by storm, they are now frequented, in addition to children, by a public with heterogeneous aspirations. When some take advantage of the apparatus to do pull-ups, others have undertaken to transform these spaces into a wild aperitif zone, counting on the fact that there are almost always benches there.
The playing area is the Gymnasium Club of a world without Gymnasium Club, at the same time as the last lounge where we chat, beer in hand. We find ourselves there, in a certain way, under the protection of children, this place encircling a residual square where hedonism and carelessness still go more or less together. “Well, they’re not going to come and get me there anyway”, we say to ourselves, thinking of the zealous implementers of health policy, whose statistical effectiveness sometimes seems to be counted less in people vaccinated than in distributed plums.
Force deployment
Well that was in the world before! Because since the last confinement, in an attempt to limit the mixing of the population and the spread of the virus, the consumption of alcohol is prohibited on the public highway in several departments; which means that the playing area has lost its status as a free zone. Last weekend, sitting in a park with friends in Paris, I was able to observe the ballet of three undercover police officers who spent their afternoon watching with almost indecent zeal, from a small promontory, the play area below, as if it were a methamphetamine laboratory.
Whenever they saw a parent pulling out his can and getting ready to bring it to his lips, they swooped down on the offender, telling him to stop it right away, immediately, immediately, otherwise “It’s a fine of 135 euros”. It is amazing to see that one can consume crack in Stalingrad Square in plain sight without being really worried, but that having a drink in a playground now seems to endanger national security. We are not saying that it is necessarily edifying to see parents sipping Goudale in front of children playing the hanging pig, but just that the deployment of force here is totally disproportionate …
A strategic place where all the neurotic issues of our relationship to risk are concentrated in a sort of symbolic precipitation.
You have 64.31% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.