Then there are the illegal street vendors in Paris …
 

In addition to scammers and thieves increasing constantly in number in Paris lately, there's also a growing army of illegal street vendors selling souvenir junk or food or other items. Around the Eiffel Tower, for example, there are typically several hundred of these vendors, and they are constantly trying to sell their junk to tourists.

As far as I can tell, they must all use the same suppliers, because they all seem to have nearly identical inventories. There are always cheap Eiffel Towers in stock: from bracelet charms to foot-high, gold-colored pot metal models with blinking colored lights. The other items change in waves periodically: One month it's tiny carved wooden elephants and rawhide hats, the next it's wind-up birds and dangerously overpowered pocket lasers, and so on.

Most of the sellers are immigrants from Africa or (I think) Pakistan or India, and most are illegally in France. Of course, they are not operating legitimate businesses and pay no taxes, unlike the legal vendors trying to compete with them with retail stands. The food they sell (usually drinks, in practice) is often expired and stolen.

Many of them place their junk on a square sheet on the ground. The sheet has cords attached to the corners. When the police make a sweep of the area, which they do regularly, the illegal vendors grap the cords to pull their junk up into a ball and make a run for it. The slowest ones get caught. One of them was electrocuted yesterday while trying to scamper across the train tracks at the Trocadéro Métro station to escape police, which implies that they aren't very smart.

It is rumored that some of these sellers specialize in drugs rather than little Eiffel Towers, although I've never seen anyone in touristy areas who looked like he was dealing drugs. Local merchants claim that the dealers hide in secluded areas of the Champ de Mars, the large park that adjoins the Eiffel Tower.

If you spend enough time hanging around the tower, you're bound to see one of the police sweeps, and if you're unlucky, you may be knocked over by an escaping vendor. You may also see them being dragged back to the police station (there's one right at the base of the tower) in handcuffs.

Vendors like this have always existed at touristy spots in Paris (and everywhere else where tourists abound), but the numbers are skyrocketing. These days, they often from a line across the sidewalk so that you cannot avoid encountering them as you walk. They are persistent and annoying, and sometimes aggressive. They long ago transitioned from local charm to local nuisance.

In addition to the area around the Eiffel Tower, you'll find them infesting all sorts of popular monuments. They hover around the Louvre, Sacré-Coeur, Notre-Dame, etc.

Technically it's illegal to buy stuff from these vendors, although I haven't heard of tourists being prosecuted for doing so (but didn't Italy try that?). When you see your first cheap assortment of tiny Eiffel Towers, it's amusing. After being approached by sixty illegal sellers in the space of a quarter-mile, though, the novelty wears off.

The government has lately posted warnings about the sellers, saying that they are operating illegally and that they threaten the safety of people who deal with them. That's somewhat of an exaggeration, as there is little risk in buying an Eiffel Tower from them, but they are a nuisance that makes it difficult to enjoy major landmarks. And of course they make survival difficult for the vendors who are legally operating in the same area, since the legal vendors have many expenses that the illegal ones do not, and tourists are more interested in price than legality. Perhaps arresting and fining tourists <i>is</i> the answer?

Personally I prefer street vendors to handhandlers. I know of people who went to NY just to buy purses from the knockoff dealers. I'm afraid I really don't worry unauthorized vendors.

Street vendors begging has been going on for centuries...

France has loose borders folks like "the Roma" and many
illegal immigrants have to do this to make a living and feed
their families it gets wose during bad times like now.

Relentless posting about this does no good.

Simply walk on if it bothers you no one forces you to buy.

Try to have some compassion and be grateful you do not have

to live in squalor and do this survive/help your poor family

who are starving to death at home...

Ignorance concerning the half million Roma who perished during the Holocaust reinforces anti-Roma prejudice today. To counter this, the European Parliament should ...
blog.soros.org/2010/12/the-roma-holocaust-the-history

They do not bother me.

They don't bother me either.

This is nothing new - it has been going on for the 33 years we've been visiting Paris.

Stu Dudley

I'm not bothered, either. I have no interest in buying from them and I'm perfectly capable of dealing with being annoyed or pestered.

"Try to have some compassion and be grateful you do not have to live in squalor and do this survive/help your poor family who are starving to death at home..."

Amen, qwovadis, but there should be some consistent way to manage this. We saw it in France and in Italy. I'm assuming that it's illegal but somewhat turned a blind eye to. Even though many of us feel sorry for them, we should not be accosted as AnthonyGA suggests because the local authorities don't or can't keep it under control.

Goodness!! You don't say!! I've never seen that ANYwhere I have visited--Russia, China, New York, San Francisco, etc. WHAT is the world coming to. LOL
I am pretty much able to resist junk when I see it, unless it is junk I want.

It's the "flower guys" that driver me crazy...right when you're enjoying a nice al fresco dining experience!

Are the guys who sell cheap, Ronco-like, kitchen gadgets still putting on their shows outside the Grands Magasins?

(As for the OP, perhaps he'd be more comfortable in Branson Missouri, where nothing unauthorized happens.)

A lot of tourists wants cheap Eiffel Towers, keychains, etc., souvenirs. I've seen this in large cities everywehre in the world (tons of it in Mexico as they are so poor).

It doesn't bother me in the slightest, and I also cannot imagine how poor you would have to be to have that as your best career choice. I think the absolute worst are the women who do that inside public lavatories. I don't ever buy anything, but I think it is very mean to talk so poorly about such people who are just trying to survive in the only way they probably can. I've never been bothered by any of these folks in France (I have in countries where they can be more aggressive, like Mexico and Egypt) == if that means harrassment either verbally or physically--and none has ever tried to stop me from walking along or touched me at all.

If I were accosted by them, it would bother me, sure. I'll admit I dont' have much to do with any street people and they tend not to bother me, as I don't engage with them in any way. And in Paris, I don't really hang out where there are a lot of tourists any more (like the Eiffel Tower), but of course I'm still around Notre Dame, rue de Rivoli, the Louvre, and the quays, etc.

The endless amount of crap that will end up in a landfill bothers me quite a bit. What difference does it make who is buying it.

Just please, don't get any for me :) please

My impression when in Paris earlier this year (low season admittedly) was that the sellers were better behaved/ more inclined to take no for an answer than the deaf petition scammers. And at least they have something to sell and most, even if recent immigrants (legal or otherwise), would presumably be from former French colonies, protectorates, mandates or whatever and so have more of an affiliation with France than the eastern Europeans.

First, the illegal sellers have nothing to do with gypsies ("Roma"). They are not gypsies. The gypsies are the ones doing the scams and picking pockets.

Second, although it's romantic to think that scammers, pickpockets, and illegal vendors are all doing what they do out of some noble motivation to help their poor, starving families, the reality is often very different. The money is often sent to organizations (legal and illegal) rather than starving relatives. The scams and pickpocketing in particular tend to benefit criminal gangs rather than starving children—the children are the means to an end, but they are not the beneficiaries.

One unspoken reason why tourists buy from illegal vendors is that it's fast. Customer service in France doesn't really exist as a concept, and whenever you want to buy something in a store, you usually have to wait in line. The street vendors don't have waiting lines. In France, if your salesperson in a store is on the phone with her friend, you have to wait until she's done, and she'll yell at you if you dare suggest that she hang up and do her job. With attitudes like that, regular shops alienate customers. I've never understood why the French put up with that, but tourists and other non-French people generally won't.

My non tourist neighborhood is full of people selling pirate DVDs, totally unapproved Chinese battery operated toys, and grilled corn on the cob. Not a problem as long as they are not blocking the sidewalk.

These illegal sales of CDs, DVDs, fake designer handbags, watches, sunglasses etc often are in a long chain which ends up funding human trafficking, drugs, terrorism, etc.

They are not selling for the love of their poor families back home. They are illegal.

The illegal vendors at the Eiffel Tower buy their stuff from the Chinese wholesale shops around Rue de Montmorency, Rue Michel le Comte and around there in the 3rd. They are usually fronts for trafficking illegal fake goods.

The only vendors that have ever bothered me in Paris are the string guys by Sacre Coeur (same deal around the cathedral in Milan by the way), but as someone said, you just have to be assertive if they are actually getting in your face or trying to touch you. Otherwise, if they're just standing there trying to sell stuff, just don't buy anything if you have an issue with it.

"....funding human trafficking, drugs, terrorism, etc."

If that is true, then the countries involved have no excuse for not enforcing their own laws.

Speaking of Eiffel Tower keychains, I read that the vendors get 50 of them for 2€, which is good to know when you are bargaining with them.

As for illegal CDs and DVDs, this is maybe 2% of the problem. First we need to arrest and lock up -- for a long time -- every single person who has ever downloaded music or a movie from the internet. Naturally, parents of teenagers who have done this should do double time. And the grandparents should get the death penalty.

ditto to the sage words qwovaids says!

Unless they are pickpocketing you then such sales without pressure pose no problems - local authorities have obviously decided not to bother...

"The scams and pickpocketing in particular tend to benefit criminal gangs rather than starving children—the children are the means to an end, but they are not the beneficiaries."

A good point worth considering. Thank you.