Eating Merguez Drunk
Frank L’Opez seeks a different kind of TV dinner under cover of darkness in unforgiving Marseille. Photographs by Frank L'Opez
Marseille is losing its soul, even if it is always ready to fight. Intrusive and unfriendly, opening your windows puts you straight into other people's lives. The THWACK of wooden shutters against crumbling walls lets morning in. To stare and be stared at. The city’s intimacy is found on the street where it is noisy and it stinks.
More and more young people come to live in a place of real violence and not just loud voices. They come and drink organic wine in The Passerelle and sun themselves on the rocks of Malmousque; not moving around the city but standing firm, comfortable with their own languages – others' lives a backdrop to their money running long. They live in the areas away from the rat maze ‘for the climate’ but you will have to spill blood to gentrify this city. It will not bend over the way Lisboa has.
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