[URBAN NOTE] "Millennials left to cope with aftermath of Paris attacks"

[rfmcdonald]

At the Toronto Star, Marco Chown Oved reports how young people in Paris are coping with the idea that they were the explicit targets.

Julien was supposed to go to the concert at the Bataclan, but got turned away at the door because it was sold out.

Emma got a text from her friend sent seconds before the shooting started: “I’m at Le Carillon.” Then for the next hour, with all the cell networks jammed, she couldn’t get through to him.

Eva was supposed to go out on the Canal St. Martin and would have walked right by La Bonne Bière Café, but decided to finish a bottle of wine at home before heading out.

The bars, cafés and restaurants attacked in Friday night’s massacre were all popular hangouts for young people in Paris’ gentrifying north east end, places where people of all cultures and backgrounds intermingle over a beer or a glass of wine. And two days after the carnage, those who narrowly escaped death now firmly believe these locations were carefully chosen for the kinds of victims that would be found there: millennials.

“This is where all people our age go out,” said Eva Frye, one of the few people who consented to have their last name used. The brand strategist from San Francisco arrived in Paris two days before the attacks for a month-long “work-cation.”