Paris (again)

The Gypsies of Paris are hilarious folk, though I’m sure they don’t try to be so intentionally. They’re annoying, we know that by reputation, but they’re also lazy and lacking in creativity. Given how many of these guys and girls there are around the place, you’d think they could muster up some half-decent ploys to trick tourists.

Come the beginning of 2011, Parisian Gypsies possess two stunts in their repertoire. To my knowledge, one of these is quite old; the other I’m not sure about.

# 1. The golden ring
This is the older one, I believe. You’ll be walking along and suddenly be approached by a Gypsy, who so happens to come across a gold ring on the ground. They’ll “pick it up” and look at it quizzically, then “spot” you and say something to the tune of, “here, you should have it.” The sucker who takes the ring will think they’ve scored as they walk away, until the Gypsy reappears to reap reward for finding the ring. This may only be a few euro, “for a coffee” or some such, but it’s money you certainly aint gonna keep unless you want to be accused of swindling on the street.

So what’s the problem? (“What’s the problem?” is become a classic phrase in some circles, you know) Well firstly, they don’t quite have the “discovery” down pat. They bend over, and flick the ring from out under their shoe, a bit like the coin from behind the ear trick. All well and good, except it is way too obvious. One Gypsy tried this on a patch of ground I was already staring at, then got confused when I laughed at her. Second, how many damn rings could there possible be on the streets of Paris? Break yourselves up a bit, Gypsies! Who are you kidding? A “spread out” group of the guys will have you witness the uncovering of treasure about 6 times in the space of 300 metres. When you laugh at this, they laugh; but they aint amused.

#2. The petition
You’ll see the Gypsies walking around with clip boards, and this means if you go anywhere near them, you’ll be asked to sign a petition for peace. We were told that, upon signing the petition, it is revealed to the signer that they have signed a contract to give money, and if they refuse then a group of their buddies are gonna approach you and give you a hard time. Do I believe this? No. For a start, the main place where this petition stuff happened was outside of Notre Dame, where military patrol with great big machine guns. There’d be no real confrontations as far as I believe.

They do request money after signing the thing, though. Perhaps it’s “a donation” for their cause. What is crap about the whole thing is that they get away with actually having “UNICEF” printed across the top of their page. Way to suck people in.

So sign it, don’t give any money, and throw a wave at one of your “military buddies”. See if they take you to court...

C’mon gypsies... you have two tricks! Can’t you have a staff meeting or something to come up with, say, a dozen ploys to have on rotation to actually make your trickery a bit more exciting for the rest of us? In the meantime, I wonder how much one of those “gold” rings will go for on ebay.