Paris braces for more unrest as riots reshape the city’s streets– www.latimes.com

PARIS — Business is up tenfold at a weapons store near Place de l’Opéra in Paris: Shopkeepers from all over the city have been stocking up on pepper spray and tear gas.

In the nine days since riots erupted in cities across France, thousands of merchants have also boarded up their storefronts, radically altering the Paris streetscape. The screech of electric saws and pounding of nails into plywood are now background noise in the French capital.

“They’re afraid their stores will be attacked and looted,” Yves Gollety, owner of the weapons store, explained.

Adding to the dark mood are police helicopters hovering, with searchlights blazing, to enforce a late-night curfew in the Les Halles and République sections of Paris.

And the city has removed many of the huge street-corner bins where Parisians are accustomed to dropping their empty wine and beer bottles. Rioters had been knocking them over to get glass ammunition against police.

Yet daily life has barely changed in much of Paris, where it can seem like normal times amid the chaos. Friends chat in cafés with shattered windows. Customers ignore plywood covering the front doors of shops.