this was some scary shit

After a 4-month hiatus I am back with a story. Disclaimer: the sole purpose of this post is to share how freaking badass we are. Also a disclaimer: there will be mild to moderate profanity in this post. We’re all fucking adults, ok? Ok. Let’s go.

Himani, Cindy, and I, following a long day traipsing around Paris, wanted to find a way from the Eiffel Tower where we had just witnessed a gorgeous display of fireworks to Bastille where we intended to carry on the party – that did not involve either walking over two hours or forcing our way through 400 000 people onto transit. We agreed, therefore, on taking one of the plentiful rickshaws for hire along the Seine. The first man we approached almost laughed us off – he refused to make the long trip over. The next agreed – but for a steep price of $30 per person. We were feeling lazy, but not $30 each lazy. So we walked away – which, incidentally, one should always be prepared to do. Not to be discouraged, the rickshaw driver called us back. “I give you discount,” he said, “ok let’s talk.”

After some negotiation, we agreed on a great price of $45 for the entire trip. Great, that was, in our minds. I triple check with him that he’s willing to take the three of us all the way to Bastille for that amount, but our first red flag was that he asked for the entire fare up front. Suspicious, I explained that we would give half up front and the remaining half upon arriving to the location. He seemed confused, so I explained several times with varying levels of simplicity in English and French. Eventually, after one of his buddies also jumped in to explain, he agreed. And so we were off.

Not 5 minutes into the ride, he pulls over and says something about needing to change some battery. We’re confused, because um what? We didn’t really understand because he was mostly just muttering random strings of words involving “change” and “battery”, but eventually it became clear he wanted us to get off. So we deboarded, though unconvinced, so I whispered to my friends to keep a hand on the bike so he couldn’t hop on and ride away. He opened a container, rummaged around a bit, side glanced at my hand firmly planted on the side of the carriage, closed it, and motioned us back on after clearly having done absolutely nothing.

We continued along our route when he came to a stop at the Louvre, less than halfway to our agreed destination. He turned around and said, “I don’t know Bastille.” Not to be discouraged, I pulled up trusty ol’ G-maps on my phone and showed him, “Look, it’s literally a straight line from here”. He still seemed confused, repeating several times he that he doesn’t know Bastille. I explain a few more times in both languages that it’s super easy. At this point, we caught on to what he was trying to do – because what person located in Paris, local or tourist, doesn’t know Bastille? Himani piped up, “If you don’t know where it is, why did you agree to make the trip?” He continues to repeat that he doesn’t know Bastille, Himani raises her voice and asks for our money back, and he begins yelling at us to get off. We refuse, because fuck that we want our money back, and he gets violent.

First, he lunges at Himani, who is sitting in the middle, and tries to physically throw her off. She resists, so he walks around to Cindy’s side, grabs her shoulders, and attempts to forcefully pull her off. Himani and I scream. He raises his fists, lunges, and is ready to hit one of us, but passer-by are beginning to stare. We are very loud. He thinks better of it but keeps yelling at us to get off. We keep yelling to give our money back. At this point, I am legitimately scared for the physical safety of me and my friends – he had manhandled them and was prepared to hit us. But we were in too far and were not about to let him get away with what he was doing. Luckily, we were in a busy area – I shudder to think at what he would’ve done if people hadn’t stopped to watch.

After what felt like eternity but was actually probably like a few minutes of this back and forth, he relented, reached into his pocket for what I thought for a split second might be a weapon but turned out to be our $20. The second Himani’s hand closed around the bills, we scrambled to get the fuck out of that rickshaw. Cindy and Himani make it out first, and as I am unboarding, I feel a thud to my back. The motherfucker kicked me. In the back. No matter, though, for we had won. Himani wanted to call the police, which would’ve been an excellent idea except for the fact that a) there are thousands of (presumably perfectly legitimate) rickshaw operators in Paris, b) we didn’t actually have emergency line numbers, and c) the Paris law enforcement has in my experience been a useless, bureaucratic mess for simple, straightforward procedures – let alone in a case where we had little evidence to go from than our words and memories.

So yeah. That was the story of how we almost got beat up. There isn’t really a point to this besides sharing a shitty shitty experience. There isn’t really anything we would’ve done differently, except maybe film the guy when it started getting heated. The funny thing was, we discussed it afterwards and were on the same page – we were fully prepared to pay him more than the €45 he had asked for because we appreciated him making the trip and we understood it’s not easy making a living. But the asshole pegged us for dumber tourists than we are, and that was his mistake. Holy shit, though, at least the three of us walked out of it rattled but safe and well – save for a hella bruised back.