“It was a very narrow street-a ravine of tall leprous houses. Lurching toward one another in queer attitudes, as though they had been frozen in the act of collapse. All the houses were hotels and packed to the tiles with lodgers, mostly Poles, Arabs and Italians. At the foot of the hotels were tiny bistros where you could be drunk for the equivalent of a shilling. On Saturday nights about a third of the male population of the quarter was drunk. There was fighting over women, and the Arab natives that lived in the cheapest hotels used to conduct mysterious feuds and fight them out with chairs and occasionally revolvers.”
George Orwell, “Down and Out in Paris and London”, 1933.
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 