A nightlife mayor for PaP? De rigueur for anywhere that wants to be Party Central

Port au Prince at night: It can get lively

Listen up, every urban conurbation with ambition to the title ‘Party Central’. What you really need is a ‘nightlife mayor’.

This is a remarkable concept and clearly destined to be a desirable job in the near future now that with Paris’s newly-elected mayor Anne Hidalgo has promised she’s going to get someone to do the job officially.

So far, there’s been a citizen nightlife mayor in the ‘post’, a gentleman named Clement Leon, who was elected by a citizen vote initiated on Facebook last year to act as a go-between for local residents and evening businesses in Paris.

It’s an enormous responsibility  as the nightlife sector employs roughly 600,000 people. Mr  Léon collects complaints and suggestions and funnels them through to the authorities. He also helps promote nightlife, including cultural activities. He looks at transportation issues too and other logistical after-hours issues.

As the Christian Science Monitor recently reported, Mr Léon is one of a small number of similarly ‘employed’ people in Europe. Amsterdam and Toulouse each have a nightlife mayor. Clearly, an idea whose time has come? London next. And then, who knows, one for each pleasure paradise in the Caribbean?

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”
– Jack Kerouac