The French town has banned people from dressing up as clowns for the next month following violent incidents across the country It's not quite coulrophobia, but the French town of Vendargues has banned people from dressing up as clowns for a month starting on Halloween A mayoral order on the town's website says the decree bans individuals and groups ages 13 and older dressed as clowns from the town's streets and public spaces It says the aim is to "avoid confusion and possible disruption" during Halloween when the ban will be "absolute." The ban ends Nov The move by Mayor Pierre Dudieuzere comes after violent incidents across France involving teens dressed as clowns The Associated Press adds: "[P]eople dressed as scary clowns spooked children and in several cases assaulted people an adolescent assaulted a passerby with an iron bar "The phenomenon spread over the past few weeks on Facebook with groups tracking clown sightings across the country is apparently the first town to ban clowning around." Closer to home, PBS reported earlier this month that people dressed as clowns in California were scaring residents in the San Joaquin Valley Accounts included the arrest of a teenager who allegedly scared a neighborhood child and reports of armed clowns "The recent creepy clown trend started on social media on October 1. Photos of an eerie clown posed carrying balloons in poorly lit streets of Wasco, California appeared online. The 'Wasco clown' photos were taken by a husband and wife team and posted to an Instagram account as part of a year-long art project Become an NPR sponsor You don't have permission to access the page you requested What is this page?The website you are visiting is protected.For security reasons this page cannot be displayed Electric Motion organised the EM Days on June 4th & 5th at their new factory at Vendargues (France) The ideal place and opportunity to launch “le nouveau Electric Motion” with a new range of models and a new visual identity EM’s “fresh” factory will provide their teams with much better and optimized conditions with an area adapted to their activity and expandable when the time comes Test sites and dedicated “customer” sites are in the immediate proximity and the factory is easily accessed from the motorway Electric Motion has a strong motivated team combining youth experience and dynamism that will give even more excitement to their business It was the perfect timing to present 4 new models with optimized performance and features of all kinds integrating some pioneering technologies … Philippe Arresten: “In the beginning they laughed with us and ridiculed us which only had the effect of giving us even more energy produced more than 1500 models and distributed our range in more than twenty countries we climb onto a few international podiums and won a national championship title Based on the same philosophy of serving novices and champions the new range open new horizons towards very high performance The technical teams have focused on integrating the various requests received during the few appearances of the bikes Philippe: “You will be surprised to discover the enormous potential of our new creations and the work done to enable everyone and as many people as possible to practice in the best conditions from the beginner’s level to the champion’s requirements and all those who will trust us by discovering this new evidence: to take pleasure and leave the constraints.” The Epure Lite is the standard model of the Epure family The Lite is good for all those who want to practice trial or ride off-road with a silent motorbike that requires zero maintenance the Epure Lite will please a large crowd of enthusiasts the Epure Sport is pure performance… Power weight… the Sport model has never been that improved before The Epure Sport proves that an electric motorcycle can be as performing as the best combustion-powered ones This is the first homologated electric trial motorcycle ever sold equipped with a diaphragm clutch Imagine one of the lightest trial motorcycles on the market add the torque of an electric powertrain and finally a high performance diaphragm clutch… Essential system for the high-level competitors here is what will make them clear the highest obstacles The Escape is the perfect bike to ride off-road from Electric Motion Extend your boundaries and discover new horizons with the capabilities and performances of the new Escape the adventure is now pushed to the extreme Reach across the borders and live the adventure with the Escape More info: https://www.electric-motion.fr/ New factory address:280 Rue Du Trident34740 VendarguesFrance Apparently France is facing a bizarre crisis of fake clowns terrorizing its citizens Pranksters dressed up as scary clowns have been causing problems on the streets scaring children and the general population the village of Vendargues in southern France has put into place a ban on anyone wearing a clown costume The mayor said it is to “avoid any disruption… by evil clowns. It’s about protecting children by preventing any ill-intentioned clowns from mixing with residents.” In another French town last week a 19-year-old got a six-month suspended jail term for scaring passers-by while in clown costume An additional 14 teens were arrested while dressed as clowns and carrying weapons in the port town of Agde Mia Maguire is the Managing Editor of Commerce at The Daily Beast Tom Price is the commerce staff writer for The Daily Beast and scouring the web for high-quality products AlexTzelnic is a teacher and writer living in Cambridge He frequently writes about the intersections of sports You read more of his writing on Medium @atz840 View this post on Instagram A post shared by Miles Diggs (@diggzy) Eboni Boykin-Patterson is an entertainment reporter for The Daily Beast She was previously the entertainment contributors editor at Business Insider and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English Corbin Bolies is a media reporter for The Daily Beast he previously served as a breaking news reporter for the Beast and worked as a reporter for Gainesville's local NPR affiliate WUFT You can reach him at corbin.bolies@thedailybeast.com @ZunyTarrio and I just had a great conversation with @POTUS. He called me and my Mother over while we were at dinner and said he was sorry for what @JoeBiden did to all J6ers He knew the hardships me and my family faced for 3 long years Brett Bachman is a night editor at The Daily Beast. He is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School and has been an editor at the New York Post, The Daily Mail and Salon. Send him tips at brett.bachman@thedailybeast.com, tips@thedailybeast.com, or use our anonymous document submission system, SecureDrop. Click here to find out how Janna Brancolini is an American journalist based in Rome She writes about financial policy for Bloomberg and covered the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy for the Los Angeles Times Her articles and essays have also appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review \"Breaking the Surface,\" blending science art and history to tell the story of pioneering underwater archaeologist Honor Frost Emell Derra Adolphus is a Detroit and New York-based writer and a 2021 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow He is currently working on a collection of LGBTQ short stories titled In Vendargues, a small French town near Montpellier, there will be one classic costume conspicuously missing this Halloween. Under order of decree by Mayor Pierre Dudieuzere no resident age 13 or above shall wear a clown costume or clown makeup in public this October 31 So what are we looking at here? An extreme case of coulrophobia It seems nearby cities and towns have been terrorized by evil teenage clowns for the past several weeks Dudieuzere said he's merely aiming to "avoid confusion and eventual disruption on the occasion of the feast of Halloween."  Vendargues' ban on clowning around in public lasts through November 30 although an extension is possible if "the evolution of this phenomenon" of menacing clowns continues Those who break the clown ban will be arrested and prosecuted though the decree does not say what the punishment is Also no word on whether mimes are prohibited According to the BBC, French police have recently arrested more than a dozen teen clowns who were "frightening passers-by" with weapons and sometimes physically assaulting people "The incidents appeared to be fuelled by a clown craze on social media," the BBC article reports cryptically A story from earlier in the week elaborates on this alleged evil clown "social media craze" which apparently is not just a phénomène français but an "international trend." there were several reports of scary clowns in California Florida and New Mexico," the BBC's Anne-Marie Tomchak reports.  anyone in the whole world who posts clown photos to the Internet is clearly part of this global violent clown conspiracy though: "Social media is also being used as part of a counter movement police say groups are organising online to track down the clowns and they're taking the matter very seriously," Tomchak notes According to the French Ministry of the Interior several clown hunters were arrested carrying batons and brass knuckles "Possession of a weapon on a public road is an offense punishable by imprisonment," says the Ministry in a statement discovered in possession of a weapon … on the highway will be arrested" and taken into police custody The statement also urges French citizens to report "aggressive clowns" to authorities immediately.  Get a daily brief of the most important stories and trends every weekday morning when you subscribe to Reason Roundup Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a senior editor at Reason Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value" France—It may be Halloween night in France A wave of diabolical weapon-brandishing bozos has sown fear across the country in recent weeks prompting arrests and warnings from bedeviled authorities against anti-clown vigilante justice one mayor has even banned clowns outright from his town a village of 6,000 souls near Montpellier in the Hérault administrative department signed a municipal order temporarily forbidding the “presence and circulation on the streets and in public spaces of any person disguised as a clown.” Monsieur Mayor signed off on the ban after parents told him they might skip the town Halloween parade this year in the face of a nefarious clown craze sweeping the nation The Vendargues order applies to jokers over the age of 12 What exactly will happen if a clown drops by Vendargues’s Halloween fête “He will be forcibly removed from the parade Six local policemen will be there,” Dudieuzière told the weekly L’Express There will even be a show with real clowns [at the party] so of course they will have nothing to fear If the violent individuals had chosen Zorro or Bin Laden disguises Vendargues’s mayor says townspeople were deeply affected after a clown attack last Saturday night in Montpellier An 18-year-old man dressed as a clown mugged a pedestrian striking him 30 times in the back and neck with an iron bar who claimed he was drunk and looked to emulate crazed clowns seen on social media was sentenced on Monday to four months in jail told a judge he hadn’t slept since the attack and was having nightmares police arrested 14 people between the ages of 16 and 20 dressed as clowns and loitering on a high-school parking lot Police picked up yet another disguised man for damaging a car while dressed as an aggressive clown The national police have tweeted pleas not to spread clown rumors that could complicate their work and to call the French equivalent of 911 if one crosses paths with a violent clown “Many of you have asked us about the ‘threatening clowns’ who after having had their effect in the north and in Alsace have arrived in the Var [administrative department],” one gendarme headquarters tweeted “We kindly inform these little jokers with the dubious jokes that they risk judicial proceedings they may not find funny at all.” a 19-year-old scary clown was handed a six-month suspended sentence and community service for frightening a 6-year-old and a group of teenagers while brandishing a stick said to look like a big knife The convicted clown reportedly claimed he’d copped the idea from Facebook the northern city the French daily Le Figaro calls the “epicenter of the epidemic of evil clowns,” some costume shops reportedly have yanked clown disguises from their shelves while others are requiring ID from minors looking to rent them Lille’s annual Zombie Walk scheduled for Nov although City Hall denies the zombies were ousted because of France’s creepy clown conundrum French media have trotted out specialists to explain the phenomenon and have generally pinpointed its origins abroad. Le Monde points to the recent creepy clowns in Wasco, California and the fourth season of “American Horror Story.” Agence France-Presse makes reference to clown-by-day American serial killer John Wayne Gacy the scary clown in Stephen King’s “It,” and even The Simpsons’ Sideshow Bob (known as “Tahiti Bob” to French fans) Italian YouTube jokesters DM Pranks Productions are also thought to have had a hand in the freaky phenomenon spreading to France Some of DM Pranks’s violent evil clown videos have registered over 30 million views worldwide Perhaps the real clowns losing face while their evil clones run amok a proper clown who was once a couturier for Dior and now performs for sick children in hospitals to see these folks who disguise themselves as clowns to attack and scare people Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here Tracy McNicoll has been reporting for The Daily Beast from Paris since 2010 she covered Western Europe for the magazine from 2002 to 2013.\n