Every night, explosions began to hit bars and shops that sold liquor in West Beirut, around Hamra Street and on Phoenicia Street, the hub of Beirut nightlife, where clubs and bars had been swinging through the 1960s and ’70s. One evening, a band of a hundred women in chadors went on a rampage on Phoenicia Street, smashing bottles and furniture in restaurants and bars. Gunmen barged into hotels, shooting up every bottle in the bar. Men with beards harassed women near the American University, demanding that they veil.
