walking in Montreal
This past week I travelled up to Montreal for the Mondial de la Biere, the big festival that lasts for 5 days in early June that I attended the previous 2 years. In 2005 and 2006 I went for 4 days (it starts Wednesday and ends Sunday but the last day is usually pretty worthless); this year I only felt the need (and the $$) for the first two. One thing I'll give having a retail job: it's awfully easy to get off a day or two and use minimal vacation days.
In 2005 and 2006 I stayed with my friend Stephen, who lived alone on the Plateau, probably about a mile from the site of the festival which is an old (but still in use) train station downtown; but Stephen moved to Vancouver last September so this year I stayed with another friend, Martin, in Verdun which is probably 3 1/2 miles from the festival. Martin lives with his girlfriend who speaks virtually no English and had to work early on the 2nd day of the fest, so it wasn't at all like the previous years where Stephen and I would spend all day at the Mondial (1130 am-1030 pm) then go out to bars or brewpubs until 3am, then get back to his place and drink malt liquor. Ah, those were the days!
But I still had a lot of fun, and I spent less and abused myself less with this more "restrained" experience. On Wednesday I arrived at Martin's just around 1115, and we took the subway in to the fest -- only 200 feet to the station from his apartment, then stopping right underneath the festival. Can you imagine an American beer fest that lasted all day, with no maximum amount you could drink, located right on top of a busy subway station downtown, and with very little police presence? I'm not automatically one of those "USA has got it all wrong" people but when you experience how other countries treat drinking, it's hard not to think WTF in regard to the way it works here.
The first day of the fest brought a lot of good, but not great beers, most of them American imports from obscure breweries in Michigan. The Quebec beer scene has really progressed over the past five years or so, but I've had a huge percentage of the good stuff and new beers from the locals are certainly hit or miss.
The second day was one of those days that reminded me very forcefully why I need to get out of Burlington. Martin had to work and had to leave at 730 am, leaving me 4 hours before the festival to kill. The subway ride is 10-20 minutes, tops. It was a cool, slightly drizzly day and I thought, what the hell I'll walk it. I'm a fast walker, it's mostly flat, I figured just to walk straight there would take no more than an hour if I didn't get lost or delayed for any reason.
It was an amazing walk. Right across the street from Martin's apartment is an gorgeous neo-Gothic church, the first of many I'd see. I started out travelling north through Verdun, along Rue Wellington until it joined La Salle, a major artery that was very busy at that early hour. Wellington was subdued, and Verdun is sort of upper-working-class, with a lot of Hispanic immigrants, and a lot of older people on pensions, but very nice -- lots of cheap restaurants and bars but all well-kept. Even in this area there were many bookstores -- Montreal has, along with the Twin Cities, managed to keep its literary culture alive even on a commercial level despite Amazon etc.
LaSalle winds, twists, turns and a couple of times I ended up off of it and approaching cul de sacs but I had a map and it was easy to get back. The neighborhood as you approach the Lachine Canal gets a little more prosperous, some of the typical 3-story rowhouses look newer and like they might be single-family instead of apartments...there are more trees. You cross a footbridge over the canal and you are in Montreal proper, and LaSalle becomes Atwater just before the famed and wonderful Atwater Market. I stopped there for coffee and a croissant...finally I am getting a little bolder at going into stores in Montreal and speaking in English, which I have definitely been afraid to do in the past (usually I am not alone, and my companions tend to all speak French). The Market proper is a long, old building that I think was built for that purpose, with a couple of dozen shops on two levels selling mostly meats, cheese, liquor, and dry goods; vegetables, fruits and flowers are in stalls outside surrounding the building. The quality and variety is incredible -- the bakery I stopped in had (I counted) over 75 different cakes available and over 25 breads; one sausage maker had about 30 different varieties of fresh sausage, all made in back. If I lived within walking distance of such a place I could never leave.
On from Atwater, into more commercial districts....a few blocks up, across the street is an enormous antique store, not open yet alas. Atwater winds slightly upward, perhaps gaining 30-40 feet in elevation before intersecting Rene Levesque which I would follow to downtown. The buildings became taller, there were fewer and fewer houses or apartment buildings, though still many churches, most fairly old-fashioned but a few clearly 20th-21st century. About a half-mile from downtown there is a tiny little park just off on the river-side of the busy street, that none of my friends had heard of when I asked them. I stopped to tighten my shoelaces and walked around a little gravel-strewn area that contained about a dozen small sculptures of buildings or parts of buildings: Doric columns, church steeples, etc. Kind of fascinating. No signs or indications as to what it was supposed to be ... art installation? Memorial? No clue.
Soon I was downtown lost in the maze of huge buildings, with still almost 2 hours to kill before I could go into the fest; I stopped in a couple of book stores and newstands, walked up St Catherine and lost count of the number of "dances nues" signs, walked through the park with a very un-PC statue commemorating Britain's brave soldiers who defended the Empire against the evil Zulus in the Boer war, and finally gazed on a statue (again, no sign to indicate its nature) right across from the festival site in a churchyard that is an exact replica of the Ixtl in Canadian SF-writer AE Van Vogt's "Discord in Scarlet". I really need to find out more about that, it can't just be a coincidence.
Large cities are full of endless possibilities. Yes they are expensive and noisy, but even in Montreal or New York, Chicago or Minneapolis you can find quiet spaces, and no free activity is more enjoyable or thought-provoking to me than walking around in these giant play-and-workgrounds. Two months ago I spent most of a day walking around Manhattan, one week ago I spent a morning exploring Montreal; I can't remember the last time I found any reason to walk around Burlington for more than 20 minutes. I need to get out of here....or at least, get away more often.
In 2005 and 2006 I stayed with my friend Stephen, who lived alone on the Plateau, probably about a mile from the site of the festival which is an old (but still in use) train station downtown; but Stephen moved to Vancouver last September so this year I stayed with another friend, Martin, in Verdun which is probably 3 1/2 miles from the festival. Martin lives with his girlfriend who speaks virtually no English and had to work early on the 2nd day of the fest, so it wasn't at all like the previous years where Stephen and I would spend all day at the Mondial (1130 am-1030 pm) then go out to bars or brewpubs until 3am, then get back to his place and drink malt liquor. Ah, those were the days!
But I still had a lot of fun, and I spent less and abused myself less with this more "restrained" experience. On Wednesday I arrived at Martin's just around 1115, and we took the subway in to the fest -- only 200 feet to the station from his apartment, then stopping right underneath the festival. Can you imagine an American beer fest that lasted all day, with no maximum amount you could drink, located right on top of a busy subway station downtown, and with very little police presence? I'm not automatically one of those "USA has got it all wrong" people but when you experience how other countries treat drinking, it's hard not to think WTF in regard to the way it works here.
The first day of the fest brought a lot of good, but not great beers, most of them American imports from obscure breweries in Michigan. The Quebec beer scene has really progressed over the past five years or so, but I've had a huge percentage of the good stuff and new beers from the locals are certainly hit or miss.
The second day was one of those days that reminded me very forcefully why I need to get out of Burlington. Martin had to work and had to leave at 730 am, leaving me 4 hours before the festival to kill. The subway ride is 10-20 minutes, tops. It was a cool, slightly drizzly day and I thought, what the hell I'll walk it. I'm a fast walker, it's mostly flat, I figured just to walk straight there would take no more than an hour if I didn't get lost or delayed for any reason.
It was an amazing walk. Right across the street from Martin's apartment is an gorgeous neo-Gothic church, the first of many I'd see. I started out travelling north through Verdun, along Rue Wellington until it joined La Salle, a major artery that was very busy at that early hour. Wellington was subdued, and Verdun is sort of upper-working-class, with a lot of Hispanic immigrants, and a lot of older people on pensions, but very nice -- lots of cheap restaurants and bars but all well-kept. Even in this area there were many bookstores -- Montreal has, along with the Twin Cities, managed to keep its literary culture alive even on a commercial level despite Amazon etc.
LaSalle winds, twists, turns and a couple of times I ended up off of it and approaching cul de sacs but I had a map and it was easy to get back. The neighborhood as you approach the Lachine Canal gets a little more prosperous, some of the typical 3-story rowhouses look newer and like they might be single-family instead of apartments...there are more trees. You cross a footbridge over the canal and you are in Montreal proper, and LaSalle becomes Atwater just before the famed and wonderful Atwater Market. I stopped there for coffee and a croissant...finally I am getting a little bolder at going into stores in Montreal and speaking in English, which I have definitely been afraid to do in the past (usually I am not alone, and my companions tend to all speak French). The Market proper is a long, old building that I think was built for that purpose, with a couple of dozen shops on two levels selling mostly meats, cheese, liquor, and dry goods; vegetables, fruits and flowers are in stalls outside surrounding the building. The quality and variety is incredible -- the bakery I stopped in had (I counted) over 75 different cakes available and over 25 breads; one sausage maker had about 30 different varieties of fresh sausage, all made in back. If I lived within walking distance of such a place I could never leave.
On from Atwater, into more commercial districts....a few blocks up, across the street is an enormous antique store, not open yet alas. Atwater winds slightly upward, perhaps gaining 30-40 feet in elevation before intersecting Rene Levesque which I would follow to downtown. The buildings became taller, there were fewer and fewer houses or apartment buildings, though still many churches, most fairly old-fashioned but a few clearly 20th-21st century. About a half-mile from downtown there is a tiny little park just off on the river-side of the busy street, that none of my friends had heard of when I asked them. I stopped to tighten my shoelaces and walked around a little gravel-strewn area that contained about a dozen small sculptures of buildings or parts of buildings: Doric columns, church steeples, etc. Kind of fascinating. No signs or indications as to what it was supposed to be ... art installation? Memorial? No clue.
Soon I was downtown lost in the maze of huge buildings, with still almost 2 hours to kill before I could go into the fest; I stopped in a couple of book stores and newstands, walked up St Catherine and lost count of the number of "dances nues" signs, walked through the park with a very un-PC statue commemorating Britain's brave soldiers who defended the Empire against the evil Zulus in the Boer war, and finally gazed on a statue (again, no sign to indicate its nature) right across from the festival site in a churchyard that is an exact replica of the Ixtl in Canadian SF-writer AE Van Vogt's "Discord in Scarlet". I really need to find out more about that, it can't just be a coincidence.
Large cities are full of endless possibilities. Yes they are expensive and noisy, but even in Montreal or New York, Chicago or Minneapolis you can find quiet spaces, and no free activity is more enjoyable or thought-provoking to me than walking around in these giant play-and-workgrounds. Two months ago I spent most of a day walking around Manhattan, one week ago I spent a morning exploring Montreal; I can't remember the last time I found any reason to walk around Burlington for more than 20 minutes. I need to get out of here....or at least, get away more often.