Montreal 2002 Trip
Day 1
Chantal & I left Worcester around 7:30-8:00 AM and somehow
made it to Montreal in a record 5 hours flat. We only stopped twice
(at a gorgeous rest area outside of Burlington, VT and in Burlington
itself to get gasoline) and getting through Customs at the border
was a breeze.
Found the hotel (Le Richebourg / Comfort Inn/Suites) on Lincoln
Ave okay. We were early for check-in but our room was ready just
the same AND we got parking, unlike last time when we stayed at
this particular hotel. I chose this place because it has efficiency-style
rooms complete with a kitchen area. It is a bit off the beaten path in
terms of being REAL close to all the action on St. Catherine Street
and Le Plateau, but the price is okay, and I like the idea that you can
save money on food/meals by eating in at your hotel room.
After parking the car in the underground garage, with really low
concrete ceilings and sometimes narrow marking spaces, we found our
way to the elevators that we'd be using all thoughout this trip on levels
PA & PB. The room was great. It was on the 5th floor. The balcony
overlooked Lincoln Ave. After a brief rest, we headed to Ste. Catherine
Street and started shopping.
Diesel clothes are still big in Montreal. One of the biggest (and
seemingly more expensive places to buy Diesel is Influence-U
on St. Catherine. The store has gotten progressively larger as well as
more expensive, but it's worth it to go in anyway and see all the wild, modern
wares they have to sell. The upstairs has gotten enormous in terms of floor
space. (1476 St. Catherine West, 514-931-3283.
We hit Parasuco and both of the Chateau stores on St. Catherine.
Then we proceeded to exchange our money and the rate was almost $1 US
= 1.50$ Can. Of course, he went to the Eliko Watch Store and gazed
at the huge display of Swatch watches in their front window displays. The staff
there now knows us as the Americans that come up a couple times a year and buy
a couple watches apiece. This time was no different. I bought my first square
Swatch (black band with a red mirror-like face).
Friday night, we went to the Jardin Botanique for the Lantern
Festival. The weather was unusually humid and sticky for September,
heading into Fall. It was a Full Moon and seeing the Olympic Stadium with the big
full moon behind it at night was very beautiful. (There was a lady with her 2 kids
& husband in line in front of us who was throwing a fit in French over the fact
that some sort of special passes she had gotten for her family didn't seem to
get them into the Lantern Festival. Oh well.) The theme of the festival seemed
to be tri-fold: the lanterns guiding our way to the main spectacle all had different
tations of the animals of different Chinese years. THEN, there were the gorgeous
light-up Sampan boats floating in the pond, surrounded by wooden walkways,
bridges, koi fish and TONS of people. It was much busier than last time I'd attended.
BTW... on the way to the Jardin Botanique, we took the subway. And one guy we
saw on the subway was quite a character... pinstripe suit, just-woke-up straight
blonde colored hair with metal tinted glasses and another pair of glasses that
hung on a chain worn around his neck, in the wide opening of his shirt. He was
carrying a gift bag from what looked like some high-end store. The guy just stood
out in a big way. People-watching is such a huge thing in Montreal in general because
there are so many cool, stylish people to check out - male & female.
Returning from the Lantern Festival, we skipped over dinner in favor of this
GREAT cheesecake/pastry place near the Atwater metro station. I had a coffee
cheesecake with caramel frosting and a piece of dark chocolate on the top.
Chantal had some really yummy carrot cake, and of course I had to have a big
glass of milk to go with it. Afterwards, we walked to the nearby grocery store,
Provigo and I got myself a half gallon of milk...
Late Friday night after having gone to bed... woken briefly by a stupid car alarm
that went off for about ten minutes...
Day 2
Saturday... Again we have great weather, contrary to what all the weather
people on tv are forecasting. Humid. Sticky. Cloudy at times, then the sun
will come out. We drove to Boul St. Laurent, parked and started checking out
stores going down the hill toward Ste. Catherine.
There's a store down that way that has always impressed up with it's beach-
like interior, custom-designed futuristic outfits, vintage clothing and wide
array of very unique footware. Chantal once boat a pair of sandals there that
had a very thick sole and liquid inside the sole swishing around. This time was
no different in that she found a cool pair of creme colored sneakers with white
& silver reflective ribbing on them ON SALE for somewhere in the $25 Canadaian
range. That's only $15-17 in U.S.!
We went in this other really amazing store called DEX which seemed to
just have clothes at first, but then you realized that they carried magazines,
books, toys, all kinds of knick knacks, Paul Frank watches and TONS of vintage
metal robots, Godzilla creatures, wind-ups, and other obscure old toys in a big
glass display case in the back of the store where the retro-furniture displays
are set up... There was even a hole in the floor, covered with clear plexiglass
that you could walk over that looked down into a room below full of other cool
retro stuff, like old scooters, furniture, etc. This place was amazing. The prices
fell somewhere between expensive and reasonable, but you have to go check out
this place regardless of whether you buy or not. (I actually bought the Taschen
-published book Future Perfect which is a retrospective of "Vintage
Futuristic Graphics".) (Dex, 651 St-Laurent, Montreal, 514-383-2474).
We went back to the car, fed the meter and then hoofed it on over to Boul
St. Denis which is parallel to St. Laurent. On the list of stores we hit:
Bella Pella (a great, deli-like downstairs, custom-made soap store),
Foam (a store with a massive 70% off clearance sale on clothes, where
Chantal bought a pair of Japanese brand jeans), Chateau and ALDO
(where I finally broke down and bought my first pair of cool guy / dress shoes).
We also ducked into an odd ethnic (mostly African) gift store where I was taken by
an odd alien/warrior/robot looking metal sculpture thing. On closer inspection,
this free-standing 6-10 inch tall metal construct was made up of spark plugs,
metal hooks, plumbing supplies and other metal odds & ends soldered together
to make this steel juggernaut. I had to buy it. So... I did. I'm so glad that I didn't
have any questions from Customs Officials on the way back home re: this item...
We went back to the hotel to nap and take stock of the lot we'd accumulated.
Later, around 7 PM or so, we were watching tv and saw a program on CTV or CBC
or something called the Red Green Show, followed by a Just For Laughs
Canadaian Comedy Marathon show with alot of stand-up comedians. This one
comedian made all kinds of jokes about saving for retirement... "Most of the people
I know are about two mortgage payments away from shitting in a shoebox under the
overpass." and "What am I doing to prepare for my old age? I'm eating a little bit of
catfood everyday so it doesn't come as quite a shock later on..." The guy was bitter,
but a real riot, too!
We got ready to go out to GoGo Lounge... Chantal got dolled up in
her cartoon-asian woman dress & black heels. I was in black dress pants,
a red/beige short sleeved button-down shirt, my new square red swatch &
my red glasses. GoGo was great... You're immediately hit by a swathe
of red lights, cool white round plastic tables with white plastic egg-like chairs.
The drink menu is on both sides of a vinyl album. The dj's play anything from
MoTown to 80s pop. The music isn't so loud that you can't talk and the drink
prices are VERY affordable. All-around great style, great meeting people place...
I loved it. We both kept saying to eachother "WHY can't there be anything like
this back home?!" CitySearch GoGo Lounge description ***GoGo lounge ad***
Day 3
We slept a little later on account of it being Sunday. When we did leave the hotel,
we parked way down on St. Catherine by Place des Arts and walked to Chinatown.
One of our ongoing jokes is about a lady we saw last time we visited, who was in a
Chinatown convenience store looking to buy "twelve beers" on a Sunday morning,
as if buying beer anywhere anyday on Montreal is a big deal.
We looked in alot of Chinatown gift shops, got candy & drinks with exotic/cutesy
looking packages and then we went to the big hotel nearby that houses a bunch of
small stores including a great Hello Kitty shop which never seems to be
open. ***One great bathroom tip*** this hotel has great bathrooms, albeit they're
a million degrees warm inside, but not only are the bathrooms publicly accessible
but there's a great koi fish pond area in the main lobby / restaurant / bar area of
the hotel. (I think it's a Holiday Inn, but I might be wrong.
The bottom end of St. Denis is a great place to check out outdoor cafes, quasi-
skateboarding shops with great hip clothes and every kind of shop inbetween.
Two very cool clothes stores we stopped in at were: ACME and Aritmetik.
At ACME we met two grrrlz working the downstairs part of this stylish
streetwear clothes store who were just talking and talking, because there was no
one there shopping yet. I overheard one talking about a dream she had where
superhero mutant Nightcrawler had attacked her Mom. I butted in and thus ensued
a great long conversation between the four of us about all kinds of stuff.
They recommended some other loung type places to visit and I gave them some
of my dsquared postcards. I'm definitely going to try to get in touch with these two
as they seemed really fun & outgoing and potential insider tour guides for me perhaps...
(2003 St. Denis, Montreal, Quebec H2X 3K8, (514) 868-9357)
Aritmetik was a smaller store, but had more local Montreal designed cool clothes.
I bought a short sleeved polo shirt with stylish rips / slices on the shoulders and talked
with the folks working there about Boston & NYC. The girl working there had a slightly
opaque Diesel Parachute shirt from several seasons ago that I recognized & pointed out
as being cool. (Aritmetik, 2011 St Denis, Montreal, Quebec H2X 3K8, (514) 847-8965)
We stepped in the candy store Sucre Bleu and I got a soda and Chantal
picked up some candy for her mother, but this store which I shought was always
great for having obscure Euro-PEZ dispensers, really isn't as great as it was back
then... Still good for candy, but it's somehow lost something...
We were tired, so we went back to the hotel after a quick bite at La Belle
Provence (a quickie burger & hotdog place on St. Catherine). Around 6 PM, we
raced out to go see a movie at Cinema du Parc called The Believer.
We ALWAYS see the harshest, strangest movies in Montreal ("Meet the Feebles",
"Bullet in the Head", "Dark Days", "Bully", etc.) and Cinema du Parc is a great
out of the way repertory theatre playing new movies and classic arthouse films. This
particular film was about a young man who's at first presented as a skinhead white
supremist nazi type character living in NYC, but then we discover that this charismatic,
well-spoken guy is conflicted and not as sure of his beliefs as we're led to believe.
I don't want to give anything away here...
Instead of doing our traditional "escargots dinner" on our last night in Montreal,
we decided to get food at Provigo, bring it back to the hotel & cook.
Chunky chicken soup and a pizza pita sandwich wrap and chips. As weird as it may
sound, it was a nice relaxing end to the vacation...
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