Raf Katigbak of the Mirror (and Vice's Canadian Editor), lays down the manifesto I've been looking for. Never having been in the Sex Machine, I'd no idea what we'd truly lost until now. A nation will hear our cry.
Also, Johnson Cummins demonstrates punk rock pride on behalf of the scene at not having been involved in the Club Soda riot, contrary to reputation.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Awesometown, pourquoi?
Some few weeks back, 15th of March, diverse groups of peoples used my town as a site upon which they voiced their grievances. The yearly anti police-brutality protest wound down from Place-des-Arts, skirmished by the park 'cross the empty lot, then seemed to pause for a moment in front of my door. Brutality on all sides.
The reporting has already been done; I'll allow you to find mainstream sources yourself if those you do prefer, and though it could always get better I appreciated the "normal man on the street who happens to be our editor and gets intimidated by cops" take a few papers managed. Our own included.
My own voice, and eyes, you'll have to allow more time to percolate. I myself am a little close to the issue, so I've got to restrain myself to a certain degree before I get this off my chest. Public forum and all that.
But along with and beyond semi-acknowledged forms of protest, Awesometown's been starting to bubble. Allow Kate to explain. Rioting drunkards of an unknown, rumour fed nature. Malicious pranksters. The usual head-crackings and sneaker-stompings that don't make it into anyone's realm of awareness but the cops, the bouncers and the paramedics.
Summer's coming.
The reporting has already been done; I'll allow you to find mainstream sources yourself if those you do prefer, and though it could always get better I appreciated the "normal man on the street who happens to be our editor and gets intimidated by cops" take a few papers managed. Our own included.
My own voice, and eyes, you'll have to allow more time to percolate. I myself am a little close to the issue, so I've got to restrain myself to a certain degree before I get this off my chest. Public forum and all that.
But along with and beyond semi-acknowledged forms of protest, Awesometown's been starting to bubble. Allow Kate to explain. Rioting drunkards of an unknown, rumour fed nature. Malicious pranksters. The usual head-crackings and sneaker-stompings that don't make it into anyone's realm of awareness but the cops, the bouncers and the paramedics.
Summer's coming.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Awesometown, Bienvenue!
Until this post Awesometown's done little but hang loose 'bout the nether spheres of my brain, protesting lightly. Chances are it will continue to do so when this post is done and gone. But maybe, dare the thought, this will gain it a little solidity. Here then, definition and purpose.
Awesometown is what I call the almost-neighbourhood centred quite conveniently around my house. Borders on the north gate of Chinatown to the south, Bleury/Parc to the west, Sherbrooke up top and round about St Denis to the east, though they stretch and flux with ease. Centred on Metro St Laurent. Population largely composed of immigrants, some hipsters. Cultural staples would include the Place-des-Arts, the Desjardin Mall, the tenderloin, Foufounes Electriques, and innumerable clubs.
I've lived here a little over a year and a half, in a slummy, 236.25 dollar a month walkup off St Laurent, with a band whose been here five. I have no windows, but it's warm. Isolationist that I am I've acquired little knowledge of Montreal as a whole, but I've been around my little nook a bit. I'm fond of the sleaze, grime and occasional glamour. The closeness of poverty and wealth, and the blind eye they turn on one another as a result. And what really strikes me is what I perceive to be a lumbering, momentum building effort to drive the poor out of this neck of the woods, perhaps into the river.
So, as for the future, an analysis of how this place functions and why it's changing. Two libraries, bloody rumblings in Awesometown, Pasq et Bitch, homeless movement, neo-nazis, moral decay, and if you need more than that, it shall be done.
Awesometown is what I call the almost-neighbourhood centred quite conveniently around my house. Borders on the north gate of Chinatown to the south, Bleury/Parc to the west, Sherbrooke up top and round about St Denis to the east, though they stretch and flux with ease. Centred on Metro St Laurent. Population largely composed of immigrants, some hipsters. Cultural staples would include the Place-des-Arts, the Desjardin Mall, the tenderloin, Foufounes Electriques, and innumerable clubs.
I've lived here a little over a year and a half, in a slummy, 236.25 dollar a month walkup off St Laurent, with a band whose been here five. I have no windows, but it's warm. Isolationist that I am I've acquired little knowledge of Montreal as a whole, but I've been around my little nook a bit. I'm fond of the sleaze, grime and occasional glamour. The closeness of poverty and wealth, and the blind eye they turn on one another as a result. And what really strikes me is what I perceive to be a lumbering, momentum building effort to drive the poor out of this neck of the woods, perhaps into the river.
So, as for the future, an analysis of how this place functions and why it's changing. Two libraries, bloody rumblings in Awesometown, Pasq et Bitch, homeless movement, neo-nazis, moral decay, and if you need more than that, it shall be done.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Desolation at the crossroads
Has anyone ever been to the corner of St. Laurent and St. Catherine? S'got reputation, does it not? I've still never found a corner that'll give you so many reasons to cry into your poutine, sittin' in the window of the LBP, watching tired men and women hustle for crack and bustle with booze. Dangerous and sad for the lifers and just Saturday night for half the city.
The south-east corner's conversion from empty space to a reliable, high end computer store is one thing. I can deal with that. Couple years ago it was "the most cracked out Burger King in the city" but I missed that. Not something I would have clung to with much nostalgia, I suspect. This week, though, the entire south-west corner was eradicated. Remember the looped video of silhouetted naked women, grinding it out on the second floor? I know some of you do. Skeezy little shops leaning against each other for support. Just a thin line of building containing that abscess of an empty lot next to Club Soda that Girl Talk turned into a block party at the jazz fest last year.
It'll be hard not to miss the slightly surreal touch of a doorman in a tux standing outside what was not even a strip club, if memory serves, but a jizz parlour. An ex-roommate once worked in one of those skeezy little shops selling trinkets and little spandex things. And though it's dumb romanticism to bemoan the civilizing of an intersection whose main traffic has often been human misery, for whatever reason a city needs something like this. Times square of the eighties, downtown Yonge street in the nineties. This corner, these blocks are the balls of Montreal, and we are beginning to squeeze them, as other cities have, into a tighter and tighter space.
What is now truly surreal; the fact that an entire block face at the heart of the city is empty save for one classic building, a closed ice cream shop and computer game store. There's too much sky.
And something's coming. I can smell the businessmen rubbing their hands. Not a bank, probably not a club, perhaps an american apparel, quite possibly condos.
Whatever it is, my spine tells me it bodes ill.
The south-east corner's conversion from empty space to a reliable, high end computer store is one thing. I can deal with that. Couple years ago it was "the most cracked out Burger King in the city" but I missed that. Not something I would have clung to with much nostalgia, I suspect. This week, though, the entire south-west corner was eradicated. Remember the looped video of silhouetted naked women, grinding it out on the second floor? I know some of you do. Skeezy little shops leaning against each other for support. Just a thin line of building containing that abscess of an empty lot next to Club Soda that Girl Talk turned into a block party at the jazz fest last year.
It'll be hard not to miss the slightly surreal touch of a doorman in a tux standing outside what was not even a strip club, if memory serves, but a jizz parlour. An ex-roommate once worked in one of those skeezy little shops selling trinkets and little spandex things. And though it's dumb romanticism to bemoan the civilizing of an intersection whose main traffic has often been human misery, for whatever reason a city needs something like this. Times square of the eighties, downtown Yonge street in the nineties. This corner, these blocks are the balls of Montreal, and we are beginning to squeeze them, as other cities have, into a tighter and tighter space.
What is now truly surreal; the fact that an entire block face at the heart of the city is empty save for one classic building, a closed ice cream shop and computer game store. There's too much sky.
And something's coming. I can smell the businessmen rubbing their hands. Not a bank, probably not a club, perhaps an american apparel, quite possibly condos.
Whatever it is, my spine tells me it bodes ill.
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