July, 2007
July 31st, 2007
When push comes to shove and that stairwell just ain’t getting any wider, try a creative approach to moving. Furniture hooks on the outside of buildings might be commonplace on houses in Holland, but in Montreal a third floor balcony rail seems to work just as well.
photo: misha warbanski
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Permalink for Creative moving
Posted by Misha Warbanski
Categories Architecture, Moving Day, Streetscape
July 27th, 2007
Next time your cell dies and you dig out a quarter for a payphone, you’ll have to dig a little deeper. After the go-ahead from the CRTC earlier this summer, Bell has doubled the price of local calls to fifty cents. The reason given is the cost of payphone upkeep. This move will likely lead to a further decrease in their usage as frustrated Montrealers simply cease to uncoil their silver-chained receivers. This, of course, justifies the continued phase-out of the public phone, admittedly not the heftiest revenue earner for Bell Canada, Canada’s largest phone service provider.
The disappearance of that little black box will make its absence known gradually, but decisively. In the past it has provided relief to countless Canadians exploring the vast countryside, and a quick (and sometimes anonymous) call for emergencies, either large or small, in our cities. And of course, the increasing number of Canadians hovering around and falling below the poverty line rely most heavily on their availability. As many people have pointed out, pay phones are a public service – like fire hydrants, parks, and public washrooms – they are an integral (and oft over-looked) component of the urban fabric. At the rate they are disappearing – about 4,000 pay phones every year nation-wide – how long before Montreal feels the phone crunch? And is there anything that can be done?
In 2004, the CRTC declared pay phones an essential service however they don’t require companies provide them. Instead, they added a clause to protect existing payphones: if the last pay phone in a community is to be removed, the company must notify everyone in a high-profile way, such as running a newspaper ad. In the wake of the recent rate hike, the national Public Interest Advocacy Centre asked the CRTC to force Bell to operate certain Public Interest Payphones (PIPs) in places with little or no profit-generating potential. But the CRTC didn’t budge, saying that it wouldn’t interfere by imposing a heavy administrative and financial burden on the multi-billion dollar industry.
…continue reading ‘S.V.P. Insérez vingt-cinq sous’ (encore): What do payphone rate hikes mean for Montreal?
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Permalink for ‘S.V.P. Insérez vingt-cinq sous’ (encore): What do payphone rate hikes mean for Montreal?
Posted by Jacob Larsen
Categories Communications, Streetscape
July 26th, 2007
An underused park in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood is getting some attention since some area residents built a wood-fire oven there. Dubbed “The Park With No Name”, the space had been an empty overgrown lot, surrounded by a 10-foot chain-link fence tucked in by the Van Horne overpass, on the corner of Clark and Arcade. Last Saturday, about 30 people gathered for a community pay-what-you-can pizza dinner.
Public making creative use of a public space – sounds great, no? Well, no doubt afraid of liability, some public officials are threatening the future of the oven. Volunteers with the project say they’re just trying to build community and preserve the Quebec tradition of wood-fired ovens. Indeed, just a few blocks away, the famed St-Viateur Bagel still uses this method.
A petition is circulating and volunteers with the oven say they will bring the issue to the next Plateau borough council meeting. If you want to find out more about the project and sign the petition, drop by the Cagibi (corner of St-Viateur and St-Laurent). The next meeting and public dinner is Saturday July 28 at 6pm.
photos by Misha Warbanski
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Permalink for Pizza for the masses
Posted by Misha Warbanski
Categories Food / Bouffe, Historical / Historique, Mile End, Neighbourhood / Quartier, Parks and Squares / Parcs et places
July 26th, 2007
For those of us year-round bike riders, one of the things that makes me smile is, despite the traffic, I’ll never have to look for parking. Locking to a parking meter gives me more joy, and especially when a harried 9-to-5er comes out to feed it while I’m locking up.
Well, the City of Montreal is making it easier to lock your bike to parking meters. A number of steel rings have been attached to parking meter poles in the city. The ones I’ve seen are on Berri, along the east side of the Bibliotheque Nationale. When I heard about the design I was skeptical – the description sounded like the ring and post bike stands in Toronto with the rings that are prone to being pried right off. But the designers have come up with something that is simple, functional and attractive, and seems to avoid the Toronto problem.
From what I can tell, there are many advantages to this new bike stand.
• If you have a chain lock, running it through the ring prevents thieves from lifting your bike up and over the top.
• The ring makes it easier to lock a bike on each side of the pole.
• If your bikes is a standard size, the ring is at the right height to facilitate locking up both the wheel and frame
• The ring goes right around the pole, so it can’t be pried off.
• These bike stands won’t be hauled away for the winter
The disadvantages:
• From what I’ve seen a lot of people don’t “get” the new locking system and are still just locking to the parking pole itself, or not locking up their front wheel.
• BMX and low-riders are too low for these stands.
The one other criticism is not so much about the stand itself, but about the City’s rhetoric surrounding them. They’re saying these rings are creating 2,000 new bicycle parking spots. I will point out that the need for these rings is a direct result of the City changing its parking meter system and putting plastic protectors around the poles, making some of them too fat to take a u-lock. I am, however, happy to see a workable solution.
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Permalink for New bike stands spotted
Posted by Misha Warbanski
Categories Cycling / Cyclisme, Traffic / Circulation
July 25th, 2007
Over at Spacing Wire Toronto, blogger Sean Marshall discusses his recent visit to your fair city and his discovery of FRAG On The Main, an art installation that appears on a number of St. Laurent storefronts.
When the opportunities arise, we should try to cross-promote each city’s blog. I’m excited to read our Spacing Montrealers’ impressions of Toronto’s public realm (Dylan Reid did a post a few weeks ago about his recent trip to Montreal, and Chris DeWolf has a great post about the little streets of Kensington Market in downtown Toronto).
photo by Sean Marshall
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Permalink for Spacing Toronto’s look at FRAG On The Main
Posted by Matthew Blackett
Categories Neighbourhood / Quartier, Public Art / Art public
