October, 2007
October 31st, 2007
I don’t really get excited about Halloween, mainly because I hate getting dressed up. But even I have fond memories of trick-or-treating when I was a kid, and I have to admit, there was a kind of infectiously fun atmosphere in the streets this evening.
Just down the street from my apartment, a raucous bunch of people lined up outside the Rialto for the first showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Over on Bernard and St. Viateur, groups of costumed kids paraded from one store to the next, collecting candy. In the alley next to Arahova, a group of people played spooky music as they projected an image of a bass player on a wall.
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Permalink for Celebrating Halloween in the streets
Posted by Christopher DeWolf
Categories Behaviour / Comportement, Mile End
October 31st, 2007
In the midst of endless complaints about the slow pace of renovation work on the Main, another, much smaller main street is about to get a makeover: Ste. Anne Street, the main drag of cutesy suburb Ste. Anne de Bellevue. Between 2008 and 2009, it will be completely reconstructed in three phases at a cost of $5 million.
Obviously, the town, which is on the western tip of Montreal Island, is not far enough to escape the macabre spectre of St. Laurent. “It’s going to be done after the big season, making sure we’re not penalizing the merchants. We’re trying to make sure the logistics of everything go well, so that we don’t have a situation like on St. Laurent Boulevard,” Ste. Anne’s city clerk told the West Island chronicle.
Apparently, Ste. Anne de Bellevue’s downtown area — quaintly referred to as “the village” — is doing quite well. It’s a nice place, sandwiched between Lake St. Louis and the Lake of Two Mountains, along the picturesque channel dividing Montreal from Île Perrot. It’s also the most substantial of the old villages that have been subsumed by Montreal’s suburban sprawl, big enough to feel like an intact town and not a strip of old shops and houses marooned in a greater sea of subdivisions. If you go, I recommend taking the 211 bus along the Lakeshore, possibly the prettiest bus ride in Montreal.
Let’s hope that the Ste. Anne St. renovation doesn’t have too much of an impact on businesses. Even then, though, for all the pain these reconstructions cause in the short term, it seems pretty clear to me that they have a net long-term benefit for business owners and pedestrians alike.
Consider the example of Bernard St. in Mile End, which was dug up between 2004 and 2006 for what seemed like an eternity. It was dusty and uninviting — but it was all worth it. The street’s wide new sidewalks, which include room for café tables, benches and bike racks, are a vast improvement over the decrepit, narrow old ones. In the past year, several new businesses have opened on Bernard, including the fantastic new Drawn and Quarterly bookstore. For the first time, there is an actual streetlife on Bernard: people linger on the sidewalk, chatting with friends. It feels like a real place now, not just a forlorn commercial street on the edge of a neighbourhood.
Ste. Anne St. photo from Wikipedia; Bernard St. photo from Spacing Toronto
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Permalink for Another main street to be reconstructed
Posted by Christopher DeWolf
Categories Development / Développement, Mile End, Planning / Urbanisme, Streetscape, West Island
October 31st, 2007
What better way to celebrate Halloween than to descend deep beneath the surface of the earth? This evening, at 9pm, costumed revellers will descend on Côte Vertu metro, pack into the last car of a departing metro train and visit all of the Orange Line stations while listening to spooky music and gorging themselves on candy. There’s a Facebook group with more information for those interested.
As far as I know, the last time there was a successful metro party in Montreal was when the people from Toronto’s newmindspace came to town. I missed the event (although, looking through the photos, I notice some friends of Spacing were there) but, in the winter of 2004, some friends and I organized a small metro party of our own. A little over a dozen of us boarded a Green Line train at Lionel-Groulx, played music and danced. We got some interesting reactions from our fellow passengers.
Photo taken by benjamin on Flickr
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Permalink for Halloween metro party tonight at 9pm
Posted by Christopher DeWolf
Categories Events/ Évenements, Public Transit / Transport en commun
October 31st, 2007
Pumpkin’s pride of place. Esplanade St., Mile End. October 28, 2005
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Permalink for Photo du jour: Happy Halloween!
Posted by Christopher DeWolf
Categories Mile End, Photo du jour
October 30th, 2007
Every time I walk through the laneway just east of St. Urbain, between St. Viateur and Bernard, I come across some striking pieces of street art. It’s also one of the more picturesque alleys in Mile End, lined with rusty old garages, clotheslines and overlooked by the Byzantine tower of St. Michael’s Church.
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Permalink for My favourite laneway: an outdoor art gallery
Posted by Christopher DeWolf
Categories Graffiti, Mile End
