Metroblogging Montreal

Not much work got done Tuesday. Glued to our laptop screens, hitting the refresh buttons to the point of absurdity, chat windows opened up all over, including our Blackberries, us Hab fans sat, waiting.

As time ticked on, despair began to set in.

"That's it?!?" One coworker who had tickets to Tuesday's game said he didn't feel like going.

Another who had tickets to Saturday's game said he too felt like staying home. When I queried them for their tickets, their tune quickly changed..

Listening to CKAC and the radio show hosts predicting complete disaster. "Stop treating us like idiots when you say the Habs are a better team now, then before the trade deadline" I believe is how one put it.

Huge dissapointment from so many calling in.

Fast forward several days later and the Habs sit atop first place. All alone. Carey Price played spectacularly. Higgins is scoring goals again. Lapierre is back in excellent form. The team looks absolutely fantastic.

I tuned in again to CKAC. One thing is for sure, people who call, call-in shows after a win tend to be rather drunk. It was as if the Habs had won the Cup. Who would have thought the habs would be sitting atop alone in first place with how many weeks left in the season ?

What was that guy's name again that the Penguins got and we didn't ?

Les Chaise Longues at Crappy Tire are no longer reduced in price.

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A lot of planets needed to be aligned for this shot to happen: A new steadier tripod, a clear sky, no wind, great visibility, new HDR software and, especially, no teenage daughters urgently asking for a lift on this Saturday evening. My sister commented that it almost looks like these images of a vibrant and futuristic Tokyo that you often see in anime movies.

The image above is only a small part of a much larger photograph. Click on the image to see the original version, and, if you're blessed with a large-enough screen, check out this link for the full panoramic version.

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I was at the bike show this past Friday evening and one of the booths was advertising Cyclostation Mavélocity . They appear to be offering as of June 1 showers, coffee, bike repair services and secure parking for your bike.

They will be located on 345 De La Gauchetière West (between De Bleury and St-Alexandre).

A fantastic idea if you ask me.

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As I rode home yesterday from work, I started to ride up my street and there in all it's ultimate horror were the little orange signs indicating snow clearing from 07:00 - 19:00

On my new street, they actually clear the snow during the day. Something they never did were I previously lived.

I went through the 7 known stages of grief:

1) Shock and Denial - No, I am SURE I parked the car on the other side of the street. Yes, I can remember now.. Coming home from snowboarding and I thought "they'll clear the right side first, I'll park there".

2) Pain and Guilt - Oh WHY did I park on the wrong side ? Ug, this is going to be hell. I'll never find a place to park. It's all over. They'll tow my car, I'll go into debt, they'll Denver Boot it and I'll lose everything. I hate winter.

3) Anger and Bargaining - Ok, maybe if I call the city, I can get them to change their minds. Ya, those blue collar worker types, they're a cool bunch. They always look so relaxed. They'll move the signs for me. I know it.

4) Depression - Who am I kidding? Oh I so long for the days when I lived at the other apartment when they cleared the snow only at night. There's no spots now. There will be no spots tomorrow. Where did I put that bottle of prozac ?

5) The upward turn - I slept horribly. Tossing and turning all night worrying about where I would put my car in the morning. I woke up, grabbed a bowl of Cheerios (did you get that? upward turn.. Cheerios) and camped out on my front porch.. Listening and looking like a hunter trying to catch his elusive prey: the Montreal parking spot. I could hear cars starting.. there's hope!

6) Reconstruction working through - Hang on! Someone IS leaving.. and they are on the right side of the street! I dropped the half eaten bowl of Cheerios on the front porch and raced out to grab the spot.

7) Acceptance and hope - Sitting in my car, pieces of wet cheerios stuck to my t-shirt, I sat for a while in silence admiring my new spot. Montreal in the winter isn't such a horrible place. It's actually quite fantastic. I love winter. Really, I do.

Wait, don't they normally clear the other side the night after clearing the first side ?

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Vaginas are coming to town! Yes, that's right, V-Day Montreal is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues in the form of a bilingual benefit production.

From the press release:

Where: Doubletree by Hilton Montréal Centre-Ville Hotel, 505 Sherbrooke Est.
When: February 15 & 16, 6pm VIP Reception and Art Show,
7pm Doors, 8pm Show
Admission: $30 General Admission, $50 VIP Access
Ticket Purchasing: http://www.admission.com (800) 361-4595
Mission: To raise funds and awareness to stop violence against women and girls in the Montreal community

Celebrity guest performances will also be featured in the show. For more details check out the website at http://vdaymontreal.blogspot.com/.

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As some of you have no doubt read, Videotron is releasing their Uber Fast Ultra High Speed 2000 Plus internet service package.

Speeds are reported to max out at 50mbps. But as others have mentioned this comes with a 50gb download limit per month. After which, there is a penalty fee to pay.

Anyone who has a relatively fast connection to the web knows that the bottleneck isn't from your house to the provider. It's elsewhere. Even with just their Super Ultra Fast package it's difficult to max out the pipe coming into your house.

So what's the bleeding point ? If there was no cap, you could become a local reseller and just offer up Wifi to your neighbours. But really, I don't get it.

Do you ?

More and more I find that cable and tv suppliers are becoming less and less relevant. At least in my life. I dumped cable tv over a year ago. We have a TV that we bought at Crappy Tire and a DVD player that my girlfriend bought from Jean Coutu.. It serves us very well. She rents Sex in the City and I buy European Bike racing DVD's from the states.

My original plan was to get an unlimited connection, nice and fast, and download TV shows. Bah. Never bothered. Too much work for 60 minutes of blah. I don't miss TV and in all honesty, when this contract with Videotron runs out, I'm going back to Teksavvy with no contract and dropping my monthly internet fees.

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Yesterday, after a very lengthy day's work, instead of going home and collapsing aimlessly in front of the TV I decided to take up the offer of a friend and make it out to the Kalmunity Tuesday night at Sablo Café. The perfect soulful balm to the kind of day I had had. An evening of fantastic live organic soul-funk-jazz improv rendered by great musicians all feeling and channeling the Vibe. It did the trick. I got home by midnight, my soul full, my mind relaxed. As for the café, it's located on the corner St. Dominique and St. Zotique (metro Beaubien), the drinks are relatively cheap and the sandwiches are notably yummy. Cash only and cover is 5$ at the door. Check it out one of these Tuesday nights. :)

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Everything in the world is wrong, right? Wrong! It's just people who keep focusing on things that are wrong and in the process, they destroy everything that is right.

Since the end of last summer, I started going to comedy clubs. I saw stand-up comics on YouTube and on TV (Comedy Central Presents and Last Comic Standing) and I figured that there must be some place in Montreal with stand-up comedy. How could a city host the Just For Laughs festival without having events dedicated to comedy?

On this winter day, I give you a few stand-up comedy events that are happening in Montreal, every week and every month.

Continued reading English Stand-Up Comedy in Montreal...

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It seems unlimited data plans are coming to Canada with Rogers. According to the article, the changes could come as early as February 5th. That's not when the iPhone will be sold in Canada, but it's good news for people who already have one and want to browse without having to look for a wifi hotspot to avoid astronomical charges.

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After a couple of weeks riding the metro, back in late November, or whenever it was that we got our first snow, I made the choice to ride my bike into work all winter. I had done it before. I had been a bike messenger for two years. So I had a pretty good idea of what it entailed.

I've been using a fixie, basically a converted road bike, which was the first road bike I ever raced on, into a bike with one front brake and one gear that is fixed. There is no free wheeling.

This turned out to be an advantage in the winter as I can brake with my feet by back pedalling and not having to rely on my front brake. Because of all the snow and ice that had accumulated, the front brake, on many days, was nearly useless .

I won't begin to tell you how much I spent in terms of clothing to keep dry and warm. But I probably could have done it for much cheaper then I had.. But I figured, if I was going to ride in the snow and slush, I might as well do it in semi-style.

Continued reading The Ride Thus Far...

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The French language seems to have become a big concern since the news came out that a journalist got 15 jobs downtown without needing to speak French. Personally, I don't pay attention to the language I use, the bottom line is communicating and understanding. Too much bad has happened because of the lack of that.

I just read this article which I found pretty funny, even though it's pretty easy to guess the punch line.

It's definitely exagerated to show a point, because I never anybody say "Qu'est-ce qu'on fait tonight?" I never heard anybody use the word "tonight" in a French context. And in this sentence, "Calm down Manon, take it easy!", there is way too much English for a person who is trying to speak French.

It's an ironic scenario and those two characters are definitely stupid.

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What do the Eiffel Tower, the US Capitol, Big Ben, the Acropolis, the Forbidden City, Christ the Redeemer, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Chateau Frontenac, the Sydney Opera House, the CN Tower, St-Basil's Cathedral, Hagia Sophia, St-Peter's Basilica, the Petronas Towers, and even the Hollywood Sign have in common?

They represent architectural icons that form a major part of their home city's identity, something that Montreal clearly does not have.

To get a proper icon, two conditions are absolutely required (1) it has to be architecturally unique and (2) it has to be either visible from the city core or located in a centralized location. Other redeeming factors include (3) a close association with a major geographical feature, (4) a high symbolic/historical value and (5) the willingness of its host city to use it for its own marketing.

Building architectural icons is a challenge, for instance architectural originality cannot please everyone, that's why it's original. The other significant factor is cost, while there will always be hungry people in the streets, the benefits of an appropriate icon are harder to quantify. How to you precisely measure its impact on tourism or even something as theoretical as increased civic pride?

While Montreal has a lot of worthy geographical and architectural landmarks none of these really qualify as an icon that would be recognized the world's over. The closest thing that we have is the Olympic Stadium but it fails miserably when it comes to location. Other candidates include the St-Joseph Oratory and the cross on Mont Royal but they don't have that "visual punch" that would make them instantly recognizable.

In fact, the one building that could have made it is the Biosphere. It is indeed very original, visible from afar, centrally located, closely associated with the St-Laurence River and it was built during an important period in our history. Unfortunately its problem is one of marketing. As my wife aptly commented "there is nothing to do there". That may not be entirely accurate but its current role as an environment museum simply isn't cutting it.

[update] Metroblogging Kuala Lumpur argues that residents and non-residents often have a different view of what exactly constitutes an icon.

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The STM and Communauto this week announced a new partnership whereby purchasing 12 monthly bus passes, gets you a registration to Communauto for $5 extra instead of the usual $500.

This of course seems like a fantastic idea. But I suspect the devil is in the details.

People I know, who use the service, state that it often requires that you reserve a week in advance to get a car from communauto for the weekend. I'd curious to know from others, if this is in fact your experience. Because if so, dropping the $500 registration fee is going to open the door to many new subscribers.

Communauto's fleet of cars, would be overextended and they would no doubt have to purchase more cars.

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I have heard a report that a debit card cloning ring is currently active on the West Island. The scammers use threats or bribery to convince store clerks to to replace their Interac machines with card scanners. Alternatively, the card can be swiped into a scanner located under the counter while the PIN number is obtained with a video camera.

While I heard this story on CHOM, I have yet to read about it in the online media. Nevertheless, keep your eyes open for strange behavior and don't wait until the end of the month to check on your bank statements.

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It has been a long long time since I've walked along boulevard Saint Laurent. I, like almost everyone else, avoided this street during its war-zone construction days. The work was finally finished in December to a big collective sigh of relief. Since then, I've been meaning to go back and check out the improvements but was too busy over the holidays to do so.

I recently had the chance to walk up the street in the early evening hours and was quite pleased with the new wider sidewalks. Despite the upgrade, the street doesn't seem to have returned to its old bustling self just yet. Traffic was moving but there didn't seem to be as much volume as in the pre-construction days. Sidewalks were not as people-packed either and there was no line-up outside Schwartz. The smell of roasting chicken wafting out from Coco Rico was delightful and it made me sad to think that this street and the businesses were put through the ringer for so long. It will take a while for people to start making their way back to the Main but hopefully they will.

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I arrived back from holiday in France where I stayed with my girlfriend's parent's and friends. Still jet lagged and getting a little annoyed at waking up at 3am all the time.

One thing I love to do in France is regale our French friends at our Canadian winters. "Snow up to our eyeballs.. -25c and that's considered warm!" And other such white lies. I sure as hell ain't gonna convince them that we make great bread.. or better foie gras or have cheaper wine. So I gotta brag somehow.

We arrived Sunday and while it looked like Montreal, it felt more like Paris. What gives? Well at least there's still snow on the ground.

That was Sunday. Today? The snow is pretty well gone and the temps are about spot on with Paris. So really, they have the great foie gras, the baguette with a crusty crust AND a light crumb and what do we have ?

Oh well, the good news is if it rains again tomorrow, I'll be able to train on my bike outside.. Kinda like I did in France.
Ok, ok I'll stop.

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• I remember the second week of January 1998, as we lived through the great ice storm.

• I remember that this was the first winter in our house in Pierrefonds. At the time, our daughters were 6 and 5. We also had a corn snake named Gumby. Need I remind you that reptiles don't like cold?

• I remember driving to work on the 520 east, when a truck going in the opposite direction lost an inch-thick sheet of ice the size of a king-size bed which crossed the median and smashed into the car ahead of me. Fortunately the driver made it ok but his windshield was all cracked.

• I remember my wife calling me shortly afterward to tell me that the power was out and that she was pissed because she had a big laundry in the washing machine.

• I remember walking around the neighborhood with my daughters later that night and seeing dozens of blue flashes on the horizon as all of the transformers in the West Island were shorting out.

• I remember moving to my mom's townhouse on Ile des soeurs along with my brother and his family who were living in Kirkland at the time.

• I remember the next day as the four of us driving west on the 20 to check on the house. A foot of water had accumulated in the curved tunnel at the entrance of the 13 and I plowed into it at about 25 kph. I still wonder how I managed to maintain control of the car and not slam into the wall.

• I remember when I was walking toward my mother's townhouse with my oldest daughter ahead of me and hearing a loud creaking sound coming from above her. An ice-laden branch gave way and fell toward her. I jumped ahead and essentially body-slammed my daughter into the snow bank thus shielding her from the branch and large pieces of ice that fell on my back. I'll never forget the faces of my wife and mother who saw everything from the kitchen window.

• I remember Black Friday, the third day of freezing rain, when the power finally went out on Ile des soeurs and most of the city. My bother's son was getting sick so he decided to drive up to my father's place in Quebec city while we moved back out to our cold and dark house. At the time, the authorities were considering evacuating the island since they almost lost water pressure and were worried about all of those people using candlelights. It truly was our darkest hour.

• I remember the four of us sleeping in the living room and waking up every two hours to put a log into the fireplace.

• I remember waking up one night to the sound of chunks of ice falling off the branches of our large oak tree onto our victorian windows. Trying to find some cardboard and duck tape in the middle of the cold night was not fun.

• I remember wearing my corn snake under my clothes to keep him warm.

• I remember running out of firewood. My brother had an extra cord of wood in his garage but I had to get into his neighbor's house to get his spare key. I almost pissed in my pants when I saw a police car driving down the street.

• I remember seeing a huge convoy of trucks from Con Edison coming up on the 40.

• I remember being invited to my brother-in-law's appartment on the Plateau the day he got his power back. He made enough food to feed an army.

• I remember kissing an electrical engineer from Connecticut when I saw him walking down my street after 6 days without power.

• I remember this period as one of the most stressful of my life.

• I also remember that we got out of it fairly easy, being without power for only 6 days and sleeping only half of those in the cold. Some people in the dark triangle went a full month without electricity.

• The following autumn, I bought so much firewood, that it has lasted us to this day.

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• I remember the second week of January 1998, as we felt the consequences of the great ice storm.

• I remember that this was the first winter in our house in Pierrefonds. At the time, our daughters were 6 and 5. We also had a corn snake named Gumby. Reptile don't like the cold.

• I remember driving to work on the 520 east, when a truck going in the opposite direction lost a sleet of ice the size of a king-size bed which smashed into the car ahead of me. Fortunately the driver made it ok but his windshield was all cracked.

• I remember my wife calling me shortly afterward to tell me that the power was out and that she was pissed because she had a big laundry in the washing machine.

• I remember walking around the neighborhoodc with my daughters and seeing dozens of blue flashes as all of the transformers in the West Island were shorting out.

• I remember moving into my mom's townhouse on Ile des soeurs along with my brother's family who was living in Kirkand at the time.

• I remember the four of us driving west on the 20 to check on the house. A foot of water had accumulated in the curved tunnel at the entrance of the 13 and I plowed into it at about 25 kph. To this day I still wonder how I managed to maintain control of the car.

• I remember when I was walking toward my mother's townhouse with my oldest daughter ahead of me and hearing a loud creaking sound coming from above her. An ice-laden branch gave way and fell toward her. I jumped ahead and essentially body-slammed my daughter into the snow bank thus shielding her from the branch and large pieces of ice that fell on my back. I'll never forget the faces of my wife and mother who saw everything from the kitchen window.

• I remember Black Friday, the third day of freezing rain, when the power went out on Ile des soeurs and most of the city. My bother decoded to move out to my father's in Quebec city while we moved back out our cold and dark house. At the time, the authorities were considering evacuating the island since they almost lost water pressure and were worried about all of those people using candlelights. It truly was our darkest hour.

• I remember the four of us sleeping in the living room and waking up every two hours to put a log into the fireplace.

• I remember waking up one night to the sound of large chunks of ice falling off the branches of our large oak tree onto our veranda. Trying to find some duck tape in the middle of the night was not fun.

• I remember wearing my corn snake under my clothes to keep him warm.

• I remember running out of firewood. My brother had a cord of wood in his garage but I had to get into his neighbor's house to get the spare key. I almost pissed in my pants when I saw a police car driving down the street.

• I remember seeing of huge convoy of trucks from Con Edison coming up on the 40.

• I remember going to my brother-in-law's appartment on the Plateau the day he got his power back. He made enough food to feed an army.

• I remember kissing an electrical engineer from Connecticut when I saw him walking down my street after 6 days without power.

• I remember this period as one of the most stressful of my life.

• I remember that we got out of it fairly easy, being out of power for only 6 days and sleeping only half of those inthe cold. Some people in the dark triangle went a full month without power.

• The following autumn, I bought so much firewood, that it has lasted us to this day.

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This is too much for my tiny little brain. I don't get it. If it's true, I will enjoy it, but I really don't get it. January and February are supposed to be the coldest months of the year. DOeS nOT comPUte!

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This sight struck me as poignant as I walked along Notre Dame street the other day near Peel. A new set of Prevel Lowney lofts sits patiently in half-construction with a cheerfully lit Christmas tree up top.

Happy New Year to all!

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