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Montreal's 150-year-old costume store leaves Old Montreal

April 1, 2015, 11:03 am
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   Canada's oldest costume store - right here in the Muchy-Hall is no more... well, it's no longer at its longstanding spot anyway.
   Ponton Costumes (aka Joseph Ponton Costumes) was located in the Fairy Land building on Francis Xavier - across from the Centaur Theatre - since 1985.
   Its move wasn't exactly the most organized affair, according to a source who passes frequently on the way to work.
   When it was vacated last October some possibly-sensitive papers were left out in the recycling, although they seemed likely too old to be of any value. A water leak left the street icy but it's not clear whether that had anything to do with the premises or with a separate issue involving the city.
   The store - first opened at The Main and Viger in 1865 - is not closed.
   It has simply moved to the great eastern side of the city, so you could still get your gorilla suits, knights costumes and wicked nurses' gear but in a more downscale neighbourhood.
   It's at 4846 Ste. Catherine E. just west of Viau. It's in an ancient greystone befitting the antiquity of the business.
   Before 1985 the store rented and sold its costumes from 451 St. Sulpice, across from the Notre Dame Basilica.
   In the 1950s it was at 35 Notre Dame E., in a building demolished for the Montreal courthouse. It was described in a profile as a place with museum-like treasures.
   The past locations - those we could dig up in a cursory search - were all within one kilometre of each other.
   Ponton's new digs is over seven kilometres east, so it's a a major departure for the 150-year-old establishment.
   Larocque and Demers had taken over from Joseph Ponton many moons ago.
   Couldn't find much about Joseph Ponton, although a 71-year-old by that name was run over and killed in Feb. 1950.

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Streaking in Montreal: Some highlights

April 2, 2015, 12:15 pm
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How big was the mid-70s streaking fad in Montreal?
   Big enough for one downtown restaurant to build an ad around the concept in '74.
  You'll note the downtown location of the Steak & Burger was pretty high rent and it was no little shack.
   It's not still there, so that might give a hint as to how the streakers welcome campaign ended up.
   Michel Leduc, who would be about 61 now if nobody's killed him yet, shocked the world (bored the world, I think you mean, just as you're doing now - Chimples) by running around naked during the closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976, an event said to be watched by 800 million people on TV and 70,000 in person. He ran into a group of 500 young women dancing around and disrupted their show. Police gave him a beatdown and held him overnight. It's said he was charged with a letting-your-dong-hang-out-in-public-related offence.

   Kevin Passarella, a Loyola student from New York, claimed to have set the world record for a distance streak, going 500 yards on campus in March 1, 1974. Police followed him back to his apartment. They said they had no objection to him streaking on campus but wouldn't tolerate it on streets.
   A few days later a couple of Air Traffic Controllers streaked on skates, doing a couple of laps around the Dorval Arena during a company hockey game.  (Are you quite finished? - Chimples)

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Montreal shisha pipe cafe customers fined because owner doesn't have special license

April 3, 2015, 9:37 am
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   About five customers smoking Turkish water pipes at the Lux cafe at 1401 Mackay, just north of St. Catherine, were handed $90 tickets by police Thursday night.
    Police ticketed those who they saw smoking the pipes, while others at the same table not smoking the contraption were not ticketed.
    The reason that these tickets were handed out?
   The owner apparently does not have the special license required for said shisha pipe device.
    How customers would know or be considered responsible for the owner having this license is not entirely clear, but that's just Montreal, I guess.
   The owner apparently told some, or all of those ticketed that he would pay their tickets.
    It is said that a similar raid took place a few days ago with similar results, although we can't confirm that. (Shisha pipes are stupid. Police are stupid. The owner of this place...yup. Should I go on? - Chimples)
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Degradation and addiction: life at Atwater and St. Catherine

April 4, 2015, 10:40 am
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Derelicts leave mess inside Atwater metro at Alexis Nihon
   A van belonging to an organization designated to help Montreal-based Inuits recently pulled up outside the depanneur on St. Catherine just west of Atwater.
  Out popped the driver who cheerfully purchased 50 metal pipe cleaners, 10 crack pipes and a carton of cigarettes.
  "Let's party!" says one of the people in the van.
Urinating? Smoking crack? 
  Such is life around Atwater and St. Catherine, a troubled area full of drug dependency that has recently worsened since the semi-secluded Cabot Square (aka Pigeon Park) was closed for renovations, forcing the habitues into nearby streets where they are frequently seen drinking, urinating and even having sex in public.
  One mother of a teenage boy recounted me her shock when her 11-year-old son stumbled across a fully-naked couple of a couple of years ago.
   The Inuit centre that was previously based on St. James St. W. was transferred to the old Reddy Memorial Hospital on Tupper a couple of years ago, which has led to some intensification of the disturbances.
Handy depanneur caters to party needs
  One frequent witness tells Coolopolis that about half of the chronic celebrants appear to be Inuit and the other half a variety of other backgrounds.
   A white anglo friend once told me that he and his wife abandoned their two children to live with their elderly parents so that they could live homeless in the park one summer about 10 years ago.
   He said that they had good times but was unhappy when their children were taken away by authorities.
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Montreal Children's Hospital: could we get a baseball stadium there?

April 6, 2015, 10:00 am
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Children's site is something like 190m x 220 m
Could the soon-to-be vacated Montreal Children's Hospital at Atwater and Dorch work as a site for a future downtown baseball stadium?
 We popped this into the blender that is Chimples' the superintelligent Chimps' superintelligence chip and got this.
Advantages
Great location near Atwater metro, west side of town.
-Demolishing the building and selling the land would answer nagging questions concerning what should be done with the old decommissioned building.
-Purchasing the land might be considerably easier than at other sites considering that much of it already belongs to government.
-It would rejuvenate a part of town that has become increasingly rough since the departure of the Canadiens from the Old Forum.
Disadvantages
Bridge & Wellington
A cursory look at other ballparks suggests that the property might be a bit small. A stadium requires at least 200 metres by 200 metres. This spot looks a little tight at 190m x 220m. Wrigley Field in Chicago gets away with being a similar size, so it might still be workable.
-Cabot Square would be lost, as would a couple of buildings on Closse south of St. Cat.
-There would be no parking anywhere.
-Hospital officials will undoubtedly argue that they still need to use part of the building for some thing or another and some neighbours might object.
      In comparison, the land near Wellington and Bridge has a major size advantage, even though it's far from public transit and might be hampered by heavy traffic trying to get to the Victoria Bridge. 
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April photo news from Montreal

April 8, 2015, 6:00 am
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Demolition on Selby A beautiful greystone on Selby west of Greene has been demolished and the one pictured here will be going down too. Sam Roberts used to live there and a city councillor owned it. I've written about Selby street demolitions before here.
Expos cards vandalized An Internet sensation with a large Instagram following has an affinity for the Montreal Expos. Baseball card vandals has targeted the 'Pos countless times likely because the "ex" lends itself to re-spelling magic.
Crazy corner For some reason I don't fully understand, the corner of Rose de Lima and St. James has become known for high-spirited Inuit hijinks.

Benches come out Where do the city's park benches go in the winter? In a warehouse on Papineau south of Notre Dame. They were trucked out yesterday.

Iconic sign removed The Reitman's sign that long towered over the building at the northwest corner of Somerled and Cavendish was taken down yesterday. It had been there for as long

Superhospital was once soccer mecca. The Glen Yards, seen in this photo from the 1950s, was home to a soccer field that hosted competitive games between such local teams as Shell Oil, Ulster United, Montrela South, NDG, Workers Sport, Verdun Rangers. This lasted from about 1927 to 1937 or thereabouts, possibly longer.
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Secret shantytown in St. Henri?

April 10, 2015, 8:28 am
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   Coolopolis received a florid description of a possible shantytown in the heart of St. Henry's.
   Writing to see if you had any idea about the history or origins of this bizarre community based on St Philippe street, between St-Antoine and St-Jacques street?
    The community is situated on a private property that is fenced off along a tree lined section of the street.  The property consists of about 4-5 trailers, some Home Depot type pre-fabricated storage cabins and a bunch of homemade shelters strewn about approximately one half-acre of land.   There is a high fence with some shrubbery around it that prevents you from seeing entirely into it, but the height of most of the trailers and cabins and makeshift shacks connected to it lead me to believe there could be as many as 15-20 people living there at any given time.  

      The community has been there at least 10 years but my guess is that its been there for much longer.  My friends and I first assumed it was some eccentric man's adult treehouse, but the amount of people lurking around there in the summertime leads most of us to believe there is a large group of people living there.
  I honestly don't know how the city hasn't shut them down or fined them or tried to condemn whatever it is they're living in at this point.  It smells TERRIBLE in the summertime and looks nothing like anything I've seen in a major Canadian city.  I can only assume that its low profile on a quiet St Henri street with not much gentrification has made it fly under the radar.
  Readers will recognize the block as the one that sits behind the famous narrow building of St. Hank, which is being transformed into condos.
  The oddball lot in question is the side lot of landlord Richard Belvolto, who is a chatty, sharp and likable real estate agent who gladly answered my questions about the strange happenings on his property.
   He said that a tenant has been living there about a decade and has arranged the side-yard, which he has the right to do as tenant.
   The landlord explained that his property is only a small slice of the larger space, which he believes belongs to the stores on St. J. He knows about the clutter but said that there's nothing otherwise unusual happening on the property as far as he knows.
   He said that the tenant may or may not have been previously contacted by the city about the dense collection of items in the yard.
   I rolled by later and noticed shed alongside the bizarre antenna with a ragged Quebec flag at the top. I couldn't see much beyond that so I can't confirm reports of an independent electricity supply.
   Two men were mucking about, apparently cleaning up the yard when I showed up. One of them gave me a solid stare. .
   I didn't have time (or balls- Chimples) to engage him in a chat about why the sheds were all about because I was late for another appointment. By the way, we have noted that shed living was happening a few feet away in 1945..
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April 14, 2015, 5:31 am
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Montreal entertainment trivia from the '30s and '40s

April 17, 2015, 10:13 am
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A common mondegreen from the 1930s involved Montreal.  The 1929 hit "I'm a dreamer aren't we all?" was commonly transformed into "I'm a Dreamer Montreal." The Marx Brothers used this quip in their film Animal Crackers and it was also put to use in the 70s by N. Irish playwright Stewart Parker a title. Groucho recalled it much later in his career while interviewing Montrealer Fifi D'Orsay on his little TV game/talk show.

 
Fifi D'Orsay was born Yvonne Lussier in Montreal in 1904, the daughter of a postal clerk and went on to become one of the best-known Montreal female entertainment exports until Megan Calvet. She was one of 12 children and moved to New York to do vaudeville and then appeared in a bunch of films, pushed as the French Bombshell. In fact she was neither bombshell nor French as she wasn't much of a looker and was quite open about being from Montreal and often boasted that she had never seen Paris. She died in Los Angeles in 1983.


Montreal was full of nightclubs in the 1940s as Christopher Plummer describes in this interview about his younger days in the city. He notes that Sinatra would drop in to watch Mabel Mercer, whose vocal techniques he is said to have emulated.


Plummer also describes one of the strangest things he's even seen in showbiz, watching an elderly bag lady enter a cabaret in Montreal and insist on singing. It turns out that it was Mistinguett, who impressed the posh room with a version of her tune Mon homme.
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Calvet House - one of Montreal's oldest buildings - on sale now for just $9.5 million

April 20, 2015, 7:42 am
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This house, one of the city's oldest, is now on sale in Olde Montreale for $9.5 million.
   This glorious fieldstone shack at 401 de Bonsecours - adjacent to Montreal's nicest vista -  is still standing after being built around 1725 and getting its name from its most famous owner Pierre du Calvet.
   Ogilvy's department store restored it in the mid 70s and it was long used for art exhibitions. 
   It's a hotel now charges about $350 a night, which is sort of justified as city taxes alone cost $90,000 a year.
   We know that four people were killed in a fire in a building across the street in 1946 but this joint seems a-ok.
   The 1725 construction date is only a guesstimate but other than its much-larger-than-average size, the house is typical of the times with the customary steep roof and twin chimneys joined in a gable. The small windows are in its original red but paint is now used rather than the ox blood that initially tinted the wood.
 Fur trader du Calvet - a French Protestant aka Huguenot, a rare species indeed in Quebec -  got the house in 1770 after arriving in about 1758 at the age of 23
   Protestant Pete Calvet wanted what became Canada to join the American Revolution and befriended American revolutionary General Richard Montgomery. Calvet was promoted to ensign due to his role as a supplier in the effort to bring Quebec into what would be the United States.
  In the spring of 1776 he held secret meetings between some Montreal Jesuits and their counterparts from south of the border. But the locals didn't bite on the pitch to join the Yanks.
  It's said that Benjamin Franklin stayed at the house in 1775 and the Montreal Gazette say its inception there apparently.
  Alas the Yanks were kicked out of Montreal in 1776.  Protestant Pete sent a messenger to the U.S. with an invoice for his services but the messanger was intercepted and a case for treason was made against Calvet.
   He was released and lobbied for payment of the services he rendered the Americans in London and Paris, impressing Ben Franklin, who wrote Congress urging them to pay their debt to the guy in 1783. "He appears an honest man and his case is a hard one. I have undertaken to forward his papers and I beg leave to recommend them to the speedy consideration of congress," wrote Franklin.
   Calvet pretended that he was not involved in the conspiracy in a pair of books he penned pleading his case. He was lost at sea in the Shelburne sinking of 1786.
   Gaetan Trottier is the current owner and he gave a tour of the premises to a site called Towertrip, whose excellent post can be seen here.

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Another neighbourhood peeler joint bites the dust, are such places on the way out?

April 20, 2015, 9:36 am
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  The Dice Club, a cozy neighbourhood peeler joint on Papineau near Beaubien, appears to have has died just days after turning 20.
  The bar had been ordered shut for 45 days on January 7 after an under aged dancer was found working in the club.
   The strip club could have opened back on Valentine's Day but I'm told that it stayed shut.*
   The club also had its license suspended  for 180 days for the same infraction in 2007 and 90 days in 1998.
   There was no other police evidence presented against the joint, no police reports of fights, drugs or insects in drinks, so it appears to have been otherwise competently operated.
  I wrote owner Giovanni Cotroni through Facebook to ask him about the demise of his establishment but received no reply.
  The club opened on November 5, 1994, a time when such establishments were rising in popularity. Back then such places attempted to draw crowds by hosting star performers, indeed the danger Tangerine Dream even shot a porno scene there.
  One discussion forum had both praise and derision for various dancers who have performed there over the years. A neighbour mentioned that dancers were known to stand out in front burning Js and being generally friendly and chatty.
   Some sort of sex hotel upstairs called Hotel Lust appears also to have closed.
   Another neighbourhood strip club called Chez Mado on Pie IX also closed last fall.
  It's possible that strip club are being supplanted by massage parlours, which are likely are far easier to manage, being unfettered by restrictions that come with selling booze. Or perhaps the whole commercial sex industry is taking a downturn due to the aging population and too much estrogen in the water supply, a situation the city vows to correct with a new filtration system within the next few years.
*The timeline might be off slightly, as the Club's FB page appears to indicate that it was open until late January, not clear how this could be given the suspension. 
   

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Dunkin' Donuts ordered to pay $11 million to former franchisees

April 21, 2015, 8:17 am
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  An appeals court has confirmed that Dunkin' Donuts will have to pay off franchisees for lack of support during the wipe-out years that saw the number of franchises dwindle from about 250 to 12 in Quebec.
 But the judges recalculated the original award downwards to $10.9 million.
   Bit o' history: 30 DD franchisees laid a $7 million lawsuit against the company in 2003 for a lack of support. Their demand rose to $17 million when the case went to trial.
  The plaintiffs were eventually rewarded $16.5 million after an exhausting 71 day court case.
  Some new calculations revised that sum downwards in the recent decision but it's still a major victory for those who saw their businesses go kaput.
  The money will be divided between the 30 former franchise owners
  The top benefactor will be Sylvain Charbonneau who owned six franchises, mostly in St. Eustache and Lachute. He will receive $2.6 million.
  The owners of the outlet at 7955 Decarie and another on Lacordaire - Ramond Masi and JohnCostini - get almost $1 million.
 A duo in St. George de Beauce gets $772,000 and the lowest amount goes to Claude St. Pierre and Lynda Viel of Riviere du Loup, who get $91,000
    The judgment might make franchisers skittish about locating in Quebec, which may or may not be a bad thing. I'm told that wrinkles in Quebec law already make franchising a bit of a challenge here, which is why such major U.S. chains as White Castle, Arbys and Taco Bell have little or no presence here.
   This judgment won't send them rushing in, probably a relief to mom'n'pop cafes and greasy spoons.
  (They could have rechristened Dunkin' Donuts as Terry Harper's, no? - Chimples)
 Tim Horton's, which now has about twice as many outlets as DD had at its peak in Quebec, was an unstoppable juggernaut upon its arrival and it's anybody's guess that anything could have been done to stop it in Quebec.
   I've theorized that the incessant mockery of Dunkin Donuts laid on by the popular comedy TV show Rock et Belles Oreilles - which frequently showed a police dog sitting on a counter stool - didn't help the brand here.
  That theory is supported by the fact that DD survived slightly longer in anglo parts of town, as the NDG branch two years ago and the one on Wellington in Verdun seems to be going strong.

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Bull Pub - run by Cock'n'Bull management - closes for good, blames Sergakis

April 23, 2015, 5:11 am
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Bull Pub closed Wed. evening. (Pic Esteban Vargas)
Commercial landlord Peter Sergakis has pulled the plug on a popular bar on St. Catherine just east of Atwater, as he has terminated an agreement with the Bull Pub, forcing its closure.
   It's the second bad encounter for the bar with Sergakis, as the Bull Pub management was also run out of its previous premises by the very same landlord. 
   The Bull Pub was run by the owners of the Cock'n'Bull Pub, which first opened in 1898 on Ste. Catherine.
   Management was forced to move from the original premises of the Cock'n'Bull Pub after those premises were taken over by the very same Peter Sergakis.
   Sergakis told Coolopolis that he shut the bar because they owe him over $20,000 in back rent. "The sign is up, someone else can run a bar there if they want," he said late Thursday afternoon.  
   Sergakis has kept the original premises of the Cock'n'Bull running but under a different spirit and identity.
   Sergakis started as a dishwasher and now owns dozens of local establishments, can't remember the figure he told me when we spoke about it a decade ago. They include the nearby Sports Station megacomplex on the north side of St. Catherine just west of Fort.
  His numbered company also owns the building where the new Cock'n'Bull was located.
  Bull Pub was owned by Ellen McCann and a statement was put online by Sloane Montgomery. 
  As a Montreal native I have watched Sergakis take over Ste. Catherine Street West from Atwater to Guy, all within the past 10 years; evicting dozens of stores, restaurants and bars along the way. Unfortunately the Sergakis monopoly has had it’s way yet again, and after today, the McCann family is devastated to announce that there will no longer be a Le Bull Pub.
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The legend of Mike French, a killer biker from Westmount

April 24, 2015, 1:45 pm
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    There are dark corners in the otherwise-sparkling and wealthy Montreal suburb of Westmount and one such place was at the Weredale House boys' home at the Souteastern corner of the city, which closed in 1977.
   That's where troubled boys were sent and that's where twisted and tragic Mike French, born in 1950, emerged.
   Mike French, according to the many legends, grew up at the boy's home because his family was poor.
   Poor parents would sometimes cast off boys into places and keep their girls, who tended to be much less trouble and better help around the house.
   French attended a small school in lower Westmount where he befriended Brian Chu, who is of Chinese heritage. The two would later become close friends and join the Satan's Choice biker together in St. Henri. Chu still lives in NDG around Sherbrooke and Melrose.
   Satan's Choice was a powerful force whose notoriety became known here in 1969 when 12 to 23 gang members raped a 15-year-old, while another woman was forced to beat on her in Ottawa.
   Soon those who knew French  developed misgivings about hanging around with him.
   An old friend of his tells me that once on a night out he returned to see somebody innocently sitting on his motorcycle on Crescent St. He pounced on the guy and proceeded to hurt him in a way that his friends found incredibly gratuitous and shocking.
   Another time French took four hits of LSD and didn't seem to be affected at all by the massive quantity of acid in his system.
  French, whose photo I have yet to find, was tall, thin and ungainly with buck teeth.
  "He had a Nazi look to him. Germanic. Over 6ft. Fair hair, clean cut. He looked in very good physical shape," said another.
   Another woman who knew French told Coolopolis that he became far more cruel after his four year old daughter died but details of that story remain unclear.
   French was eventually found murdered in November 1982 and his body was found in Kahnawake. Local legend has it that he boasted about killing young Sharron Prior seven years earlier in Point St. Charles.
   That murder has never been solved. Police named West End Gang hitman Jackie McLaughlin as a suspect in French murder.
   He supposedly killed French upon hearing that news of Prior's murder, as a sort of community service.
   According to an anonymous source who has posted about French on the internet, French during his time with Satan's Choice killed several Popeyes and thoroughly enjoyed attacking and torturing others for minor perceived slights. Apparently he quarreled with someone named Michel Cardinal and stepped on his neck and pulled his shoulder out of the poor man's socket.
   The Popeyes became the Hells Angels and supposedly 38 Satan's Choice members were killed (seems a bit doubtful) except French survived.
   Who killed Mike French? Well according to that 2006 version, it was neither McLaughlin or the Hells, but rather people still "operating in the West End." This version suggests that French was killed as punishment for raping the daughter of a Mafia boss.
  
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Sunday news on Coolopolis:

April 26, 2015, 11:05 am
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Cool house for sale The Bombardier family was so impressed with the Cuba pavilion at Expo 67 that the got star architect Jacques de Blois to build them a three-bedroom home in the countryside across from Quebec City as a knockoff. It's now on sale for just $489,000, St. Damas is a four hour drive from Montreal though.


Pre-critique of the Superhospital The West End MUHC Superhospital has opened today, here's a list of worries I overheard someone mention on the 80 bus.
1-The contract with Lavalin. Administrators must hire Lavalin to do every little bit of maintenance and repair. A picture can barely be tacked into a wall without them being involved, which means that the cost of this thing will always be expensive.
2-The layout. Some staffers urged designers to copy the Jewish General, which has a useful layout but they did not get their way. As a result workers will be cutting through the emergency room because the alternative is to walk all around the entire grounds. There's also some worry about where the ambulances will wait. Workers will have to use pass cards to get through doors but patients will be able to waltz right through, which some find odd.
3-Consultation: the only group of the MUHC that really had time to get away to participate in the design was the infection people. So it's very good for the infection stuff but maybe less good for other departments.
   The person who uttered them said that they might not turn out to be seriously problematic. (BTW, don't call it "The Glen" because that's a Scottish word for valley and it's not in a valley at all. The Glen is a geographical entity in Westmount where St. Cat meets Landsdowne, Westmount doesn't get naming rights after blocking a logical access down there).

More buildings atop metro stations please
Boring old Vendome before and after
Every time I see a stumpy little metro station it saddens me.
  Every metro should have a building atop of it, preferably with both retail, office and housing.
   The value of a building above a metro station would be much higher than in some other place because those who live inside can conceivably get around town without facing cold winter days and can boast that they don't need more than a little sweater.
Papineau metro as it should be
  Why don't more metros have buildings atop of them?
  I'd suspect it's because metros are controled by a government body that doesn't specialize in real estate wheeling and dealing so the board don't feel compelled to cut such deals in return for their six figure paycheques.
   Also there could be some issue with parking as building condos or apartments might be problematic given the standard one-indoor-parking-space per unit municipal requirement. Maybe they're harder to build for obvious other reasons.
   The stumpy tations most ripe for such structures are the St. Lawrence metro, the Vendome metro and the Papineau metro. Others?

Mike Torrez: let's name a street after him in St. Laurent. Studly Expos righty Mike Torrez was a workhorse for the Expos until Jim Fanning (RIP) foolishly traded him away to the Orioles along with Ken Singleton for basically nothing. But what you didn't know is that Torrez was one of those incredibly-rare Expos who actually lived here in the winter. He spent at least four winters here  according to this article, in which he expresses an interest in returning to the team after playing briefly for the dreadful Oakland Athletics, which had recently ditched all of its stars for money reasons. Alas Torrez did not return and went on to win a World Series with the Yanks.  (By the way, at least one obituary for the recently-deceased Fanning suggested that he moved away from Montreal in 1993. In fact he lived in Hudson well past that, where he and his wife were very much involved in local stuff.)

Broadway Chips: let's bring 'er back
We don't have much to say about Broadway Chips at the corner of Notre Dame and
Broadway in Montreal East, other than to say that it looked like a helluva place.




Showgirls at the rental board This high-profile duo is Dorcas and Kristi, leggy showgirls and nightclubbers long associated with the Kingdom Gentleman's Club.
   According to online rental board records, they had a rough time getting 'er paid each month. They were evicted from an apartment costing $1,480 for non-payment and then were booted out soon after from another apartment owing almost $5,000. Seems neither has had such problems in the three years since, so we live and learn. BTW, speaking of the Kingdom strip club on St. Lawrence, you might ask what celebs go there? Their FB page has pics of visitors Rob Corddry, Russell Martin, Bad News Brown, David Desrosiers from Simple Plan and a variety of other boxers. actors and rockers. 
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Montreal admits that their parking stickers don't stick

April 29, 2015, 12:26 pm
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Sticker parking is exploding in Montreal and until the fine day we get rid of cars and just have electric robot taxis to share, those geographical-revealing decals will remain a de rigeur boastastical item for car owners.
   But Montreal authorities recently confessed that the glue on their stickers didn't get the job done.
  We've noted that some motorists were using ugly-ass duct tape to keep their stickers affixed (Remember when you insisted it was called duck tape? quack quack - Chimples).
   Due to the poor quality of the stickers, many fell off and panicked motorists got down on their hands and knees to search in the ditches and frozen, icy roadways to try to find them. (Sure they did - C)
   Those who have received such an inappropriate tickets should - of course - contest the fine.    
   Agents at the various Montreal borough office have been fielding many such complaints and they've got all the forms at the ready for those who wish to fight the parking powers.
   Apparently a response will take something like 10 months to receive. But it should result in the ticket being tossed out.
   The sticker-controlling borough authorities are now giving out these clear stickers to place on top of the original sticker to ensure proper stickage.
  Coolopolis strongly suggests that anybody affixing a sticker to a car or any other device should do it while sober and of a clear-spirit and Zen-like mind. A pre-sticker-pressing yoga or Tai Chi session is highlyr recommended. 
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Van Horne Hardware closes after 60 years

April 29, 2015, 1:01 pm
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   Van Horne Hardware - which has sold paint, copied keys and supplied all your fix-it needs since Max Schneiderman opened the place near Victoria and Van Horne in 1955 - has closed.
 Co-owner Karen Lukacs tells Coolopolis that the store was a lifelong setting.
  "I worked here from the time I could walk. I spent my weekends and summers here growing up. It was a great experience,” she said.
    She bears no regrets about locking up for the final time.  “It's not sad for us, we're  excited, looking forward to our future.”
   Lukacs said that business is fine but retirement beckons. She and her husband are moving to Windsor to be near their daughter, a physician assistant in Detroit.
  The extended Schneiderman family opened several hardware stores speckled around town in decades past, including one on
St. Viateur bagel that was eventually turned into a health food shop by a nephew.
   Karen wasn't planning to take her father's store over. But that changed when her mother died about five years after Karen graduated as an account.
   So in 1980 her father Max – who died in 2002 - said that he would close up shop unless she took it over.
  So Karen left accounting and ran the place with her engineer husband.
  The store was originally located at 5950 Victoria, just a stone's toss away but has been in its current digs since about 1965.
  Mom and pop hardware stores have been closing at a fast clip since the arrival of big box stores but the clientele has always been a loyal bunch and have been very supportive of their decision to close.
  “People have been great, they're hugging us and giving us gifts for our daughter,” she said.

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Fifty years of pull top beer cans in Quebec

April 30, 2015, 8:29 pm
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 Time to celebrate 50 years of pull top beer cans!
  The device came to Quebec on May 10, 1965. Prior to  that you needed a can opener to get at your canned brew.
  Ontario didn't even have canned beer of any kind until May 3, 1965.
  Of course the pull tops were also used in soda pop cans as well and became a nuisance as they polluted the environment with their sharp nasty edges.
   The riveted stay tab type that we use today was developed in 1975 by an engineer who accidentally swallowed a pull top.   

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The bucolic home to Italian hit men visiting Montreal in the 70s

May 3, 2015, 12:30 pm
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   The Inn was a hospitable landmark in St. Sauveur until it burned down in 1973.
   But what most do not know is that the Irish-Canadian owner had a deal to welcome Mafia hit men flown into town from Italy to assassinate certain selected targets.
   The killers were as discreet as could be on their brief visits to Canada except once when their car bumped into another vehicle at a red light.
   The other driver exited, angrily cursing the inhabitants of the Mafia-killer vehicle.
   The angry driver slunk back into his driver's seat and sped off after seeing a gun pointed directly at his face, held by an expert professional killer.
   Good times...sigh...good times.
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Tribute to the great old Hot Colonnade on Crescent and Dorch

May 6, 2015, 7:08 am
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Montreal's disrespected landmark file:
  The Hotel Colonnade, that's it on the right with the big windows.
   One of the city's great buildings sat at the southeast corner of Crescent and Dorch but Internet whack-jobs, red-eyed taxi drivers, crackheads, Tourettes-afflicted vagrants and others of their ilk think that it should be an object of derision.
   The Hot Colonnade, as the burnt-out lighted E and L would have you call it, was around from the 60s until the late 80s when it was replaced by a faceless office tower.
 The beaut was designed by legendary Montreal personality, friend of Coolopolis and former architect Michael Fish. Sometimes walking east on Dorch you could see people wandering naked in front of their windows or not really but if they did you would.
   In 84 the hotel failed to pay its bills and someone else took it over and rechristened it boring old Hotel Crescent and it was demolished a few years later.

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