Slumming on St-Catherine
by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR
I like slumming and
I figure one of our most gratifying local ghetto strolls starts at
Ste-Catherine and Iberville because of the undeniably gross Loud
House, which is noted in large letters in an abandoned storefront
window. My tour begins as a leather punk ushers his leashless pitbull
amid rotten bananas and dog poop on the sidewalk through a glass door
that is currently without glass. No false advertising here, the
hardcore din above is loud even from the busy street below.
At small junkshop around the corner, four elderly men are doing not much of anything, including a chubby guy gyrating nonstop in a rocking chair and an obese owner too important to bother with customers. A perkier hangabout and myself discuss my notion that one can kill an attacking dog by 1- getting it to bite your padded forearm, then 2- slipping your other forearm around its neck and jerking pulling it inward. He’s skeptical.
Next door is Les Courtisanes which features $2.01 cups of coffee served by a hardened, dark-haired waitress naked but for five tattoos and a bédaine-obscuring piece of lingerie. The lack of a hairnet over her southern tuft is more troubling than arousing and my appetite for decrepitude leads me east over an interminable bridge spanning rail yards and bright orange Gaz Met trucks. At Préfontaine, the infamous building locally famous for its many crack hookers offering bargain sexual favours is no more: it’s boarded up now, a victim of a fire three weeks ago. The corner is also known for the putrid stench of a nearby molasses factory and the sweet reggae music from a nearby recording studio but today the only approximation of life is three men slumped in front of videopoker at a nearby tavern.
21 year old guy will clean homes, reads a sign in a dépanneur, one of the few east end enterprises that regularly defy the empty store front epidemic. Next door at a spiffy computer shop a young salesman proves reluctant to buzz me in. Further on, a junkstore sign makes the philosophical proposition Usagé ne veut pas dire usé: “crap doesn’t mean crappy.” Near Darling Street (many street signs are in English only, although someone has attempted to white-out the offending terms) I poke my head in a storefront which turns out to the home of a presentable young man who suggests that the neighbourhood is in the process of rejuvenation. Yet there seems more commercial survival than revival, as evidenced at Alywin where a well-lit herb shop is buzzing with aged attendants in white lab coats who serve east enders eager for medicinal remedies. Seven popes and one Jesus adorn the walls.
Abandoned TV rental and pawn shops ensue as does as a defunct lingerie shop called La Place a Johnny, whose memory is noted only by a laughably crude sign. Weathering the decline of the east is an unconsciously-retro bowling alley at Aylwin. The tiny, immaculate two-floored, dozen lane facility has been there “for many years” according to the woman tending the steel grill at the snack bar. She says that dozens have bowled perfect 300s there this year, and it’s my turn to be skeptical.
A wood’n’wicker antique wheelchair chained to a parking meter is the spooky emblem marking the debut of a row of antique shops. Unfortunately the nearby river is blocked by Notre Dame (slated to become another dug in trench-like highway) and the fenced off port. The only tall building in the area that might have offer a view of the St. Lawrence is positioned directly in front of the hideous Miron hangar.
At Davidson I’m lured by Jean’s Casse-Croute an old-style diner where I order what’s described as a Chessesburger featured on a fluorescent-backlit white panel with badly painted renditions of burgers and fries. I tell the waitress, who wears a red polyster uniform top, that I like these old-fashioned places. A couple of patrons laugh and repeat what they obviously consider a left-handed compliment but the waitress doesn’t seem bothered one bit. Comments? kgravy@cam.org