Legends of Beaubien

   Cruise down Beaubien from Park..shift over one block south to stay on the strip... an oft-overflowing brasserie east of the Main...Depanneur PIF... church double-spired vista from St. Denis... onwards to more semi-somnolence..to the brief rubberneck-worthy Beaubien Cinema (near where Nadia Comaneci briefly lived) and then 16 acres of park and schools between 16th and 20th to Pie IX and the too-bright, Beaubien Deli with its slow waitresses and the fish joint that looks empty because it IS empty, the catchy bell-spired church... a downward slope with a concrete Quebec-sait-faire SAQ, as the street slowly narrows then rewidens and at Languedoc goes 6-lane strip-mall and white-brick Italian lowbuilds until Langelier where you hear the threnody for the scrappy strip as the sleepy hollow of parks, cemeteries and tall condo towers takes over until, finally after four kilometres, Beaubien ends at the highway to the tunnel.
   The corner of Langelier is where the last-gasp of hustle is on Beaubien and that's about where - since about 1980 - Legends, at  6440 Beaubien E. has slung its brew to the thirsty from the end of a 20-store strip mall called Atanar Place, mirrored on the other side of Beaubien by a similar jammed-in commercial strip.
   Some media are now hinting that recent events at the bar have made it ground zero for a possible future underworld showdown, as presaged in a brazen attempted robbery.

Poulin-Agostino

   That part of the east side - (it's technically in the borough of Hochelaga Maisonneuve Mercier) has fallen into a power vacuum after strongman Guiseppe Ponytail De Vito killed himself in prison with cyanide (the same Ponytail whose whose wife was found guilty of killing their two daughters.)

Bagui - killed in stabbing

   Legends had its first online dealings with the law in December 2001 when a cop noted that manager Francois Alaimo (brothers Joe Cammisano and Charlie Cammisano had owned the place from the start) had been seen with a convicted drug-dealer named Dominique Mule.
   In Nov. 2009 customers chased out a guy who was packing a gun. A few months later a big fight led to the arrest of a guy named Dany Lafleur. Then a drunk customer was found badly beaten outside and two were arrested. In March 2010 another gun-packing customer was reported and cops busted Martin Amyot for parole violations but couldn't find a weapon.
   Small stuff, but it picks up.
  In March 25, 2010 four were arrested after someone was shot in the bar. François Heng was charged with attempted murder, while Roberto Eden Piche Orantes, Rudis Castillo and Badr Khadir were charged with lesser crimes.
   The next month someone broke in after hours and stole $809 and in a separate incident, another report of a customer with a gun was called in but once again no gun was found.

Top row: Faustin, Sanon. Bottom: Polynice, Francis

    On 2 October 2010 just as the bar was closing at 3 a.m. a big fight broke involving about 15 people spilled out into the parking lot where Jonathan Poulin Agostino, 23, allegedly stabbed Abdou Bagui, 21 to death. Kevin Tunis and Thierry Ferdinand were also arrested in the case.
    The young Algerian victim was not thought to be involved in any sort of street gang and a big parade of his friends conducted a spontaneous march through the area the next day.
   The key event in this whole tapestry of drunken drama and occasional weaponry occurred when the Bloods - more specifically part of Unit 44, the elite group launched by now-deceased Harry Mytil - allegedly held the place up with a fake gun on January 23 at closing time and took off with $10,000.  
  Police shared a brief surveillance videotape with media and Jules-Marie Beaucicault, 31 and Ghandi Estimé, 29, were arrested.
   Four others are also being sought for the same crime: Bernardin Polynice, who was suspected of leading the heist, as well as Jean-Luc Sanon, Danny Francis and Leonard Faustin Etienne.

   The six, according to La Presse, were close to Mytil's associate Edrick Antoine, known as The American.
   Antoine was among those charged with killing Raynald Desjardins' right-hand man Gaetan Gosselin in January 2013. Raynald Desjardins, the ex-Rizzuto Mafioso suspected of leading an anti-Rizzuto uprising and who is now in prison.
  The current owner of the Legends, according to La Presse, is a 28-year-old who survived an attempted murder last summer and who was also acquitted on charges of hiding guns in his walls.