"Any ideas on what a good concept for Maz's should be when it reopens?" asked new owner Peter Sergakis."No I don't. Sorry. But I liked the karaoke nights," said I.
"Grumble, grumble," said Sergakis.
I had that exchange a few months back with restaurant/bar owner Peter Sergakis, who had recently purchased the dilapidated Maz bar next to NDG Park.
Other solid bar owners had kicked the tires on the bar but had found that the numbers did not justify what it would take in renos.
See also: Save Maz!
Sergakis, who owns countless bars, restaurants and nightclubs, was undaunted and injected cash into a Coyote Ugly-type bar, which has stirred much interest since a promo video went online.
For those unfamiliar with Coyote Ugly, it's a movie about a bar where free-spirited feisty young bartenders dance around on the bar wearing cowboy boots and hats and jeans and vamp around in a highly-confident dominant manner.
This is in no way a strip club, as such establishments require a special license permitting nudity.
The only possible objection to such a bar might be that dancing on a slippery bar looks a little perilous. However someone named Mary Jane Caro went on to Facebook to denounce the project: "I'll agree that Maz was hardly Downton Abbey, but it wasn't 'here's a shipping container of illegal sex workers out back' either."
Huh? Shipping container of illegal sex workers?
Mary Jane Caro also suggested that this bar would drive down property values and had no place near a school, even though a bar has been there for about 60 years. She even suggested that her outrage should be worthy of mainstream media coverage.
This aggressive nimby call of the wild was apparently sufficient to persuade the city councillor Peter McQueen to oppose the bar.
McQueen said that both he and the party he represents oppose the bar, although another Projet Montreal party official I spoke to could not confirm that the party opposes this bar.
"Projet Montreal is working to mobilize the community against this type of bar," he wrote on his Facebook page.
It would be interesting to get him to define what he means by "this type of bar."
Undoubtedly McQueen would prefer a government funded food-bank granola bar that serves kale to bicycle-riding single mothers, but we live in a world that tolerates diversity last I looked. (Incidentally McQueen recently expressed fierce opposition to extending Cavendish Blvd, which is also possibly worth noting).
Of course bars have been closing left and right around Montreal for many years due to nimby pressure from noise-complaining neighbours, a trend which has also coincided with a drop in U.S. tourism and an increase in Americans thinking that Canada is boring.
Should bars be banned?
Banning a bar is a practice that raises ethical and economic questions.Landlords are denied the right to rent out their property when municipalities ban bars, yet that same municipality will still demand the property tax from that landowner.
In the past municipalities derived tax revenues directly from businesses through a business tax. Now they just collect it directly from landlords, so municipalities no longer have any need to encourage businesses, which has led to many more empty storefronts around the city.
When bars are not permitted, other levels of government lose revenue in terms of GST/PST, so social programs suffer when legit commerce is denied.
Banning bars is also a slippery slope when it comes to corruption.
A few years ago the Cote des Neiges/Notre Dame de Grace borough banned new bars in almost the entire borough, a borough so large it would be Canada's 30th biggest city.
The ban conferred a major advantage to already-existing bars, so such a ban represents a gift to certain entrepreneurs.
Such bans also encourage bribery, as any entrepreneur wishing to get an exemption from the ban might consider reverting to attempting bribery.
Over-exuberant policing has also played a role in the anti-bar oppression in the West End, as a bar on Decarie recently lost its long-held right to have nude performances based on occurrences that did not lead to permanent bans in other cases.
Unfortunately there is still no charter of human rights-style protection in existence to protect people and businesses from zoning and bylaw abuse by politicians and police.
It would be nice if borough politicians would put their energy into more interesting and relevant pursuits, such as saving the Snowdon Theatre, or creating 200 parking spaces by laying some slabs atop the Decarie Expressway north of Queen Mary, a worthy project that politicians in the area have failed to address.