Bony City

This is the variety of stone that you pass when you walk down rue Saint-Jacques (Saint James Street) in Old Montréal. Each façade has its own textures and rhythms. Stones are the bones of the earth. They are solid and timeless. I still remember my secondary school geography class teaching me about igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rock. I had no idea then how these old boulders could influence the character of a building, a street, or a neighbourhood.

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Night of the Living Dead

The Cinéma Beaubien, which is, along with the Parc, one of the few remaining arthouses in Montreal. Photo by Antoine Rouleau.

On October 27th, like a zombie in a George Romero flick, the Cinéma du Parc will rise from the dead. The Parc closed early last August after seven years as Montreal’s premiere English arthouse, its last remaining repertory cinema and the epicentre of the local cult film scene. Now, its new owner, an old hand in the arthouse biz, has said that he will focus on first-run arthouse and foreign films instead of repertory fare. “If I play Clockwork Orange, it will be part of a retrospective of the films of Stanley Kubrick,” he told the Montreal Gazette last week. “There is no place for repertory cinema with DVDs.”

That’s a shame. Although the list of theatres that have closed over the years is many times longer than the list of those currently operating, Montreal remains a good city to catch a new foreign or independent film. But there is no longer any cinema that offers regular and extensive repertory programming, aside from the government-funded Cinémathèque, despite a clear a demand for eccentric programming. After the Parc closed, a few people formed the Film Club, a weekly gathering at a bar on the Main where people can take in a free flick with cheap beer and popcorn. Cinema Politica, weekly screenings of politically-conscious films at Concordia University and the Université du Québec à Montréal, has proven popular since its launch a couple of years ago.

But these are not replacements for good cinemas; they only speak to the demand for film screenings that are a community event. Cinemas such as the Parc offer this on a permanent basis, although the effect is diluted if the programming becomes less adventurous. Even that, the survival of the new, reborn Parc isn’t certain. The life-death-ressurection cycle is common to arthouse cinemas everywhere, but lately, the combination of mainstream mega-cinemas and DVDs seem to be making their struggle to succeed much more difficult. Without them, what then will happen to the cinema-as-social-space, the cinema-as-neighbourhood-landmark?

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In the September Sun

Morning Coffee: Hungarian Pastry Shop

Trying to explain why the Hungarian Pastry Shop is invariably staffed by Ethiopians, or why it sells more Austrian than Hungarian delicacies, is as much an exercise in futility as attempting to dissuade the socialists who scribble incessantly on the cafe’s bathroom wall their clarion calls to revolution. To be sure, were a socialist revolution to break out anywhere in Morningside Heights, uptown Manhattan at its most, perhaps, uptight, it would probably be here and not in the myriad Starbucks lining nearby Broadway. Still, frequenting the Hungarian can be an exercise in observing how gentrification can affect a neighborhood as much internally as imposes pressures from the outside.

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Home Sweet Home Caledonia

Easter Road, EH7

Quebec City Tour #1: Saint-Jean-Baptiste

I would have second thoughts about living in Quebec City if it wasn’t for my neighbourhood: Faubourg Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

Located directly outside the old city walls is this very dense area of rickety working-class homes. Most were built between the 1840s and the early 20th century. Saint-Jean-Baptiste has a grit lacking in other parts of the upper city. Power lines are tangled up like clotheslines across the streets, most of which are too narrow for trees. The neighbourhood is laid out in a grid patterrn on a steep hill, and has consequently been used on many occasions as a cheaper alternative to filming in San Francisco.

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The Other St. Laurent Blvd.

I’m sure most of those interested in urban issues (and many who aren’t) are quite familiar with St. Laurent Blvd. in Montreal. And why not? It’s arguably one of the greatest commercial streets in North America, filled with activity at almost any time of day. Of course what most aren’t aware of is that we have one in Ottawa as well, except that it’s defining traits couldn’t be any more different. A wide, grey expanse cutting across the East End, through some of the most uninspiring industrial and strip commercial districts the city has to offer, along with the largest mall to boot. I had the (mis)fortune to take a friends shift at the East End location of where I work last weekend and had my camera to accompany me on the 25 minute walk from the transitway station.

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Gateways

A walk in the city. A glance to the side. A glimpse of light.

Novgorod, Russia

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Mong Kok Fiction: AC

One Night in Mongkok. Photo by Christopher DeWolf.

Wet. One second standing on the sidewalk, screaming at my cell, flick the clock forward, sopping wet. An air conditioner box exploded over my head. I remember it as a cutting, little slivers of time; first droplet, expected if unwanted, second, began inching towards the street, third, full, and I’m standing in abrupt silence, the phone running water and beginning to buzz. I watched water roll down the LCD for a naked minute before looking up. Rationalize, really, it’s like getting rained on out of nowhere, happens a lot in this city, doesn’t it? Sure the water’s dirty, but don’t kid yourself, so’s the rain. But, rationalizing the real damage was harder — but fuck, the cell phone!

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Marylebone High Street, London

Marylebone High Street after work with dusk just around the corner…

Morning Coffee: Peshawar, Pakistan

Okay, so it’s more like morning tea than coffee. There are two different kinds: the first copper samovar contains the chai found all over South Asia — milky, black, strong, and spiced with cardamom and ginger. The other samovar contains Peshawari kawa, or green tea spiced with cardamom (and… is that nutmeg?). The small pots are mostly sold to other shopkeepers, but there are a few benches to the side to drink on-site. The chai-wallah (tea maker) is constantly busy. He bobs around on haunches and clutches onto the chain to maintain balance: a heaping scoop of sugar starts the mix, followed by the concentrated mixture in the samovar, topped off with some water. A spoon goes clink-clink, and off to the next one. Every so often, a young boy pops up with a tray of empty pots collected around the bazaar, rinses them with hot water, and throws them at the feet of the chai-wallah. Oh, and did I mention I could go for a pot right about now…

An Evening in Chinatown

Montreal’s Chinatown, more than a century old, is small but bustling — almost as if to spite the zoning restrictions and megaprojects that have hindered its growth over the years.

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Lovers and Friends

Forget the damned motorcar and build the cities for lovers and friends.

– Lewis Mumford

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Condo Conversion Done Right?

Storm brewing over the Atwater Market, St. Henri, Montreal

There was a bit of a local controversy last spring over plans to convert Montreal’s former Imperial Tobacco factory and headquarters into condos. The complex, which has stood in the working-class neighbourhood of St. Henri for more than a century, has been empty since 2003 when Imperial shut down the last of its operations, putting several hundred neighbourhood residents out of work. Then, much to the surprise of approximately zero Montrealers, in stepped a developer with ambitious plans to convert the former cancer factory into condos.

One evil replaced by another, right? That was certainly the line of thought propagated by local housing activists, who took an all-or-nothing approach and demanded that the city buy the factory and convert it entirely into social housing. Otherwise, they threatened, they would shut the project down by forcing a local referendum on the issue. (Last May I wrote a Maisonneuve column on the issue, which you can read here.) They failed. The project is going ahead as planned and, soon, St. Henri will be home to nearly a thousand new condo-dwelling residents. Huzzah for gentrification!

But that’s a bit of a simplification. Okay, make that massive oversimplication. Because the Imperial Tobacco project is actually a model of how old brownfield sites should be converted into residential use.

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