Shots and Corners
Before I left Montreal, my geography geek friend Sam Imberman organized an event for all of the other geography geeks he knew. He called it “Shots and Corners.” For three hours, we walked through Little Italy, Outremont, Mile End and the Plateau to visit everyone’s favourite streetcorners.
We honoured each corner with a toast and a shot of various types of liquor. My corner was the intersection of Groll Avenue and the laneway between Esplanade and Jeanne-Mance, which I picked partly because I like the way it looks and partly because I’m the kind of annoying person who has a preference for the obscure. (My drink, in case you’re curious, was gin.)
I thought of this today after I found out that Google Street View has finally launched its coverage of Canadian cities. I’d been waiting for this for a long time, because it lets me vicariously explore places I haven’t been to (or revisit those I have).
So to commemorate Street View’s expansion, here are three of my favourite Canadian corners. St. Viateur and Waverly, which you see above, is where I feel most at home. There’s terraces on all four corners and a great view of St. Michael’s. It’s the epicentre of Mile End streetlife and it distills most of what I love about the neighbourhood into a single intersection.
Below is Augusta and Baldwin in Toronto’s Kensington Market. I like it because its combination of narrow streets, commercial bustle and clutter is unlike anything else in Canada. It’s reminiscent of the haphazard, small-scale backstreets of Asian cities like Seoul, Taipei, Macau and Bangkok, where signs compete for attention, shops spill into the street and buildings have evolved and expanded informally.
Finally, there’s Hastings and Main, which is the quintessential Vancouver corner. Its architecture is a reminder of the cocksure early years of a frontier metropolis, but its streetlife is something different altogether, a combination of drug addicts, Chinatown shoppers and people transferring from one bus line to another. There’s an open-air drug market in front of the beautiful Carnegie Library on the southwest corner, but it’s not an unfriendly place; there’s often music and people dancing.
Tags: Downtown Eastside, Exploring the City, Google Street View, Kensington Market, Mile End, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver
Montreal Apartments
Sam Imberman says:
One wonders whether they’ll ever launch Google Alley View. I smell a project…
October 9th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Christopher DeWolf says:
Google’s already there. Its coverage of Vancouver includes many alleys:
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October 9th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Patrick Donovan says:
This is my favourite corner in Quebec City – the lively heart of Saint Jean Baptiste with old specialized grocery store, middle-eastern grocery, pharmacy, health food store, good café, gelato shop, neighbourhood library in the Anglican church and… well… a Piazetta chain restaurant (although it IS the first of the chain, whatever that’s worth).
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But now I’m in Montreal, so I’d probably vote for this as my favourite corner, despite (or maybe because of) the stupid brick cube.
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October 10th, 2009 at 1:08 am