Montreal!

sidenote: why do we never do montreal FAPs?

we're at least as cool as Chicago ILX0rs

st henri is cool but kinda isolating in the winter imho

oh, definitely. i have learned to embrace the isolation, although i'm also studying math so it helps not being surrounded by divertissements

get a calculator and enjoy the divertissements!

ha, i thought 'i have learned to embrace the isolation' was re: why no faps. i am not there yet but pro-fap.

ty for your advice. i have to move in a bit of a hurry so i'm hoping some short-term share or convenient one phonecall craigslist thing will crop up. i'm less spooked than i was.

i think we just have dance parties instead of faps here
and when ilxors come to town, sometimes we eat iconic montreal foods together

are you moving here for work or school or etc? shares and sublets are not so hard to find in the summer months (May-Aug), especially as many university students move away

i got my first apartment via a university housing message board 10 years ago - shared with one person in st-henri, stayed there 3 years, my rent was crazy cheap. then got my second apartment, in mile end, where i still live, because a friend was moving away, so i took over her lease. my rent is still pretty cheap. sometimes i think about moving to something bigger. lately though i just want to get rid of half my stuff.

maybe i will need half your stuff? am moving for school in sept, was planning to just bring like a garlic press and a tin opener & some clothes, so i'll have to get it together when i'm over there.

university housing message board sounds promising; i'm semi-alarmed at most return to school things on the horizon but the idea of living w/strangers is pretty high up there. st-henri's nice, or?

anyways, i'm here one more day and found some nice eats, fyi, S1ocki. Aux Vivres is a pretty brilliant vegetarian resto. Smoked coconut in place of pig for a BLT?! what a genius concept and execution. also had wonderful banh mi and Chinese. and i freaking love the beers by dieu du ciel.
gonna hit cheap thrills today in my walking about. cool city, but there is some definite wierdness here in Quebec. crazy people that hate English speakers are way outnumbered, but i've felt their impact (literally got a hard shoulder check just walking down the street yesterday)....

weird

Is this maybe a not-from-quebec-ppl notice it more sort of thing?

As a (mostly bilingual) Anglo with family from Montreal, I haven't noticed anti-Anglo hostility in Montreal in eight years living here. Part of me thinks that the narrative about QC is so linguistically-focused in the rest of Canada/the media that people are more likely to interpret any sort of brusqueness as related to that. I dunno. But then again, the longer I live here, the more I become a crazy person who hates English speakers - specifically here-for-four-years college students from Toronto or New York or whatever who by the end of their stay still can't order fast food in French and obnoxiously make a scene about how *ridiculous* it is that there are people in Quebec who don't speak English. And I suspect a lot of those tensions have to do with class divisions between non-Quebecois university students and the rest of the population of the city/province.

But even then, for me, it's not really hatred for English speakers so much as frustration at people's lack of curiosity? I know too many people who parachuted in here to partake in the 'cultural scene' and never bother to explore the other half of the cultural scene, which is just as rich as the Anglo stuff that gets national attention.

Alot of the anti-Anglophone sentiment dissipated after (since revoked) laws banning English from signage/advertising and threats of Quebec secession wreaked havoc on the economy and made mainstream Quebecers realize the whole anti-English thing was a bad idea.

it's been almost 10 years since i moved to Montreal and i'm still not fully bilingual (to my own shame but my efforts have been inconsistent), and i really do embrace the cultural/language difference now. it took a while, like, i did feel alienated for a bit in the beginning, but i think that was more cultural than language, plus i was in grad school, which is just an alienated experience as a whole imo. I came from BC, knew very little about Quebec, had been to Montreal twice but only for a day each time when i was younger, but I also really wanted to get away from BC and Montreal was the only place that really appealed in a major way.

i almost always order in french except if i'm at a known anglo establishment (Schwartz's, etc)
haha i also have become that same crazy person, alex! even though i'm a big huge anglo!
eeesh, when i get back home next week, i'm going to make a point of finding a language partner again

that's cool that you are moving here for school, schlump! it's a good reason to move here, esp if you don't stay in the schoolzone all the time.
st-henri is nice enough, though quiet. some people really like it and pointe st-charles (in same area). the climbing gym i go to is in pointe st-charles, which is cool. there aren't a ton of things to do there, but the canal is really nice in summer for cycling and walking, and the atwater market is good too. it's all just kind of quiet really. i would always end up taking a cab home at 3am from mile end and the plateau, where the shows and bars are, or i would bike in summer, of course. only place i would avoid living would be downtown, but some people are into that mayhem. some people also like verdun, but it's further away than st-henri/pt-st-charles and even quieter. i do think about moving further up (little italy, rosemont, park ex). and yet... there is something so awesome about stepping out my door and running into people i know 5 minutes away, especially during my anti-social winter moods.

i've been away from montreal for almost 3 weeks! i miss it.

i would move to montreal in a heartbeat if i could find a good job in my field. little chance of that unfortunately.

Montreal is my favorite city and I'd love to move there but I'm already poor enough in the crappy city I live in, so Id hate to imagine how poor I'd be living in an expensive city.

who said it's an expensive city? that's crazy! i have a friend who right now on facebook is casting around for a $300 apartment haha

^^

Montreal

i would move to montreal in a heartbeat if i could find a good job in my field. little chance of that unfortunately.

I'm sure they have pedants in Montreal just like everywhere else, but it's a competitive market for sure.

a six-pack of local beer in vancouver is $14 w tax. a six-pack of local beer in montreal is $10 w tax.
i rest my case.

and by w i mean incl

that's cool that you are moving here for school, schlump! it's a good reason to move here, esp if you don't stay in the schoolzone all the time.
st-henri is nice enough, though quiet. some people really like it and pointe st-charles (in same area). the climbing gym i go to is in pointe st-charles, which is cool. there aren't a ton of things to do there, but the canal is really nice in summer for cycling and walking, and the atwater market is good too. it's all just kind of quiet really. i would always end up taking a cab home at 3am from mile end and the plateau, where the shows and bars are, or i would bike in summer, of course. only place i would avoid living would be downtown, but some people are into that mayhem. some people also like verdun, but it's further away than st-henri/pt-st-charles and even quieter. i do think about moving further up (little italy, rosemont, park ex). and yet... there is something so awesome about stepping out my door and running into people i know 5 minutes away, especially during my anti-social winter moods.

i've been away from montreal for almost 3 weeks! i miss it.

― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 04:24 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hey ty! for the st-henri lowdown also. also interesting knowing about your history of linguistic integration; i figure i should live in a french-er neighbourhood, because i learn better with cues & would feel better once i'd got the basics of being able to order stuff and talk a little down, at least to a degree of demonstrably making an effort. i live in a town where you see your boss & friends & former lovers & previous landlords &c&c&c every time you leave the house, and that can be a little much, sometimes, but it's kinda good to live in a hub once you move somewhere. i planned on disguising myself as a non-grad-school attending resident, as much as is possible, and being off campus. i will gratuitously turn to this thread to liveblog & q&a my move.

what school?

I'm sure they have pedants in Montreal just like everywhere else, but it's a competitive market for sure.

Ha, was this a direct response to me?

slocki: mcgill, i am pretty excited. hey i was wondering, actually, i thought you might be a useful-montreal-person to sound out what the cinemas are like. i know toronto's the big film city, & i know that there's a really good mostly-french cinema in town, but what are the others like? is there anywhere with a particularly interesting/reliable/eclectic programme?

our cinema situation is pretty sad these days but check out cinéma du parc. the amc forum, which is one of the big box theaters, actually has some of the best indie programming in canada (according to some distributors/programmers i know). also check out the cinéma parallèle, which mostly but not exclusively shows french stuff.

Am I wrong in thinking the NFB has some events? I know the headquarters is in Montreal and I was thinking I saw a flier for something or another.

btw as I mentioned on another thread, I'll be in mtl at the end of May, probably going to wander around the city a bit more

dude... its heartbreaking, the nfb downtown center and cinema is being closed thanks to fuckface harper's fucking fucker budget cuts

so thanks for BRINGING IT UP

u might want to also look at the cinémathèque québécoise's schedule, kind of a crapshoot but often great stuff

I didn't know! Fuck, that blows.

I think I took a picture of it previously because lol boards of canada

btw I am not related to the canadian Harper family of note, lest you think I'm bringing this up to spite

NFB is getting closed? fuckin' hell. I only have so much rage left in me after they cut the budget for the Native Friendship Centre in Montreal and the National Aboriginal Health Organization.

And the new immigration bill.

And and and and and.

Sigh.

You still have so many nice cultural institutions, though!

I won't let you in on the secret about booze prices, though. I will continue letting you all think they're reasonable.

the nfb ITSELF isnt getting closed, thank goodness, just the downtown cinema/robotheque.

oh and 10% of everything else.

yeah, sorry. i understood. i just meant - that little cinema room thing was awesome.

ya man i had several flix play there, both at fests and at cast/crew screenings (for the latter it was really the only affordable screening room in town)

It's also fun that the nfb offices are above the 40. and that now they'll have zero downtown presence.

good times these days for national arts institutions/funding bodies... ugh.

I also hate how this govt makes me so sarcastic.

dude... its heartbreaking, the nfb downtown center and cinema is being closed thanks to fuckface harper's fucking fucker budget cuts

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Tuesday, April 10, 2012 2:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what. the. fuck.

god, why hasn't someone fucking slaughtered harper already.

from what I understand, there are plans to move the entire NFB downtown in about 4 years time, and this will probably include a new cinema/robotheque type place. At least this is what a guy who works for the NFB told me.

They have filled his head with pipe dreams.

i also hate stephen harper for making rrrobyn sarcastic :(

because ilx wasn't working on that already!

I go to Montreal tomorrow for a week or so, MTL ILXors please help me out with a couple of questions. Mostly doing work stuff but I might go see Nina Nastasia at Casa del Popolo on Thursday? Anyways:

- Is the Parc du Mont-Royal a good place to go running?
- My French is ok but not amazing (I expect I won't understand the Quebecois accent too well), I assume most tourist-facing Francophones will end up speaking English to me but is it a good idea to "make the effort"?
- Tuesday night I'll be looking for somewhere to go hang out with a bunch of conference people: preferably downtown-ish, open late, laidback/not too hipstery, good beer would be a bonus. Any ideas?

Pro tip: many "tourist-facing francophones" (aren't they all, har har har) are actually bilingual anglophones who will initiate a customer service interaction in French because it's their job to do so. Don't get upset if someone doesn't reply to you in French. They may not, in fact, be French themselves. My advice if you wish to try out a bit of French would be to keep your customer service and tourism French to "bonjour" and "merci" and find a local friend to converse with. Busy customer service people are not paid to humour your fantasies of language proficiency.