Montreal!

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.

Busy customer service people are not paid to humour your fantasies of language proficiency.

Sure, they're not "paid" to do so, but decency-- not to mention a desire to propagate a language-- would suggest that it's a better to encourage new French speakers, not discourage them?

But otherwise OTM.

Thanks for tips. I'm less interested in trying out my French than in not pissing anyone off.

in my experience i didn't understand a blinking word of the Quebecoise French and got the impression they felt exactly the same about the French i learned in school, save for merci, i reckon

Sure, they're not "paid" to do so, but decency-- not to mention a desire to propagate a language-- would suggest that it's a better to encourage new French speakers, not discourage them?

At a systemic level, "desire to propagate a language" works out to tax credits and socialized childcare so that white francophone women will have more babies. The only people in Quebec who believe that being able to order a sandwich in French constitutes propagation of the language are McGill students from USA, tourists, and people posting on message boards. The people making your sandwiches, increasingly, don't give a fuck about French anyway and only speak it well enough to take someone's sandwich order.

I know no French and have been running around speaking English w/no probs.

The park would be good for running if you like hills!

@fields I agree with everything you're saying, re: service industry professionals. And your advice is sound. My experience with bilingual Quebeckers-- my family, for example-- has been that many have a profound lack of patience with anybody who is not already fully fluent in the Quebecois dialect. I don't take issue with it but myself try to be more patient with new French speakers

My sister hosted an exchange student as a teen and it was always "bien non speak English" in the guy's face, I was like, really?

So the language thing has turned out to be more complex than I expected - I've spent lots of instances speaking French because English is clearly the dispreferred option.

More important though: where should we go dancing tomorrow/Friday night?

I tried to order Montreal restaurant meals in French a couple of times, but it was apparently obvious I wasn't too fluent because they always responded in English to make it easier for me.

What kind of dancing/music? Did you find a downtown bar for work gathering? What part of downtown? Grand prix is on so I would say avoid crescent st and avoid st-Laurent btwn Sherbrooke and Pins - both are that particular brand of swanky-shitty-painful nightclub scene.

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/montreal-mirror-to-end-publication-tsx-qbr.a-1672679.htm

June 22, 2012 12:42 ET
Montreal Mirror to End Publication

MONTREAL, QUEBEC--(Marketwire - June 22, 2012) - It is with great regret that Sun Media Corporation is today compelled to announce the closure of the Montreal Mirror. The current edition of the free English-language cultural weekly will be its last.

The growing popularity of digital media and communications has irremediably changed the context in which free cultural weeklies operate, bringing about economic challenges which have unfortunately compromised The Mirror's viability.

The closure will result in the layoff of seven employees and the transfer of two more into other parts of the corporation.

Sun Media Corporation sincerely wishes to thank these employees who contributed to making the Mirror a true Montreal cultural and journalistic institution.

i am gutted by this miserable news! this paper was my first glimpse into the montreal music scene, and despite some noticeable downsizing in recent years was still an invaluable source for local news & cultural events of all kinds. it will be dearly missed not only by its readers, but by future generations who will miss out on it

RIP

freakin sucks.
the weekly i worked for shut down 1.5 years ago, and it was because of profit-above-all-else. but business is business. pretty fucked up that we have no english-language weekly paper now when less than 2 years ago we had two.

plus people losing their jobs and freelance gigs, ugh

i don't even know how i can live in this world anymore

i guess it's time to start a(nother) website

i feel like i have 8 different rants i could go on

i hate quebecor for so many reasons but this is too personal, too close to home

it's a massive fuck-you to anglophones and to anglophone tourists imo

but the paper wasn't making money, that's what counts, not politics, business is business, blahblahblah, rmde, it's not like anyone tried to change the business model at the mirror or at hour

it is massively depressing that such a valuable cultural institution could not make enough money to persist, even in a majority french province the need for such a service feels so great, it felt permanent because it was so necessary

the whole reason these weekly papers started in the first place was to give a voice and some PR to up-and-coming music and culture and the creators of that, the stuff that didn't make it into the dailies and magazines/tv. and then they were bought by companies, who for a while let them do whatever they wanted (lol 90s!) and then slowly but surely started to cut sales team attention/hours and thus cut pages, and here we are...

it's also a big fuck-you to journalists in general

as if facebook and bookmarks for 10 different websites can somehow replace the information provided by these papers

okay i think i've hit 4 rant topics already

energy to be channeled!

yes <3

i want to cry dudes

why not, it's a loss, seriously

This sucks real bad.

im so depressed

10 years that place paid my bills

honestly i dont think its a fuck you to anglos, sun media caters to english douchebags all over the country. it's just another sign of total mismanagement. honestly im amazed that the mirror survived as long as it did as a distant outpost of the quebecor empire, the thing they had no idea what to do with. really gotta hand to the EIC for that.

well, i think at the very least sun media looks at its consumers/advertisers base in quebec and says that it's not big/$ enough to warrant certain products, e.g. the mirror.

anyway, it is sad :(
and the state of media these days is something i am trying to think about in a problem-solving way and not an aargh depressing way

sorry, s1ocki :-(

i guess i'm glad i got out when i did... i knew one day i wouldn't have a job anymore, and i wanted it to be my own decision

i blogged about it if anyone cares http://markslutsky.com/post/26018910565/montreal-mirror-1985-2012

i totally care
last paragraph otm!

thx!

yeah that is the saddest part of the whole thing, really

ppl havent really gotten that yet i dont think, having been on the 'front lines' of listings & BOM & soundcheck etc for the early part of my career its quite clear to me thats where the impact will be

Yeah, not having the Mirror for recommendations for Fringe next year, or Pop, or even just weekly 'what i should be doing in town' will make filtering through the hundreds of things going on in the city much more difficult.

there wasn't much fringe coverage this year tho?

honestly facebook sucks

flopson did you ever start FLOP'S ON

haha yeah i did, you mean the dj night right? it's tonight, in fact

yes, that's what you called it in the end.