Montreal!

Haha ice skating, I mean

hrmm yeah doesn't seem like there's much going on this weekend

where is the best cheap place to stay in mtl is what i want to know

i may as well go there

we're neighbors basically

gbx I don't know, I even think of that as something that ~cannot be known~ by the contemporary residents of a city, but def come hang in Montreal whether or not you are a neighbour. if I were to describe what it's like here anytime between like one week from now & April you wouldn't come, so just jump in, don't even talk to hoteliers who might let something slip by phone, just book a trip, commit

u can stay at my place, my roommate's sublettin

flopson do you want to get a drink this wknd? i sent you my cell #

didn't get it i think my ilxmail's fucked 1 sec

sent you my number

gbx I don't know, I even think of that as something that ~cannot be known~ by the contemporary residents of a city, but def come hang in Montreal whether or not you are a neighbour. if I were to describe what it's like here anytime between like one week from now & April you wouldn't come, so just jump in, don't even talk to hoteliers who might let something slip by phone, just book a trip, commit

dogg I am from mn yr weather doesn't scare me

cool man let's hang come on over let's say february fifteenth get at me bro

gbx, you should def visit. March 2 is Nuit Blanche, which is ridic but fun if you do it right. let's go bouldering, there's a gym near my place!

hey robyn i think i'm meeting up w lamp at that show, maybe see u there?

oh cool, I have an xmas party to go to so am playing it by ear but totally want to go!

i am really enjoying winter so far. i hate winter. i was so scared about it, just memories of waiting for buses, waiting to cross streets scrunching your toes. but so far it's been so fine; the wind has not been in my face, i have been wearing regular shoes, the temperature change on the metro has been as inconvenient as it gets. but then TODAY. ugh. just sliding. what happened. sliding forever. so often almost dying.

also: i had a long conversation with my friend about olimpico, the little cosmopolitan nucleus of olimpico, & he said he preferred café social. i was so surprised! & then i sat bolt upright twelve hours later wondering if it was better, if it was like religious bias, the construction of a hierarchy instilled by whichever you visit first. i always thought c.s. was just olimpico but with food & slushy coffee. inferior because it was less ascetic, less pure. but then he talked about it having a better, more authentically grizzled quebecoise clientele. i like the ambient conversation at olimpico. but i doubted myself. does anybody have opinions about this, i feel like it has the dna to become a really excellent partisan division between people who are currently friends.

i have a lot of opinions about this, i've put in time, literally years, at each cafe

me too. I lean in the olimpico direction though because the coffee is better! I used to go to social with boozehound friend because for many years you could buy drinks without having to also buy food (ah the years of lax liquor license monitoring), and their terrasse in summer rules.

Ah it's nice to think about summer...

it is a very very complicated and subtle dichotomy, the Olimpico and Social thing
(it has been made more complicated, I believe, from the decampment of Vito northward to Villeray)

I get Myriade because the baristas are so pleasant and the sun is nice

guy i know who works at myriade is a creep but maybe he doesn't work there anymore

also they have slush coffee at olimpico, too

olympico is a nobrainer for me, maybe i am just yet to have entered my social phase but that always seemed like the too obvious snob challop, like the equivalent of "tourists eat at schwartz's, real heads eat at the main." olimpico on a sunny afternoon just the best place on earth imo

Olympico's slush coffee wins it for me. I don't think I've ever been to either place outside of the summer. Even in the summer, I more enclined to buy bagels and sit at Parc Outremont.

Most of my Olympico/C.S memories have more to do with World Cups and Euro than regular coffee activities.

Montreal residents should build a summer-dome 3000 suqare feet in which to frolic in flowers all year in skimpy retro bathing suits

You—and everyone else, really—should then try Thanjai. Plamandon metro is really not that far... It's still Van Horne, even! You could bike it if you llive at Parc and Bernard (which I assume most of you do). It's South Indian: dosas, the unparalleled rasam, sambar, idli, vada, and all the gang. I've never spent more than 40 bucks for two. It is a charming, charming little place with great food. It's fuckin' spicy so don't bring your student friends (although I always see at least one table of confused people who are always scared of the menu but they are always accommodated as much as as a South Indian resto can accommodate "no spices, no sauce, just chicken please. I don't want any sauce thank you."

― fields of salmon, Sunday, August 18, 2013 6:34 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

went there this past week btw. soooooo good. not that spicy though?? (IME)

In the 12 months I've been eating there I believe they have toned it down a notch.

http://gizmodo.com/explore-more-than-3-000-miles-of-tunnels-beneath-montre-1531576186

find march hard
nice today though

And there's more snow+rain in the forecast for the next few days! March is painful mostly because it seems to promise to be nice and then turns harsh on a dime. It's a good time to be on vacation really. Or at least look at pictures of tropical beaches if you can't go anywhere (I have been doing this, no shame.)

this marsh came in like a lion and is leaving like a bitch

I almost went full nihilist stuck in a cycle of grey freezing-cold days coupled with 24/7 morning-sickness for the past two months. I feel like a survivor today just for leaving the house to do laundry. 12 winters here and i still sometimes ponder leaving because of the weather far more than the politics!

i hate people who went to california but ... i went to california

just because last winter was so hard that i felt like something had to be in the calendar, a picture pinned against the wall & traced with trembling fingers, dustin hoffman in midnight cowboy, or i wouldn't make it til spring. & then actually this winter turned out to be fine? just fine! every day above -30 really just a triumph. less time this year spent waiting for a bus to arrive or a light to change at a windy crossroad, scrunching my toes. it has been okay but yeah, march refusing to deliver on its promise of palpably easing is hard because you've only budgeted enough endurance for february

days like today remind me at least a little of some of the whenever-they-were (april? may?) days last year of prematurely picking up takeout cold brew coffees & people smiling at you on the street, this simultaneous civic defrost. i can't take the subway anymore. but it feels like it'll be over soon, or almost over enough for that delusion to paper over the chill

april promising weather + politics, quick, split

everyday I have the 2 degrees blues

why am i so annoyed by the whole food truck thing here

except for the really good coffee truck, that can stay

which is the good coffee truck? on parc?

food trucks in montreal seem kinda potemkin to me

they're doing it wrong.

(the food truck thing)

basically you can only get a food truck in this city if you already own a restaurant and you promise to put $9 pulled pork sandwiches on the menu.

Most pulled pork sandwiches cost $9 already. The food truck version would be a pulled pork banh mi slider.

Thinking it's time I come back the next month or so.

With Mutek and Suoni Per Il Popolo, should I consider moving to Mtl for end of May/June?

do it! feel like you're simultaneously more & less eligible for the thrill of seeing los angeles plays itself at the cinematheque in a couple weeks but come anyway. montreal is in #full #spring.

also admrl come before i leave montreal forever, soon

yesssssss

whats your deal as of sept adam?

deal as in...?

I will come soon, maybe even in a few weeks. I think Mtl is by far and away my favorite East Coast city, if you even consider it that

Oh I am staying put where I am now, if that's what you mean. I'm in this for the long(er) haul.

I'll be in yr city for a week starting the 26th

my favorite East Coast city, if you even consider it that

if philadelphia can be considered "on the coast," then why not Montreal?

also, i agree.

well finally we agree on something