The Writing's On The Wall.

While I'll admit the closest I've come to graffiti is watching an ex boyfriend buy spray paint, and am thus no expert on the genre, I'm very much enjoying the abundance of paint on the walls of various Montreal buildings. It takes roughly 12 minutes to walk from my flat to university, and all the photos in this post were taken in that short stretch of Rue Sainte Catherine between Rue Saint Urbain and Rue Sanguinet. In London, it feels as if the only area street art is welcome/accepted/common is the Brick Lane/Shoreditch area, an area that's a bit self-consciously hip, like. Montreal, on the other hand, has street art everywhere. This is just Part One of my street art odyssey in my new city.




I thought this was cool, just because the building stands in complete isolation of any other buildings, and the art totally covers the side:

Another one on the side of a huge building. How frickin' detailed is that?:

I couldn't get it all in, but if you see this in real life, it's actually the wall of a mosque that they're building at the moment. The dome is there, but it's covered in some kind of paper. I just thought it was neat that the mosque clearly commissioned this, which I guess you wouldn't see in England:

These next few are just down little alleys down the side of shops/in a car park:

 Annnnnnd I liked this one because it's on the side of a Vietnamese restaurant, and I like the fact the owner wanted it there:

I'm going to scope out some more areas of Montreal with lots of art, and hopefully this will be the first of many posts celebrating the city's walls!
xx

Tamtams: It's Like A Park, But With Added Bongo.

Summer Sundays in Montreal see all of humanity head to the monument to Sir George-Etienne Cartier for an outdoor hand-drum party known as the tamtams. The weather today was an amazing 30degrees, and boy, could you tell. The shade of the trees was the only place to be, and when a guy came around handing out free popsicles, the only answer was YES [but not to the grape flavour one]. Free things seem to be a recurring feature of Montreal: only this morning we had been given a free bottle of Coke Zero and a few bars of Hershey's chocolate when we came out of the Metro. I ain't complaining. Meanwhile, back at the tamtams, everyone was happily co-existing, taking in the music and passive-smoking weed. It has such a laid-back atmosphere, and anywhere that people are giving out free ice lollies has got to be a nice place to while away a Sunday afternoon.

Photographic evidence of drum action:

And there were some totally rad juggling guys:

But everyone's highlight was blatantly the dog in a dress:

 Purple gingham suits her better than the average human.
xx

The View From Up Here.

We had the noblest intentions of walking up Mont Royal to watch the sun set but, perhaps wisely, we caught a bus up the mountain instead. At the top, the sun was just setting, casting an amazing pink light over the city.

Picnic-ing at the top of Mont Royal and watching the city turn into a landscape of twinkling lights was the perfect end to the day. Who'd want to be anywhere else? The walk back down the mountain was, frankly, terrifying due to a complete lack of lights [I'm talking no lights at all], but Emma and I held our own against the scary darkness and made it to the plateau in one piece. Maybe one day when it's less hot and humid, I'll scale the mountain.
xx

Le Village People.

Having been here for 3 days, we decided it was time to venture into Le Village. The stretch of Rue St. Catherine between Berri-UQAM station and Rue Papineau is the Montreal equivalent of gay London's Old Compton Street, except.... completely different. In the summer, it's pedestrianised and the wide pavements are covered with 'terrasses' [for the non-Francophones, that's like an outdoor sitting area], and enormous red roses are strung up between the lamp-posts all the way down. Given that we'd walked past it before and seen they had a poster for a night called 'Popstars', we decided that Sky Bar would be the right place to scratch the itch to be at Popstarz on a Friday night. After a drink on the terrasse, we headed inside, partially to stalk a group of McGill Froshers [no one knows why they call it that.... 'frosh' is most certainly not a word] and woo them with our accents and there we found the veritable wonders of a drag show.

Essentially 4 of Montreal's most fabulous drag queens in the most divine outfits, lip-syncing and dancing to camp classics. Wonderful. The highlight? DEFINITELY our favourite queen + 2 gorgeous dancers bustin' a move to Lady Gaga's 'Telephone'. For your viewing pleasure:

It would appear the rumours are true: Montreal is a great place to be gay.

See y'all soon- I'm working on some posts that are more photo-centric to show the weird diversity of the architecture and the abundance and amazingness of the street art.
xx

Going Underground.

In honour of the fact that I've spent a lot of time in the Montreal Metro today, the first picture will be of Mont-Royal Metro Station.

Not very inspiring, I know, but I suppose that's been the problem with our first day in Montreal. Due to the fact we had several boring tasks to accomplish, we ended up seeing only the dullest parts of town by day. In the evening, we were lucky to be able to head towards Sherbrooke/Mont-Royal to see more of what I was expecting from Montreal. The area we're living and studying in is a little bit soulless, but that just makes us all the more excited to explore other parts of town in the days and weeks to come!
xx