Godless bohemians running amok

"It'll still look great in thirteen years when you play Derek Smalls in Spinal Tap."

It was a sunny Friday afternoon in June, 1971, when these surreptitious evidence pictures were taken at what was then called the Artists Corner. But don't worry: that was then; we live in the new, improved now. There can be no doubt that the activity depicted in these photographs was decadent, repulsive and vile. Who did these feckless hippies and beatniks think they were, taking over the west side of McGill College, south of St. Catherine, hanging their communist clown velvets on an exterior wall of the Capitol Theatre (gone), a few steps south of Woolworth's (gone), as loitering crowds in need of shoving along had their portraits drawn and generally thought they were having fun? (Gone, gone, gone.) Thank You, Progress! Thank you, voters, for bringing us Mayor Jean Drapeau and his planning Sani-Vac. Today, these layabouts and palm-readers no longer cast their wicked shadows across what is now an exquisitely modern, meditative stretch of homogenous pavement.

"Make me look dangerous."
"He's wax."

"Eat your heart out, Peter Fonda."


"Puff, miss?""One day, this will all be yours. But it won't be here."