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| Upon a visit in 2011 |
It wasn't fancy or huge but it was my favourite-ever place to live. The small building had been an illegal drinking joint long ago and there was at least one wild fight between cops and boozers at the blind pig in 1948, which saw people flee and toss bottles at cops.
The ground floor of the $300 apartment was vacant storage space and nobody lived nearby. Through this splendid central isolation I met a downtown Montreal of extremes: vagrants and tourists, strippers and office workers. The area was occasionally quiet and lonely and but usually abuzz with drones and queens.
The Chinese buffet discarded unwanted food into five foot high clangoriffic green metal dumpsters, it sometimes fed members of the fearlessly omnivorous subset of homeless that could snack on half-eaten eggrolls.
The apartment had a tiny bedroom which became a walk-in closet and a Montreal-issue double living room, plus a full kitchen. It came with a bathroom complete with a long four-legged tub and low water pressure that turned bathing into a long-term commitment. The bath doubled as a washing machine as there was no place to do laundry anywhere nearby. A rickety wood balcony off the kitchen offered a view onto a gloomy enclosed courtyard.
The absence of neighbours allowed me to blare The Chronic, Doggystyle and Above the Rim as loud as my four-foot Sony speakers would allow. When bored by the free cable TV that Videotron forgot to unplug I'd watch a thousand shrieking seagulls invade the empty lot Sunday mornings or peer at the strippers parking their Corollas for their evening shifts at one of the three adjacent peeler clubs, their telltale gym bags betraying all attempts at sweatsuit transitory discretion.
Being 60 feet from the sidewalk made the apartment difficult to locate, so ordering a pizza from Angelo's required describing the "green door behind the parking lot."
The Mandarin Buffet constantly stuck its dumpsters under my window which stunk up the apartment and made a REM-destroying racket when the truck came for the garbage at 4:00 am. I couldn't close the window as the landlady, an elderly Eastern European named Mrs. Sobko, banned air conditioning fearing that the electrical wiring was inadequate.
I convinced city councillor Georgina Coutu to install two potted trees and a cement planter to prevent the buffet staff from rolling its movable former feast to a spot beneath my window. In exchange for the planters I vowed to tend to the foliage. When a rowdy bunch of drunks snapped off a branch of my little tree I dashed down and raged against the entire gang. I screamed so fiercely that they started to turn to confront me. I stood my ground, warning them that if they didn't walk on I'd call 911 and displayed the cordless phone in my hand. Two empty tree planters remain but the oval planter is long gone. Georgina Coutu died a year or two after our deal.
One day my 18-speed bike, locked to that tree box, was crushed by a hit-and-run car passing in the alley. I realized that in an attempt to get the maximum possible space for sleeping vehicles, the lot had expanded onto the alleyway, forcing cars through the narrow passage. I displayed a map to city bureaucrats proving that the lot had illegally encroached on the city lane. But a hostile clerk ridiculed me for playing "junior detective" and my grievance was dismissed.
My humble home sat in Montreal's cartographic bullseye. I could get to Peel and St. Catherine - the crossroads of Canada - in a 40 second nose-pinching dash through a grease-stained alleyway off Stanley. Unlike the Plateau where I had lived seven years previously, which was wallpapered with self-involved hipsters, downtownitarians were shiny and excited. I loved no longer being constantly exposed to the same tragic artsy layabouts lingering aimlessly. Downtowners had cash and sported fresh new clothing. The girls were pretty, they smiled and their hair perfumed.
Parking for free was inconceivable. I once parked briefly in one of the parking spaces next to my front door. The spot belonged to the Omer De Serres art supply store. My transgression prompted the owner to storm out and order me to displace my wheels. I told him that I lived next door. "So what?" he asked. I replied slowly and ominously with full implied threat: "I... watch... your... cars." He shut up and returned inside.
My world lay within reach. Lucien L'Allier and Peel metros were a short stroll away. My job at Bell Canada was four minutes downhill on bike or a nine minute dash through Central Station. Harvey's offered late-night orange vinyl refuge on the corner. One night I awaited a beautiful-thing-burger alongside Kelly Hrudey minutes after he won the opening game of the 1993 Stanley Cup finals.
My living room window offered a vista onto a sprawling concrete lawn and a large, low-key hotel where patrons would munch crustacean in a sub-street level Red Lobster, until it folded in the late 90s. The Blue Angel country bar and its magnificent neon sign was replaced by a hot dog joint. The historic Stanley Rink, the birthplace of modern hockey, long ago sadly transformed into a car rental storage space, sat solidly a few feet south. A narrow basement pool hall run by a Lebanese offered a handy place to bring a girl on a date and there were plenty of dates for a young guy living alone in an isolated downtown apartment. The seductive architecture of the golden square mile was an aphrodisiac, the pounding heart of downtown was my muse and I accomplished a lot there.
Order reigned amid the urban moodiness of mid-90s referendum-era Montreal. But there were moments of unpredictable passion. Once a young man urinated on my door and we entered a fast-escalating verbal showdown as he refused to apologize in front of his girlfriend. During the Stanley Cup riots of 1993 the street filled with mayhem. A short-lived sexy-serveuse joint across the street was flooded with beer. A large phalanx of riot cops assembled in masse under my window. Glass was shattered, bottles tossed, the sturdy Drummond Street sign launched to the ground.
But other happier gatherings such as the St. Patrick's Day Parade were two March snowball tosses away on St. Catherine and the steamy Carfiesta was equidistant on Dorchester.
I never grooved to the Crescent Street bar scene but a nearby video game establishment gave me a place to rotate hips as it housed a pinball machine called Clown Time that would hypnotize me for hours and suck my quarters. Kojax fed me Yiro burgers eaten over employee banter about Dustin Hermanson's many lovers and such things. My bank sat a minute from my door and I'd wait for cash behind TV VJ Sonia Benezra who I bumped into many times.
After starting my family I had no choice but to move on. I almost bought a house on Coursol. Those were going for $105,000-$140,000 in 1998 but I aimed to live as close to Westmount Park as possible. I purchased a 18-foot wide $65,000 bank repo duplex on Addington and Upper Lachine.
As I sought a new tenant I did my best to find someone who could tune into the joy that such a place could bring. I sublet it to my two lovable nieces from Ottawa attending school here. A low-energy third roommate, a pastry chef from the nation's capital eventually became the sole tenant. He was less charming and I was disappointed that he inherited the apartment.
Google does an unfortunate job of showing the apartment but compensates by offering this hilarious gem about 1221 Drummond from 1948.
The ground floor of the $300 apartment was vacant storage space and nobody lived nearby. Through this splendid central isolation I met a downtown Montreal of extremes: vagrants and tourists, strippers and office workers. The area was occasionally quiet and lonely and but usually abuzz with drones and queens.
The Chinese buffet discarded unwanted food into five foot high clangoriffic green metal dumpsters, it sometimes fed members of the fearlessly omnivorous subset of homeless that could snack on half-eaten eggrolls.
The apartment had a tiny bedroom which became a walk-in closet and a Montreal-issue double living room, plus a full kitchen. It came with a bathroom complete with a long four-legged tub and low water pressure that turned bathing into a long-term commitment. The bath doubled as a washing machine as there was no place to do laundry anywhere nearby. A rickety wood balcony off the kitchen offered a view onto a gloomy enclosed courtyard.
The absence of neighbours allowed me to blare The Chronic, Doggystyle and Above the Rim as loud as my four-foot Sony speakers would allow. When bored by the free cable TV that Videotron forgot to unplug I'd watch a thousand shrieking seagulls invade the empty lot Sunday mornings or peer at the strippers parking their Corollas for their evening shifts at one of the three adjacent peeler clubs, their telltale gym bags betraying all attempts at sweatsuit transitory discretion.
Being 60 feet from the sidewalk made the apartment difficult to locate, so ordering a pizza from Angelo's required describing the "green door behind the parking lot."
The Mandarin Buffet constantly stuck its dumpsters under my window which stunk up the apartment and made a REM-destroying racket when the truck came for the garbage at 4:00 am. I couldn't close the window as the landlady, an elderly Eastern European named Mrs. Sobko, banned air conditioning fearing that the electrical wiring was inadequate.
I convinced city councillor Georgina Coutu to install two potted trees and a cement planter to prevent the buffet staff from rolling its movable former feast to a spot beneath my window. In exchange for the planters I vowed to tend to the foliage. When a rowdy bunch of drunks snapped off a branch of my little tree I dashed down and raged against the entire gang. I screamed so fiercely that they started to turn to confront me. I stood my ground, warning them that if they didn't walk on I'd call 911 and displayed the cordless phone in my hand. Two empty tree planters remain but the oval planter is long gone. Georgina Coutu died a year or two after our deal.
One day my 18-speed bike, locked to that tree box, was crushed by a hit-and-run car passing in the alley. I realized that in an attempt to get the maximum possible space for sleeping vehicles, the lot had expanded onto the alleyway, forcing cars through the narrow passage. I displayed a map to city bureaucrats proving that the lot had illegally encroached on the city lane. But a hostile clerk ridiculed me for playing "junior detective" and my grievance was dismissed.
My humble home sat in Montreal's cartographic bullseye. I could get to Peel and St. Catherine - the crossroads of Canada - in a 40 second nose-pinching dash through a grease-stained alleyway off Stanley. Unlike the Plateau where I had lived seven years previously, which was wallpapered with self-involved hipsters, downtownitarians were shiny and excited. I loved no longer being constantly exposed to the same tragic artsy layabouts lingering aimlessly. Downtowners had cash and sported fresh new clothing. The girls were pretty, they smiled and their hair perfumed.
Parking for free was inconceivable. I once parked briefly in one of the parking spaces next to my front door. The spot belonged to the Omer De Serres art supply store. My transgression prompted the owner to storm out and order me to displace my wheels. I told him that I lived next door. "So what?" he asked. I replied slowly and ominously with full implied threat: "I... watch... your... cars." He shut up and returned inside.
My world lay within reach. Lucien L'Allier and Peel metros were a short stroll away. My job at Bell Canada was four minutes downhill on bike or a nine minute dash through Central Station. Harvey's offered late-night orange vinyl refuge on the corner. One night I awaited a beautiful-thing-burger alongside Kelly Hrudey minutes after he won the opening game of the 1993 Stanley Cup finals.
My living room window offered a vista onto a sprawling concrete lawn and a large, low-key hotel where patrons would munch crustacean in a sub-street level Red Lobster, until it folded in the late 90s. The Blue Angel country bar and its magnificent neon sign was replaced by a hot dog joint. The historic Stanley Rink, the birthplace of modern hockey, long ago sadly transformed into a car rental storage space, sat solidly a few feet south. A narrow basement pool hall run by a Lebanese offered a handy place to bring a girl on a date and there were plenty of dates for a young guy living alone in an isolated downtown apartment. The seductive architecture of the golden square mile was an aphrodisiac, the pounding heart of downtown was my muse and I accomplished a lot there.
Order reigned amid the urban moodiness of mid-90s referendum-era Montreal. But there were moments of unpredictable passion. Once a young man urinated on my door and we entered a fast-escalating verbal showdown as he refused to apologize in front of his girlfriend. During the Stanley Cup riots of 1993 the street filled with mayhem. A short-lived sexy-serveuse joint across the street was flooded with beer. A large phalanx of riot cops assembled in masse under my window. Glass was shattered, bottles tossed, the sturdy Drummond Street sign launched to the ground.
But other happier gatherings such as the St. Patrick's Day Parade were two March snowball tosses away on St. Catherine and the steamy Carfiesta was equidistant on Dorchester.
I never grooved to the Crescent Street bar scene but a nearby video game establishment gave me a place to rotate hips as it housed a pinball machine called Clown Time that would hypnotize me for hours and suck my quarters. Kojax fed me Yiro burgers eaten over employee banter about Dustin Hermanson's many lovers and such things. My bank sat a minute from my door and I'd wait for cash behind TV VJ Sonia Benezra who I bumped into many times.
After starting my family I had no choice but to move on. I almost bought a house on Coursol. Those were going for $105,000-$140,000 in 1998 but I aimed to live as close to Westmount Park as possible. I purchased a 18-foot wide $65,000 bank repo duplex on Addington and Upper Lachine.
As I sought a new tenant I did my best to find someone who could tune into the joy that such a place could bring. I sublet it to my two lovable nieces from Ottawa attending school here. A low-energy third roommate, a pastry chef from the nation's capital eventually became the sole tenant. He was less charming and I was disappointed that he inherited the apartment.
Google does an unfortunate job of showing the apartment but compensates by offering this hilarious gem about 1221 Drummond from 1948.
On the same page of the same old newspaper story is the tale of a hit-and-run on Upper Lachine Road
ReplyDeleteNice story. Living downtown is the best although I don't think I could have handled being "that" downtown. I have a real hard time passing through those alleyways without gagging a bit but I've always been a bit of a gagger.
ReplyDeleteAwesome story indeed. God, how I loved downtown and boy were those ever the days. I remember the riot like it was yesterday as I got stuck right in the middle of it being charged by the riot squad. Err, I mean charged like a bull not charged like a criminal. On another note, I lived on Coursol for a few years in the late 80's early 90's.
ReplyDeleteUp until about 1980 or so, that parking lot which your window overlooked was originally occupied by, among others, two stately apartment buildings:
ReplyDeletethe Alsace (1217 Drummond) and the Lorraine (1215 Drummond). Exactly why they were demolished I do not know. If they were structurally unsound, surely the city could have got more tax money by replacing them with new apartments and not a crummy parking lot?
When I first discovered that they had been knocked down,I was very annoyed and saddened because of the memories I'd had of them.
You see, back in the early 1950s
when I was a pre-schooler my parents would take me along to visit some family friends living in the Lorraine, and I remember looking out of the window enthralled whenever the vintage fire engines from station number 25 opposite at 1212 Drummond would sally forth, their sirens blaring!
The Lorraine (and undoubtedly the Alsace as well) also had those old-fashioned by still very
functional "dumb waiters" in the hallway. For those who don't know what a "dumb waiter" is, it's a sort of small, hand-and-rope, pulley-operated elevator used by the tenants to lower their gargage cans down to the basement where the janitor later removes them.
With reference to your linked newspaper article of 1948, for some reason your address of 1221 or 1221A is not listed in the Lovells Street Directory for that year or even around that time period--although it does in fact appear in the time-frame when you lived there. Perhaps "blind pigs" weren't considered to be "official" addresses
way back when. Who knows?
In those "olden" days my father had a regular gig as a musician at the Chez Paree when it was in its heyday as one of Montreal's best nightclubs, along with others such as the Downbeat, The Sahara, the El Morocco, etc. The Chez Paree was run by somewhat shady
characters (fancy that?) but it was very popular back in the day. Indeed, although the performances there today are quite different, the location itself is perhaps the last survivor of a bygone era.
I could never see myself living downtown, though, what with all the noise, pollution, crime, risk of fires, and the prospect of confronting drunks, deadbeats and
drug dealers in laneways behind my home could never appeal to me. To each his own. But then, you did move away in the end.
My friend lived here for 10 years after you. A rare gem indeed.
ReplyDeleteThe Chinese buffet place was a favourite take-out place for the local cops.
ReplyDeleteMany late nights I would park the car in the back lot, go in through the back kitchen entrance and (always) watch the guys prepare the food order. Sometimes, when leaving, my headlights would pick up the gleaming eyes of the rodents going through the nearby garbage bins.
Scary, if you've never experienced it before.
I seem to recall the cops coming around for food now that you say it.
ReplyDeleteBut I can tell you that there were no rats. I know because I walked by there all the time and only once did I see one. I called the city and they had a whole team of rat killers there within minutes. It was an impressive operation.
Could've been just really small raccoons. I didn't stick around to get a closer look.
ReplyDeletelovely reminiscence kristian. glad to see that real estate speculation and landlordism hasn't squeezed the poetry out of you...
ReplyDeleteYou've got skills, loved reading this story!
ReplyDeleteWhile Google Maps does an "awesome" job...I did find this photo by clicking on the pictures uploaded by users (Ok - I then hunted down Mr. DAVE ID from MTL and found it on Flickr...hmm - obsessive much?)
Enjoy!
What a wonderful story!
ReplyDeleteThere are many hidden surprises in Montreal, one of the things that makes it such a captivating place to live.
Amazing - I worked on the corner of drummond for a couple of years and would walk by there quite often and wondered who the lucky person living there was - what i would give to have a cool apartment like that..!
ReplyDelete