The store on the left was where people would assemble to rent movies for many years.
It became an informal cultural centre for people of the area, a busy hive for cinephiles looking for a DVD fix and a place to overhear young couples make disparaging remarks about Adam Sandler movies.
The staff became sorta like family: my fave was the awesome Sarah, a brainiacademic was there for quite some time, lived upstairs and had a baby. There was a cutesy spiky-blonde kid who wasn't quite as friendly but was a mainstay as well about a decade back. Its straight-shooting manager was there less often, he lived a few doors down from me and worked in a bank. In later years there was a skinny black guy with big glasses who was quite helpful as well. I miss 'em all, and have many good memories from dropping in there.
I feel a bit guilty in the Expos way as I liked the place but didn't support it anymore, having stopped renting videos a few years back.
The memories are a bit wistful as well, as I frequently poked around the joint with the tots, playing tag in the aile, buying gumballs (silver foil gets you a free rental) and occasionally grabbing one of the freebie posters from the bin.
The store belonged to the building owner, about whom I know little except that he bought the building in 1985 from Verdun car dealership guy Omer Barre. I have assumed the owner, 9173-0200 QUEBEC INC is someone from the Bitton family, of Buffalo Jeans fame, as there has long been a huge billboard along the side of his wall over the KFC parking lot that. The billboard was deemed illegal in 2006.
Sometime in the early '70s this building was threatened with demolition to become the location of what would eventually become the Vendome metro but nobody had the heart to demolish it, according to what Sam Boskey, who was on the city's transit committee told me. So, of course the metro got built a block south.
The new store seems to be a bike store called Giant complete with a not-very-posh-looking station wagon parked in front.
Of course the stores have changed many time since the building went up in 1929, as the original commercial tenants of the Baroness Apartment building were Sol's Fruit Mart, Geraldine's Fashion Shoppe, Evelyn's Library and Gift Shop.
In the 1980s there was a little old lady running a laundromat at the far east end of that building before she closed down and it was merged with the stereo centre, later the video center you mention.
ReplyDeleteAt the front of that laundromat, she also had a small soda fountain from which she made the most delicious and huge milk shakes that I would take with me to drink on a bench outside the church just to the east.
Never had any milkshakes like it since! I make my own OWN chocolate malteds now. Forget Dairy Queen!
For all my childhood years in the late 70's and 80's, there was an Omer Barre dealership ad painted on the side of that building facing the KFC parking lot, showing the profile of a long beige? brown? 70's looking car. I was sad when they covered that vintage ad over.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't on the Transit Committee, but I became City Councillor (1982) years after the building was saved (around 1974.) For a long time, the owner of the building was John Banks who ran the audio store there.
ReplyDeleteThe building at one point used to contain a Van Houtte store (not A.L. Van Houtte but Christophe VH)
That GIANT shop is one of the few large-manufacturer-owned bike shops around. I'm glad they opened in Montreal.
ReplyDeletethe apartments above are beautiful old relics... High ceilings and tons of character. I hope it survives.
ReplyDeleteSad that John Bank's Audio Centre went by the wayside when he had to step aside for cancer treatments, one of the inevitable problems of a small business without a contingency operations plan. He was married to Brenda Pratscher of JWalterThompson Advertising, bumped into him on a European ski trip 20yrs or so ago aboard the old Esprit Vacations and KLM.
ReplyDeleteI know that skinny black guy with the big glasses. Film student (now graduated.) Lives nearby. Dad was a McGill prof.
ReplyDeleteAcross Sherbrooke from the current KFC, there is a Shell gas station (formerly a "White Rose" gas station - Shell bought them out in the 1960's). There was already a Shell where the Esso is now (SW corner), so for many years there were two Shell stations - one on the SW corner; one on the NE corner. The wall of the building next to the NE Shell had a large painted sign reading "You Can't Beat Gas Heat".
ReplyDeleteAlso never could figure out why the Shell Oil company had TWO rival service stations on opposite sides of Sherbrooke at Decarie.
ReplyDeleteWe used to make bets as to which one would close first. Eventually the one on the southeast corner did, later becoming a KFC fast food franchise.