This longtime cobbler on Monkland went out of biz after a blaze tore through the building on the south side near Oxford sometime in April. There was a heart-warming end to the story as over $3,000 was raised by caring neighbours (mostly the local bank) that really wanted the place to reopen without waiting for an insurance settlement. I find it a lovely story, but yeah, it sorta doesn't make sense to me. Anyway it seems like those donations were wasted, as the joint is still closed many moons later.
This SLUT sign has sneaked by the armies of bureaucrats avidly policing every aspect of our lives here in the Kweeb. Occasionally a voice of resistance pipes up from under the gutters and manages to plant a blissfully subversive message that goes way over the heads of those nitpickers slathering inky criticism onto papyrus affixed to clipboard. This one is on Decarie just north of the Queen Mary.
And will someone please tell me why we've allowed the awful sumac tree to bloom and blow all throughout the island, particularly on the west island? This heart-stopping farmhouse in Ste. Anne's is soiled by the presence of the sumac which is really just a wooden weed.
Howdy!
ReplyDeleteThe Monkland dude is working at a cobbler in Saint Lambert while at the same time looking for a new (affordable) space. Lucille's seems to have turfed him out of his old quarters.
The entire building with Lucille's, the shoe maker, and jeweler is still mothballed. Very little has been done as of yet. All I noticed was a full dumpster carted away.
ReplyDeleteLucille's couldn't have kicked him out as they don't own the building.
I don't know what the long hang up is, perhaps insurance-related.
What's your beef with sumacs? They're a native tree (which a lot of trees in Montreal aren't), they turn a whole range of fantastic colours in autumn, and their fruit is full of vitamin C.
ReplyDeletecan you eat those things on the sumac? I agree their colours are fantastic.
ReplyDeleteThe community raised more than $30,000 for the cobbling husband and wife duo.
ReplyDeleteNobody dropped off a time for the jewellers (who'd bought the place a few months earlier) or the crap Oyster bar or the tenants who lost their homes.
But given there are multiple storefronts on Monkland that are currently vacant, I suspect that rents were hiked quite a bit in the past 12 months.
-Kevin
Yeah, I really don't get the $30,000 handout that they received. I'm not really following the logic to that, but I think I heard that the bank donated most of it.
ReplyDeleteI'd imagine that the owner is waiting on insurance money to repair the building. If he didn't have the 80% insurance, he will get a cash settlement that he can do what he wants with. If he had above 80%, it's going to be fixed and he won't have the right to sell it before that.
The owner is listed as Ali Ghadban Mahmoud. I don't know who that is, but his cousin Ali Ghadban is a dentist on Park Ave.
The thing you need to know about this or any other abandoned building is that it's very hard to find an insurer for it and if you can find one,it's incredibly expensive like $2,000 a month.
So when you see an abandoned building there's a pretty solid chance that it's not insured.
blamma, sumac fruit is not toxic (we don't get poison sumac here) but it's full of little spines. You can make a sort of lemonade-ish drink with the fruit but you have to filter it through a coffee filter or something like that to remove the spines.
ReplyDeleteIn Middle Eastern cuisine they use sumac as a spice, it dries out to a sort of reddish powder that adds a lemony tang to things. The mixture of herbs used on za'atar bread has sumac in it.