Back in college, my friends and I used to make yearly pilgrimages to Montreal. That’s a great road trip if you hate scenery—three hours of scraggly Vermont wilderness and two more of flat Quebec farmland punctuated by metal-roofed farmhouses… that is, until you reach Iberville and this imposing bastion of advertising, this Paul Bunyan of carbonation, looms into view:
Such a great specimen of roadside kitsch! Coke man is the best.
I’ve been up to Montreal a few times, but the best time was with my friend Amy. It was wintertime, very cold and icy. The hotels in Montreal proper are expensive for po’ college kids, so we stayed in Longueuil, just across the river. It was a high-rise and we were on something like the tenth floor, so we had an amazing view of the bridge, the river, the city, and the heavy, swirling snow.
Our first mission upon arrival was to find a liquor store. We were always giddy bringing our purchases to the counter, feeling like undercover agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were going to leap out and arrest us. Somehow, we always managed to evade them and make off with our contraband: Bailey’s and butterscotch schnapps. Heh.
To kill time during the day, because it was zero degrees out, we went to the mall in Longueuil. It was fun to browse Canadian stores (hello acid wash!), marvel at how the Tragically Hip can be a household name in Canada and virtually unknown in the States, and people-watch in the food court while enjoying French fries with vinegar and a Labatt Bleu. The highlight was witnessing a guy being chased by the Royal Canadian Mounted Shopping Centre Force, tackled to the ground, and handcuffed.
Back at the hotel, we began the elaborate ritual of getting ready to go out. Besides showering, applying makeup, styling hair, and trying on and rejecting every article of clothing (our own and each other’s) before returning to our pre-planned outfits (invariably black pants, black boots and a sassy top), we bopped around to the Backstreet Boys and tipped back about ten buttershots apiece. Then we assembled M.I.L.K., buttoned up our coats, and descended into the Metro. Destination: Peel Pub.
I still get warm and fuzzy when I think of Peel Pub. Honestly, we thought we had discovered the best bar in the city, and had going online in 1996 not involved eighty billion hours of waiting for Netscape to load a single page we would have known this, but Peel Pub is home away from home for McGill students: big, divey, loud, jammed with tables, hockey on 24/7 and pitchers of Molson Triple-X flowing plentifully. And it was full of Canadians, who are friendly and love to drink, but who aren’t underage and therefore aren’t all fratty-bo-batty and binging it up like American college students.
We met tons of guys there, all of whom, once it was revealed that we were Americans, wanted to treat us to an enthusiastic, if slightly defensive, litany of reasons why Canada rules. I’ve heard this more than twice, and the list is always like, “Hockey! Better beer! Um, let me think. Because it’s not the States!” which… huh? Beyond whatever that is supposed to imply about the U.S., why would you hinge your national identity on a fervent anti-comparison to a neighboring country (unless you live in South Korea, in which case I understand)? It sounds ridiculous. “Denmark is great! You know why? It isn’t Norway.”
Although how great would it be if there was a random Dane reading this like, “Word.”
Anyway, putting Canada’s insecurity aside, we got drunk. We talked to people, although I have no recollection of anything that was discussed (I’ll take a stab: hockey? Beer?). I do remember sitting there enjoying myself when a guy walking by stopped abruptly, leaned down, and kissed me. Afterwards, he said, “I felt like doing that, so I did.”
Later on we decided to leave. I’m not sure why, or if we were with anyone, or where we were planning to go next, but I yelled at two guys on the sidewalk whom we had seen inside. They stopped to talk, and ended up escorting us to a nearby pub, where there was an Irish band and a bunch of middle-aged people dancing. It was fun, especially when a guy in a cable-knit sweater who was old enough to know better fell off his barstool. After that they took us to a boring club; the only thing I remember about that place is there was a gigantic fancy staircase and two-for-one Budweisers. Finally, we all went to a nearly empty pool hall where we did shots of tequila.
Afterwards, on the street, they tried to invite us back to their apartment to watch Apocalypse Now. It was getting weird and there weren’t many people on the street and we were in a random area near the Molson Centre. Amy and I kept communicating with our eyes about how we were going to get out of the situation. A cab magically slowed at the corner, Amy flagged the driver, and we jumped into the back. The driver was funny. “Thank you for saving us,” we told him. “Ahh… they want to make babies,” he said in a gutteral French accent. Then he wanted us to play a trick on another cab driver. I agreed to call the driver pretending to be a stripper who had just gotten off her shift at Solid Gold and needed to be picked up. I’d say it was the strangest cab ride of my life, but there was also the time on Storrow Drive when we got into an accident with a Jeep and, of course, the Travis Bickle doppelganger who drove us to see Dane this summer.
How does this meandering and not very entertaining story end? We slept until five minutes before checkout. Driving home, we got on 87 instead of 89 because there are no signs and had to go through upstate New York.
Well hey, what kind of big finish did you want, dancing girls in feather headdresses? This is a blog, not English class. And apparently not Vegas, now that I've taken it there. Not even Atlantic City.
Such a great specimen of roadside kitsch! Coke man is the best.
I’ve been up to Montreal a few times, but the best time was with my friend Amy. It was wintertime, very cold and icy. The hotels in Montreal proper are expensive for po’ college kids, so we stayed in Longueuil, just across the river. It was a high-rise and we were on something like the tenth floor, so we had an amazing view of the bridge, the river, the city, and the heavy, swirling snow.
Our first mission upon arrival was to find a liquor store. We were always giddy bringing our purchases to the counter, feeling like undercover agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were going to leap out and arrest us. Somehow, we always managed to evade them and make off with our contraband: Bailey’s and butterscotch schnapps. Heh.
To kill time during the day, because it was zero degrees out, we went to the mall in Longueuil. It was fun to browse Canadian stores (hello acid wash!), marvel at how the Tragically Hip can be a household name in Canada and virtually unknown in the States, and people-watch in the food court while enjoying French fries with vinegar and a Labatt Bleu. The highlight was witnessing a guy being chased by the Royal Canadian Mounted Shopping Centre Force, tackled to the ground, and handcuffed.
Back at the hotel, we began the elaborate ritual of getting ready to go out. Besides showering, applying makeup, styling hair, and trying on and rejecting every article of clothing (our own and each other’s) before returning to our pre-planned outfits (invariably black pants, black boots and a sassy top), we bopped around to the Backstreet Boys and tipped back about ten buttershots apiece. Then we assembled M.I.L.K., buttoned up our coats, and descended into the Metro. Destination: Peel Pub.
I still get warm and fuzzy when I think of Peel Pub. Honestly, we thought we had discovered the best bar in the city, and had going online in 1996 not involved eighty billion hours of waiting for Netscape to load a single page we would have known this, but Peel Pub is home away from home for McGill students: big, divey, loud, jammed with tables, hockey on 24/7 and pitchers of Molson Triple-X flowing plentifully. And it was full of Canadians, who are friendly and love to drink, but who aren’t underage and therefore aren’t all fratty-bo-batty and binging it up like American college students.
We met tons of guys there, all of whom, once it was revealed that we were Americans, wanted to treat us to an enthusiastic, if slightly defensive, litany of reasons why Canada rules. I’ve heard this more than twice, and the list is always like, “Hockey! Better beer! Um, let me think. Because it’s not the States!” which… huh? Beyond whatever that is supposed to imply about the U.S., why would you hinge your national identity on a fervent anti-comparison to a neighboring country (unless you live in South Korea, in which case I understand)? It sounds ridiculous. “Denmark is great! You know why? It isn’t Norway.”
Although how great would it be if there was a random Dane reading this like, “Word.”
Anyway, putting Canada’s insecurity aside, we got drunk. We talked to people, although I have no recollection of anything that was discussed (I’ll take a stab: hockey? Beer?). I do remember sitting there enjoying myself when a guy walking by stopped abruptly, leaned down, and kissed me. Afterwards, he said, “I felt like doing that, so I did.”
Later on we decided to leave. I’m not sure why, or if we were with anyone, or where we were planning to go next, but I yelled at two guys on the sidewalk whom we had seen inside. They stopped to talk, and ended up escorting us to a nearby pub, where there was an Irish band and a bunch of middle-aged people dancing. It was fun, especially when a guy in a cable-knit sweater who was old enough to know better fell off his barstool. After that they took us to a boring club; the only thing I remember about that place is there was a gigantic fancy staircase and two-for-one Budweisers. Finally, we all went to a nearly empty pool hall where we did shots of tequila.
Afterwards, on the street, they tried to invite us back to their apartment to watch Apocalypse Now. It was getting weird and there weren’t many people on the street and we were in a random area near the Molson Centre. Amy and I kept communicating with our eyes about how we were going to get out of the situation. A cab magically slowed at the corner, Amy flagged the driver, and we jumped into the back. The driver was funny. “Thank you for saving us,” we told him. “Ahh… they want to make babies,” he said in a gutteral French accent. Then he wanted us to play a trick on another cab driver. I agreed to call the driver pretending to be a stripper who had just gotten off her shift at Solid Gold and needed to be picked up. I’d say it was the strangest cab ride of my life, but there was also the time on Storrow Drive when we got into an accident with a Jeep and, of course, the Travis Bickle doppelganger who drove us to see Dane this summer.
How does this meandering and not very entertaining story end? We slept until five minutes before checkout. Driving home, we got on 87 instead of 89 because there are no signs and had to go through upstate New York.
Well hey, what kind of big finish did you want, dancing girls in feather headdresses? This is a blog, not English class. And apparently not Vegas, now that I've taken it there. Not even Atlantic City.
2 Comments:
I can't picture you single! I would've LOVED to have known you during that era of debauchery.
Also, when Steve and I were in Canada earlier this year, we saw a girl at a bar that looked just like you, but all drunk and out of control. We called her Melissa, If She Made Different Choices. Now I'm wondering if we just time warped back to the late 90s and saw you during one of your college crawls...
Red: I know, we would have torn some shit up! Except maybe not, because you were always in relationships then. Go figure.
Carly: I'd love to hang out for one night with our bizarro selves. We'd either love them and become bizarro BFFs or totally hate them and get into a screaming, scratching, hair-pulling fight in the street.
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