Montreal is a crazy town to me, somehow perpetuated by the ideological differential between French and English Canada.   For instance, on the way home from Bianca’s last night there were six CRT TV sets out on the curb on our walk home.  Today wasn’t a garbage pick-up day nor was there some sort of special TV collection in progress, just six sets soaking up sidewalk and this didn’t seem odd until I pointed it out.

Adam and I stayed in Richard’s basement and Adam was roused by the Kallos’s dog, Lucy.

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Lucy ready to attack

Lucy is a friendly dog, and upon being licked awake a second time Adam yelled “WHY ARE YOU STILL LOVING ME”.  Breakfast was a mishmash of eggs, Pacheco’s chorizo, smoothie, and bacon and most of us did our fair share to make sure everything was eaten.

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How a Sausage Should be Enjoyed

 

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A Crowded Kitchen

We met up with Brian and Andrei at a Metro stop and Bianca departed to attend to some things.  Andrei and Alan were both more talkative than during our first meeting and hearing what there were up to was pleasant.  We returned to Alan’s before getting lunch.

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Outside Alan's

I had assumed that poutine was the specialty of Montreal when in reality it is more of a provincial food.  The local delicacy is smoked meats, and this we had in spades:

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Smoked Montreal Meats

Maybe Philadelphia has spoiled me, but I found it unremarkable.  The smoke flavor was weak and the flavor of the meat itself was buried under mustard.  I finished mine, and the rest of Brian’s, and the rest of Bianca’s (maybe it was good), and we again returned to Alan’s.

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Intersection by Night

Time passed to the perennial favorite of Super Smash Bros where my utter gracelessness with a control over keyboard + mouse rendered me useless.  As sun set, we decided to climb Mount Royal.

Alan’s apartment was about a 1/2 mile from the foot of the “mountain” and I moved slowly taking photos.  There were a dozen searchlights pointed at the clouds illuminating the overcast night and for what reason none in the party was sure.  After crossing McGill university we set up the unlit roads toward the peak and I was very glad I had a continuous LED light that I use as fill flash for video with me as we otherwise had no form of illumination.  The climb to the first of two observation levels was long enough that the group separated into two groups, Richard and myself and then everyone else.  I hadn’t before realized that thinner than me didn’t mean fitter than me and I was happy at the pace I kept.

The view of Montreal from the main belvedere provided a “hey, do you remember that?”

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Montreal from Above

The weird antennae of light to the right is what remains from the 1976 Montreal Olympiad.

At the top of Mount Royale is an illuminated LED cross which we decided to see if we could reach.  There was much fencing but we found a break in it and started going up.  The top-most point wasn’t occupied by the cross but by an antenna station that was reachable via a fenced road or the network of foot paths and switchbacks we took.  Having gone so far for nothing, we celebrated the discovery of a puddle.

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We walked a ridiculous amount to the top of Montreal. When we got there, nothing of interest was present so we assumed the mountain protected this puddle.

Oh yeah, then there was the cross.

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Top of the Mountain

We stood near the fence and talked about how TF2 had changed over the past three years, a juxtaposition I found novel.

On the way down, rain began to pour and after about 12 miles of walking today we wanted to eat again.  We walked towards Frite Alors! against a deluge where again the different parts of Montreal came to light.  St. Catherine’s Street is probably the main artery and had dapper but dully dressed Anglophones on one side of the street walking with their umbrellas and much more daring Francophones on the other side darting through the rain without so much as coats in many cases.  I was fine with the combination of water, running, and cocktail dresses.

Poutine is the closest I’ve found to soul food when traveling, combining salt, fat, starch, and warm in a serving environment where one only requires a fork.  Ours were served in bowls although a trough may have been more appropriate.  I will miss it.

We dropped off Alan, and then unwound the evening at Richard’s watching Community.  Since I enjoyed the show, it should be cancelled soon.

Thank you for having me, Montreal.  It was fun.

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Richard, Andrei, Bianca, Adam

From 2011-10-14 The Pachecos

Pacheco’s Meat Market is near mythic in the ersatz pantheon of Team Interrobang.  Gary (Church) and Derek (Caboose) Pacheco both work there in some capacity and it’s been spun off in a dozen directions some of which are nice (there’s a Pacheco’s Meat Market-level Donor class) to not so nice (“Come meet my aunt.  She’s a nice lady and all and her face is busted but her body’s slammin’.”)  The market itself is unremarkable but the magic happens in the back where the signature chorizo, a type of Portuguese sausage, is made.

From 2011-10-14 The Pachecos

The chorizo has its fans and gets shipped all over the United States.  A batch was being smoked while I was there and I was given some before I left.

Gary and Derek took me to a fine lunch and then gave me a tour of Fall River which consisted of pointing out perpetual construction, rust, and graffiti removal.  Any of the Pachecos are hesitant to move as most of their family lives within a few blocks of them, something that carried over from their origins in the Azores.  I asked Gary and Derek’s mother if she preferred the states or back home and received the reply of “I could go back home if I had to.  I wouldn’t want to, but I could.  But I would miss having floors.”  Of all the wonders of America that would inspire longing, floors tug strongest at the heart strings.

The Pachecos’ apartment building is small but tidy and is bathed in bits of family history.  Photos from across three generations, from major life events, and of life’s marginalia crammed available shelves.  Gary and Derek’s father has at times looked like Chuck Norris, The Most Interesting Man in the World, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva making him the template for some future Portuguese Ãœbermensch.  Their dog, Chewy (named after the adjective, not the Wookiee) enjoys butting against bed frames, especially mine, and was unenthused to see me leave in the late afternoon.

From 2011-10-14 The Pachecos

I had drug my feet more than I wished and hit every possible type of traffic on my way north to Quebec.  Having blown my 10 PM arrival time, I stopped for a nap and a pound of pears at a farmer’s market connected to a McDonalds and crossed the border into Canada alone without incident for what I think is the first time ever.  The arterial roads all seemed to be under construction with frequent lane closures but the hour was late enough for this to not matter.  All the signs were in French and each section of road work ended with a sign saying “Fin” like I was driving out of a student film each time quality pavement returned.

Richard was again my host and his father, consummate competitor, challenged me to a game of backgammon.  Bianca was on her way out when I arrived and Richard, Adam, and I walked her home.  Bianca had made for me a painting of fireflies around a pear, I very much like it.

Reference Shots:

From 2011-10-14 The Pachecos
From 2011-10-14 The Pachecos

My Montreal host was Richard Kallos/Impact, a geology student who would prove to be my insulation against Francophonia.

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Content over composition

We kicked off the day by walking his dog and placing a score phone calls to set the agenda for the day which had two parts; meet people and eat poutine, and one of these two was optional.  As has happened perennially with Canada, in the first 30 minutes of our trek we encountered a trade-off as every Canadian ATM has a surcharge but Montreal has functioning mass transit, I’m not sure which I’d prefer.

We met up with Brian/Stonecold at a metro station who immediately told us about him having been paid to make out with a fat chick (more Rubinesque in my opinion) in exchange for $20 and beer followed by the immediate statement that he regretted the choice and that he wish people didn’t know.  In that a report of the above was the content of at least two Facebook status updates I’ll consider the incident an open secret that I will lord above should I ever do something stupid.  God bless sobriety.

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Brian, Beer Gigolo

Our next party member was to be met at the poutine vendor, but considering the lack of elegance that seems to be intrinsic to the experience of consuming french fries covered in cheese curd, roast drippings, and other toppings, I’m fine that she met us later.  My choice was the T-Rex, a stack of potato also covered in shredded beef, sausage, and what appeared to be tiny sliced cocktail weenies.

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Richest. Food. Ever.

The pile was wonderful and rich to the point where I didn’t finish it.  Normally after a meal like that my future would be filled with what I’ll call “reading time” but it never came, such is the magic of poutine.

Our next target was downtown Montreal to meet up with the rest of the group.  We passed the tiny Montreal Fringe Festival, the much larger hippy conflux of the Thames, and then block after block of stone-over-concrete veneer buildings until we hit the more glassine facades of shop after shop that Amazon should have vanquished years ago but whose existence I will sum up to the French inability to find the appropriate accents for eBay.  Most of the stores were powerfully air-conditioned and also had open doors creating little oases of low humidity, low heat and high distaste for efficiency.  Brian, Richard and I then began part three of our morning, waiting for other people while listening to a generic world cup game near a man with humorously high underwear.

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Accidentally With It

Our next two additions were Bianca a 20-year old Romanian emigre that glommed to the group quickly.

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She blinked a lot

Alan is a hirsute college student and contemporary of Richard’s with whom I have markedly different views of the efficacy of the Israeli government and US aid.

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Alan, with backlighting

The collective wait for the last group member was complicated by not knowing his actual name, not knowing what he looked like, us not being sure that he knew what we looked like, and not having a realtime contact number for him.  I donned a sticker to increase visibility.

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I later used my shoulder

After a flurry of calls to Andre’s mother, we made contact with him via cell phone and shortly thereafter or last member arrived.

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Our second Romania emigre Francophone

From there, we walked… more.  The previous evening was the night after a Grand Prix event and several blocks were closed to celebrate fast cars and slow people and a multiblock area was closed off for a weak cover band and a weaker crowd.  We kept walking to the old city which is expressed in French as “Le Trap du Tourist” with a large array of tourist-friendly restaurants, souvenir shops, and other made-friendly places; here I purchased a shirt with a beaver on it saying “dam it”.  At the center was a relatively small block-paved boulevard hosting a crappy street performer who in this case looked like a French Robin Williams that was about light himself on fire.

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"I'll do it"

This turned out to be the height of Montreal’s offerings as the next two things to see were a large iguana and a half-assed French clown making crappy balloon animals for scared Chinese children.  The next four hours were a wonderful montage of chat and ignoring people urinating in bushes at parks capped by imitation Chinese food.  Apparently in Montreal it’s General Tao’s chicken rather than the General Tso’s chicken I’m used to.  The place didn’t accept credit cards so I paid in Team Interrobang stickers to another person present.

During the train ride back to Richard’s, I amused other passengers by doing a purposely poor job of translating French subway ads.