Newbie

Welcome to Mafiaville! Let's embrace our bad boy image

 

 

By JOSH FREED, The GazetteNovember 7, 2009

 

 

 

If you're thinking of hitting the town tonight, ask yourself - is it worth the risk? Haven't you read the Nov. 9 Maclean's? There's a blaring cover story on Montreal, headlined:

 

MONTREAL IS A CORRUPT, CRUMBLING MOB-RIDDEN DISGRACE. WHAT WAS ONCE CANADA'S MOST GLAMOROUS CITY IS NOW A DISASTER. EVEN THE MAYOR FEARS FOR HIS LIFE.

 

Does that sound like somewhere to be out after dark?

 

Now don't get upset just because our "national" magazine has trashed our reputation. In fact, we should thank Maclean's for the PR. Our tourism is way down since the recession - while many rich travellers now prefer edgier vacations, from adventure tours to war-zone tourism.

 

How long can we sell ourselves as the Paris of North America when every city has French onion soup, café au lait and croissants? We need an edgy new image and Maclean's has given us one. Let's use it remarket Montreal as an exotic, exciting city of crime - Rio North.

 

Welcome to Mafiaville - make sure you hit all the sites:

 

Mob headquarters: Start your tour at city hall, where all our "gangsters" allegedly hang out, heavyweights like Gérald (Goodfella) Tremblay and Louise (Ma Merger) Harel. Apparently, people gather here brazenly to fix city construction contracts and pass around brown envelopes. Get them to sign one for you.

 

Don't just be an observer. Make a donation to a political party and you can get a construction contract too. Even a small donation will let you pave a pothole and keep a percentage of the asphalt for your driveway. Don't just visit Montreal, build it.

 

Beware: don't show up at city hall unexpected, unaccompanied and unarmed. Would you walk up to Tony Soprano's house and just ring the bell? Bada-bing! It's the same here, where someone might take out a contract - on you.

 

You could wind up deep-sixed in the St. Lawrence in a pair of cement shoes - only nowadays they've been replaced by heavier ones, known as "poutine shoes."

 

Gang life: Our Hell's Angels are all in jail or Toronto, which makes our streets less thrilling. But there are still many gangs to be seen by the perceptive tourist - you just have to spot their gang insignia. Our largest downtown gang wears red and white hoodies with the gang name McGill emblazoned on them. They're led by consigliere Heather (Mom-roe) Blum.

 

Another tough gang is known as the Syndicate, or Brotherhood. These are members of the notorious Blue-Collar gang that bomb about town, terrorizing pedestrians on lethal sidewalk snowploughs that are literal hit squads.

 

Keep your eye out for anti-gang cops too, like the SQ, not to be confused with the SAQ, or the SAAQ, the STQ, the SIQ, the SCCQ or the SOQUIJ. In Quebec, you can even get mugged by abbreviations.

 

Crumbling construction tours: Brazil sells tours of its favela slums while Paris offers tours of its sewer system. But neither can compare with our crumbling edifice tour that showcases the best of our government construction racket.

 

Take a thrilling walk beneath the Bibliothèque nationale, where glass panels crash down regularly. Enjoy a joy ride under the Laval overpass and the crumbling Turcotte Interchange. Don't miss the Big O, which has killed before and may kill again.

 

Yet why stop with our existing attractions, Montrealers? Let's forget the Cité des spectacles and build a new theme park at La Ronde - called Gangland. Instead of a haunted house, you'd tour a Mafia House, with pop-up gangsters who fire real bullets.

 

There are so many ways to make money with a mafia-tourist economy. We could rent a Kalashnikov to every tourist, or a bulletproof limousine. We could have tourist protection booths when they arrive - they'd pay some money to Montreal Protection Racket Inc. and be guaranteed not to get rubbed out.

 

To heighten the mob mood, we could turn Sherbrooke St. into Rue Bugsy Segal, Décarie Blvd. into Capone Expressway and Little Italy into Big Italy. We could rename the underground city the "Underworld City" to keep up with our new reputation.

 

The trick is to twist the truth, like Maclean's. In reality, it's hard to get killed in Montreal nowadays. Last year there were 29 homicides here, the lowest of any Canadian city, compared with 103 in Toronto, the gun capital of Canada. In Montreal there are few guns to be seen, just lots of Purell hand sanitizer dispensers.

 

Apart from the sleaze at city hall, we've practically become Montreal The Good. But why admit that and lose our sordid new Maclean's image. Instead let's embrace it - they've made us an offer we just can't refuse.

 

josh_freed@hotmail.com

© Copyright © The Montreal Gazette

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I don't appreciate your pessimism a lot pedepy Most people in this forum are here to get informed, inform others and share ideas about the future of the city. If you feel some things are going too slow for your taste, then get involved! Luckily there are lots of ways to do that in Montreal

On the renderings it does look like a building from the 70's, but I didn't get that feeling from the construction. Is it going to be strange? Yes! Is it going to look cheap? Probably. But if it helps, I don't think it is going to look like those renderings.

I don't think the tram is a good idea. It will be a moving showcase of vandalism. On the other hand the design has to be simpler and feel lighter, otherwise if it's something like these photos, it will look outdated in 5 years.

I will post my ideas for a small volunteer-based anti-graffiti patrol on a new thread once I put them together. I'm thinking of a very organized and initially small-scale system. Maybe I'm being too optimistic by thinking such an organization would make any difference but I guess trying is better than doing nothing

New building and graffiti already? Disgraceful. The guys that do this crap ought to be cockpunched. Artistic graffiti in places where it's appropraite? Sure. Murals? Absolutely. Generic tagging on a brand new building? Unacceptable.

 

I have zero tolerance for disrespecting public and private property. If you want to do art, find a place to create a mural and get permission and funding to do it. If you want to tag, find a place where it doesn't bother anybody and it's totally out of the way.

 

Don't. Do. It. On. People's. Property.

 

This is an infuriating issue to me.

The amount of graffiti tags in Montreal is disgusting, there are many more than in any other North American city I know, and they are incredibly ugly. Toronto has volunteer-based private graffiti removal programs which seem to work pretty well. I wonder why they don't exist in Montreal. I would start one myself with my own money but I haven't found one other person in the city who cares enough to actually do something. Most people I know actually like the tags, while the others just complain...

What ever happened with this plan?

Hi! I hope this post is not miscategorized.

Since I moved to Montreal I have been looking forward to seen these old garbage cans replaced:

They are too small, break easily, are always leaking, and most of them have lots of garbage under them which looks really bad (I don't even know how it gets there though I have a few theories). Anyway, in 2007 I found out that Michel Dallaire (the BIXI industrial designer) was to design new benches and garbage cans for downtown:

http://www.ledevoir.com/2007/12/17/168881.html

In 2008, renderings of the new designs appeared on his website:

http://www.dallairedesign.com/flash/index.html

And after that nothing happened. Is there any way to know what happened to this? Are they ever going to be replaced?