New York point of view on Montreal (as a city, not hockey related)
Hi,
I am writing a short story about Montreal, New York and Paris. My main character is a new yorker who studies in Montreal. I would like to ask you guys a question : how do you see Montreal, as new yorkers? Have you ever been, what is the vibe you get from it and what do you like and hate about Montreal.
Having been to Montreal several times, I feel as though I can characterize it in just a few words:
1. Hockey - being surrounded by hockey makes me extremely happy.
2. Poutine - Disco fries with a twist; sign me up.
I know that my travels to/around Montreal have only skimmed the surface. I realize that my experiences there have been very tourist oriented. But, I still feel pretty safe in saying that I LOVE the town and look forward to going back often throughout my lifetime.
Last edited by SingnBluesOnBroadway: 01-25-2007 at 08:07 PM.
As a new yorker who lived and studied in Montreal, here are my details:
1. Poutine - REAL disco fries. I would eat them everyday.
2. The bar scene - Montreal is one of the few cities in the world where you would find attractive women at pretty much any pub in Montreal, with the exception of the Peel Pub. At the Peel Pub, you find stupid 19 year olds from Massachusetts chanting "Yankees Suck!" (Mind you, this happened THREE bloody times for me!)
3. Joie de vive - Les Quebecois know how to party!
4. Le Metro - As someone who grew up on Subways, riding Le Metro is like going back to the future while living in 1960s provincial Quebec. It is a treat!
Let me fill up on Trois Pistoles and see if I can tell you any more things!
Last edited by SingnBluesOnBroadway: 01-25-2007 at 08:22 PM.
Having been to Montreal several times, I feel as though I can characterize it in just a few words:
1. Hockey - being surrounded by hockey makes me extremely happy.
2. Poutine - Disco fries with a twist; sign me up.
I know that my travels to/around Montreal have only skimmed the surface. I realize that my experiences there have been very tourist oriented. But, I still feel pretty safe in saying that I LOVE the town and look forward to going back often throughout my lifetime.
As a new yorker who lived and studied in Montreal, here are my details:
1. Poutine - REAL disco fries. I would eat them everyday.
3. The bar scene - Montreal is one of the few cities in the world where you would find attractive women at pretty much any pub in Montreal, with the exception of the Peel Pub. At the Peel Pub, you find stupid 19 year olds from Massachusetts chanting "Yankees Suck!" (Mind you, this happened THREE bloody times for me!)
4. Joie de vive - Les Quebecois know how to party!
5. Le Metro - As someone who grew up on Subways, riding Le Metro is like going back to the future while living in 1960s provincial Quebec. It is a treat!
Let me fill up on Trois Pistoles and see if I can tell you any more things!
Thanks. Trois Pistole is good, but la maudite is the best beer from Quebec By the way, New York is one of my favorite cities, and I like the Rangers a whole lot. Anytime I'll see them in the playoffs, I'll cheer for them unless they are playing against the habs. As a Québécois, since I don't feel canadian but north american and Québécois, New-York is my equivalent of what Toronto is for English-Canadians. (And I'm not trying to be a jerk to english canadians, I like you all, cheers !)
Last edited by SingnBluesOnBroadway: 01-25-2007 at 09:11 PM.
I live in NY but Montreal is one of my top fav cities in the east. A nice balance of the french and western Canadian cultures imo. Great food and very hip in many ways. Arts Fashion etc.
I always notice that the women are all in great shape...Men to I suppose, but I notice the woman. Everybody must be pretty active
My wife loves to shop there and coming from NY thats a great compliment.
The subway was the most amazing thing for me in Montreal. i couldn't believe how nice it was compared to the NYC subway. Even though they cleaned it up alot, you still get the feeling that there are alot of people living down in the stations and tunnels, and I just never got that feeling in MTL.
After New York, Montreal is my favorite city on the east coast, possibly in all of North America. It's one of those rare cities that feel both large and intimate at the same time. I love the Aesthetic: It's quite a pretty city, but not in a cutesy way, and it still feels like a modern moving metropolis.
I've also seen better street art in Montreal than in any other city in the world.
And while I don't speak French, I've always enjoyed the experience of walking around and hearing it spoken, definitely adds a bit of a European feel to the city (of course you can hear five different languages being spoken walking down any given street in New York, but that's a bit different.)
And of course it's wonderful to be in a place where hockey is spoken on every street corner, but that's more of a Canadian characteristic than it is specific to Montreal.
I live in NY but Montreal is one of my top fav cities in the east. A nice balance of the french and western Canadian cultures imo. Great food and very hip in many ways. Arts Fashion etc.
I always notice that the women are all in great shape...Men to I suppose, but I notice the woman. Everybody must be pretty active
My wife loves to shop there and coming from NY thats a great compliment.
Cubans...at a whim
Hockey
and Jazz Fest
my girlfriend lives in montreal, so i am up there quite a bit, but almost all of the women are pretty attractive there
i really enjoy the poutine as mentioned earlier, but i go to mondo fritz because they have vegetarian poutine as an option which is great, but all of the food is excellent in montreal
also almost everyone there likes hockey, which is great for me because i currently live in nj where no one likes hockey or they are just fair weather devil fans, so to be able to talk hockey with people who really enjoy and love the sport as much as i do is greatly appreciated
Montreal is awesome, i just wish it wasn't so cold
The subway was the most amazing thing for me in Montreal. i couldn't believe how nice it was compared to the NYC subway. Even though they cleaned it up alot, you still get the feeling that there are alot of people living down in the stations and tunnels, and I just never got that feeling in MTL.
I actually enjoy the grimyness of the NYC subway, but then again I find somthing to enjoy in just about every aspect of New York.
But I do agree about the Montreal Metro, it definetly impressed me (and it's hard to beat a Metro System that has Bars in some of it's hubs.)
I've only been in Montreal one day and I thought it was a great city although I need to see more of it.
True story: We had tickets to see an Expos game at Olympic Stadium (which is a bit of a trip from downtown) and this local guy was driving around with his kids and he offered to take myself, my mom and dad into downtown so we could see a bit of the city and get some lunch. I was stunned. Obviously at first you are hesitant to just go in a stranger's car, but the guy had his kids with him and he was really nice to us tourists.
We had some pretty good pizza there (the pepperoni was bigger than any I had ever seen) and the smoked meat sandwiches were awesome. Le Metro was the most beautiful subway I have ever been on - reminded me alot of the Metro in Washington, D.C.
The Expos game was fun although the stadium is...well...it's not very good, lol. But the tickets were cheap and the food was good. I kind of miss the Expos.
We also drove by the Molson Centre (now the Bell Centre) and it's a nice arena from the outside.
Overall I think it's a great city and would love to get back there at some point soon.
The subway was the most amazing thing for me in Montreal. i couldn't believe how nice it was compared to the NYC subway. Even though they cleaned it up alot, you still get the feeling that there are alot of people living down in the stations and tunnels, and I just never got that feeling in MTL.
my girlfriend lives in montreal, so i am up there quite a bit, but almost all of the women are pretty attractive there
i really enjoy the poutine as mentioned earlier, but i go to mondo fritz because they have vegetarian poutine as an option which is great, but all of the food is excellent in montreal
also almost everyone there likes hockey, which is great for me because i currently live in nj where no one likes hockey or they are just fair weather devil fans, so to be able to talk hockey with people who really enjoy and love the sport as much as i do is greatly appreciated
Montreal is awesome, i just wish it wasn't so cold
A friend lives downtown and they can go from their apt directly through the building to the metro which takes them directly to work or the huge endless under ground mall of shops , clubs restaurants etc. It's possible to never go outside and live a pretty active life in the winter,,,if you so choose.
Thank you very much for all your answers. I had another question : is Brooklyn considered a strickly middle class neighborhood? Are there bourgeois/richer parts? Are there slums/ghetto parts?
Also, if you are interested, I though of my story when I met a friend from Brooklyn (BK!), at Concordia University, in Montréal. We started to hang out and I learned that there were a lot of new-yorkers studying in Montreal, and I met many new-yorkers through this gang (appartement) which everyone called "The American Ambassy". They gave me a good and positive image of what the liberal/democrat America is, because in Canada, as we are liberals (gay mariage and marijuana and left politics...), we have a lot of bad press on americans because of the president, the conservatives, the evangelicals, and the war. I like the New-York mentality and it is a plus to the USA !
A friend lives downtown and they can go from their apt directly through the building to the metro which takes them directly to work or the huge endless under ground mall of shops , clubs restaurants etc. It's possible to never go outside and live a pretty active life in the winter,,,if you so choose.
It's true. I think we have one of the biggest underground network of the world, hahaha, I love it because I hate the cold !
Oh and by the way, thank you New York for Matt Higgins and Mike Komisarek ! Great products of american hockey. Also, I really wish you luck in your playoff hunt, because it's always a shame when the Rangers are not in the playoffs.
You know Ive only been there in the Spring and the Summer, so Ive never seen a Montreal game...I'm sure tix are hard to stir up, but I'll be making a point of it if I'm up there during the season
A friend lives downtown and they can go from their apt directly through the building to the metro which takes them directly to work or the huge endless under ground mall of shops , clubs restaurants etc. It's possible to never go outside and live a pretty active life in the winter,,,if you so choose.
my girlfriend used to live in square victoria metro area, so i know all about the underground walkways, however she now live sin NDG, which is a pretty nice area and mostly an english speaking area, but you got to go outside to get anywhere
Thank you very much for all your answers. I had another question : is Brooklyn considered a strickly middle class neighborhood? Are there bourgeois/richer parts? Are there slums/ghetto parts?
Brooklyn is bigger than Mtl.
There's a lot of rich, nice areas and tons of p-jects.
Thank you very much for all your answers. I had another question : is Brooklyn considered a strickly middle class neighborhood? Are there bourgeois/richer parts? Are there slums/ghetto parts?
Brooklyn is a complete city in it's own right, infact before the formation of greater New York Brooklyn was the 4th largest city in America.
Thus, you get all sorts of neighborhoods in Brooklyn: Rich, Poor, Middle Class, And the recently gentrified. Brooklyn has actually gotten much hipper and trendier over the last decade (whether this is a positive or negative development is highly debatable) and I'd say that, after Manhattan, they're is probably more wealth in Booklyn right now than any other bourough.
Oh and by the way, thank you New York for Matt Higgins and Mike Komisarek ! Great products of american hockey. Also, I really wish you luck in your playoff hunt, because it's always a shame when the Rangers are not in the playoffs.
Well they're both island products, but I've always said that everything within a 75 to 100 miles radius of the city falls under it's cultural pull, so I guess those of us from the greater tristate area can take credit for them .
Brooklyn is a complete city in it's own right, infact before the formation of greater New York Brooklyn was the 4th largest city in America.
Thus, you get all sorts of neighborhoods in Brooklyn: Rich, Poor, Middle Class, And the recently gentrified. Brooklyn has actually gotten much hipper and trendier over the last decade (whether this is a positive or negative development is highly debatable) and I'd say that, after Manhattan, they're is probably more wealth in Booklyn right now than any other bourough.
I agree with this. Brooklyn is basically a city within a city. There's a reason we are getting the Nets in a few years (even though I can't stand them). Just like any city there are rough parts but I would have to say Brooklyn is the most residential borough of New York. The area I live in (Gravesend) is almost strictly residential outside of a few stores.
And Brooklyn has definitely become hip the past few years. In the early 90s, nobody would bother coming here if they had to. Now people flock from all over the tri-state area to go to our restaurants, bars, clubs, museums, you name it. Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Bay Ridge, Carroll Gardens and Williamsburg have become extremely popular.
By the way, New York is one of my favorite cities, and I like the Rangers a whole lot. Anytime I'll see them in the playoffs, I'll cheer for them unless they are playing against the habs. As a Québécois, since I don't feel canadian but north american and Québécois, New-York is my equivalent of what Toronto is for English-Canadians. (And I'm not trying to be a jerk to english canadians, I like you all, cheers !)
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