Montreal New Years Eve 2010 :: the Blog

I was reading through the Mirror, le Voir and tons of sites online to figure out what’s happening in Montreal this week-end, but I can’t find anything interesting to write about (if you do know of a cool event, just post a comment about it). I was banging my head against the wall in desperation and hoping that an interesting topic would pop in my head.

Then a colleague of mine mentioned the Carnival, and I went: “Yes, I am going to Quebec city to party and ski, but that’s only next week end, for the last days of the Winter Carnival, so it’s too early to talk about that”, a innocent and truthful statement, to which the answer was “What Quebec city are you talking about? I was talking about the Rio Carnival” (which I should have understood right away, considering that my colleague is, luckily for him, Brazilian).

And that’s genius.

The Quebec Winter Carnival is always lots of fun. There’s the freezing cold allowing tons of activities like hockey, bobsleigh, skiing and naked snow wrestling. The warm “caribou” served and drank on the street, finally restoring our human dignity and giving us freedom to get intoxicated on the streets. And finally the packed bars and clubs, full with human beings trying to forget the cold.

Or maybe trying to pretend they are in Rio.

Because the Rio Carnival is the real stuff. It’s summer in Rio. It’s full with people in Rio. And all these people want to do for a couple of days is: dance, party and indulge in all sorts of debaucherous activities. They don’t have to worry about freezing to death, so they don’t need the tasty “caribou”. All they have to worry is finding their way back home at the end of the carnival.

I love the Quebec Carnival, I’m going for sure. But I wish I went to Rio.

VS

I think there really is no competition here, Bonhomme des Neiges finishes last (unfortunately for him).

Believe it or not, but there are people out there that thought that organizing an outdoors party in Montreal at the end of January was a good idea.

And somehow they ended up being right.

Last week-end (January 23rd) a whole bunch of my friends headed for the Igloofest, and I quickly labeled them as crazy and refused the invitation. Turns out the party was a blast: all they had to do in order to survive the cold is to dress with skiing-clothes and drink some alcohol. But apparently the setting, the ice bars, the igloos, the music and the people, made the whole event amazing. I guess I can understand that, it is definitely different than the usual week-end chilling at Rouge or any other “normal” club.

If you’re skeptical like me and you missed the event the last two week-end, you still have one last chance to catch-up on Igloofest this week-end (January 29 and 30).

I wanted to wish everyone an amazing new year, all the best for 2010, lots of health and joy.

I hope you all had a blast partying on new years eve, I know I sure did.

A friend of mine had some issues with a patron at Confessionnal, so that place is now officially black-listed, and yes, you shouldn’t go there either. If you don’t know where it is, even better, I wont say.

Today reality is back with a full-strength slap in my face. After almost 2 weeks of vacations, it’s hard to go back to the routine. At least we had some amazing snow falling in the last 24 hours, so ski-slopes, here I come.

Including today, there are only 4 days left until new years eve. That’s enough to close up your year, finish everything you wanted to finish now, set this and that right and prepare the setting for next year.

But that also means that you have only 4 days left to prepare for your celebrations. The possibilities are endless: you can hit a club for a massive NYE party, or you can go to one of the many live shows around town. Or simpler yet, head for a house party, you just need to know someone that throws one, or just organize one yourself (it might be a bit late for that but you never know).

If you want to go to an organized party in a club or a bar, you’ll have to choose which place to go to. It all depends on the crowd you want to party with and the music you want to groove to. You can see description of parties at the new years party guide presented by Montreal-Clubs.com, where you can also purchase tickets online for these parties.

For house parties, no one can guide you to that but yourself. I suggest you check around Facebook, maybe one of your “friends” has advertised a party they are throwing, or maybe one of your “friends” has mentioned something about a cool house party they are going to. If you want to throw your own house party, just make sure you invite a lot of people (because a lot wont show up) and make sure you have a lot of alcohol. You don’t want the party to turn dry before the ball drops on Times Square.

Finally, for everything else, you have the Mirror’s complete new years eve guide. They have the info on pretty much all commercially organized events happening in Montreal for NYE.

You really can’t go wrong on NYE:

So enjoy whatever is left of 2009 (and of the poor Christmas turkey).

As for a quick side note (or I should say “side post”) I wanted to wish everyone a happy Christmas. I know it’s only the 24th, but I usually celebrate Christmas on the night of the 24th to the 25th; so yeah, here we go with the best wishes.

For people like me, who celebrate on the 24th at night and have no family to visit, there is the whole question of the full day on the 25th. It’s a pleasant lazy day, because almost everything is closed, you can’t even shop for food. Basically it’s a nice day to sleep-in, eat the succulent leftovers and just chill. And maybe catch a movie, for which my suggestion would be the latest Almodovar movie “Broken Embraces” again starring miss Cruz. It’s playing at the AMC at the Pepsi Forum, starting 4PM, 7PM and 10PM. A good lazy way to kill 2 hours of your day, and watch something interesting.

With all that gold, it seems that Cruz’s character got quite the Christmas gift there:

I like the poster a lot, very Warhol-ian in style, but still it doesn’t look over-used or too obviously copied:

Just look around you, the recession is so 2008. Or at least so it seems when you walk around St-Catherine street in downtown Montreal, and you witness the flamboyant store fronts, the colorful banners and the joyful consumers, prancing around from store to store, shopping for that gift that will make their loved ones feel even more loved.

Yes, the Christmas season has its good sides (vacations, snow, skiing, turkeys and families) and it’s dark sides (shopping, gifts, boxing-day). It’s all about establishing a balancing act, between maintaining your sanity, not offending anyone by not having gifts for them, and still make everyone feel loved. It’s not necessarily easy, but it is doable, and we have 2 resources for you: Montreal-Club.com’s shopping guide and the more professional and serious Montreal Mirror shopping guide (click on “Games”, “Gadget”, “DVDs” and “Music” sections to see the whole guide). The first will set you back only a couple of bucks and might get you lots of love in return, the second, more commercial one, will set you back 3 months of credi card payments, but will make you’re material-goods-loving relatives love you almost as much as they love their flat-screen 100-something inch TV.

Enjoy the sinful pleasures of shopping in Montreal.

I had all but given up after a disastrous first half. Bad kicks and powerful Roughriders play made me doubt it was possible to come back. So much that I stopped watching, and instead headed out to Cinema du Parc to see another horror show, the amazingly mad and thought provoking Antichrist. Well, little did I know, I missed an amazing roller-coaster ride second half, culminating in a razor thin victory aided by an unbelievable mistake made by the Roughriders: being one man too many on the field.

Watch the amazing photos of the game here.

Grey Cup parade, here we come.

I didn’t know this, but apparently the Roughriders are a religion in Saskatchewan. Read this interesting article from our beloved national daily (thank Globe and Mail) and you’ll see what I am talking about.

It’s their only professional sports team, so people in Regina and Saskatchewan have built-up their love of the Roughriders up to a new level. And I thought we had it bad with only one NHL and one CFL team in Montreal. It seems the Roughriders sell tons of memorabilia merchandise and have huge “on the road” following, and the team is as old as the province. That’s a sports culture I love. The fans seem all in, and that’s cool. Just take a look at that:

Well, too bad for all the Roughriders fans because the Alouettes are still going to win.

Thanks to Ethel the Frog, from whom I stole the image.

Again, on other Montreal-related news, the Montreal Alouettes, our CFA darlings, are playing at the Gray Cup final, this Sunday, starting at 6:30 PM Montreal time. Their opponents will be the Saskatchewan Roughriders, and we’ve already beat the twice this year, so I cross my fingers.

In the last 8 years, the Alouettes have been at the Grey Cup final 5 times, that’s over 75% participation rate (I don’t feel like whipping out my calculator to double-check this), but they’ve won only once. So yeah, I think we’re due for another Grey Cup parade through downtown Montreal. Cause one thing’s for sure, the Canadiens wont be making us parade on Sherbrooke Street this year.

We already had the Impact win their championship this year, to not much fanfare, but if the Als win also, that will make 2 out 3 our “professional” teams winning. Not bad at all.

On a side note, tomorrow the 21st of November, St-Catherine Street in downtown Montreal will host the Santa Claus Parade.

While if you’re a kid this might be a big event for you, for the rest of us it will only mean that traffic will be disrupted downtown and hordes shopping crazed parents will invade the streets of downtown; eventually to return home carrying heavy shopping bags with items that will be forgotten right after Christmas as quickly as they were bough.

Really, it is just plain ridiculous that the Santa Claus parade is held so early. It’s not even December yet, Christmas is in over a month time. The parade just goes to prove how Christmas has lost its celebration spirit to turn into a shopping frenzy fueled by guilt and societal and marketing pressure.

This is really not the Santa Claus I was dreaming of as a kid.