Montreal New Years Eve 2012 :: the Blog

I just came back form a two week trip in Europe, to discover to my dismay that Europeans seem to have it all figured out.

What do I mean? Well, here are some examples of what I saw:

• You can drink alcohol on the streets. There are “bars” that literally spill on the street; they have tables for the finished glasses all round the square where people drink in peace. You can also drink in the mall, in the store and pretty much everywhere.
• You can drink at 16. I saw an add saying not so sell alcohol to under-16, because they are not adults! In Canada we’re not considered adults until 18 or 19, and in the US it’s even worse, you need to be 21 to be an adult. At that point, a German kid has been drinking in the pub with his dad for 5 years already. No surprise kids in the US have tragic accidents because of binge drinking. If I was 21 and I couldn’t drink before that, I’ll be drunk all they way from 21 to 22 just to catch up.
• You can bring you dog to the restaurant, to the bar, to the store, to the mall, to … We ate at an Italian restaurant, with our dog under the table. Best feeling ever, not to feel like you dog is a burden to the rest of the world.
• There is no disgusting filter coffee. Even the smallest place has at least an electrical espresso machine making better espresso than Starbucks ever did.
• Drinking coffee and beer, with people of any age, is acceptable. There is no distinction in age groups in cool bars and coffees. It wont be weird to see a 18 year old drinking near a 50 year old. Here in Canada, we’ll think that the 50 year old is a perv, and we’ll find him weird / her a cougar.

This is just a partial list of all the things that the Europeans seem to have gotten right. The list could be much longer. For a long time now I’ve been a fan of the St-Patricks Day parade in Montreal because we’re implicitly allowed to drink on the streets that day. But that is not enough, we need more European-style freedoms in North America too.

Talking about Germany, this is a good article on what you should look for when traveling in Germany.

Enjoy the Weisbeer and the Espressos.

I don’t understand why our elections have to be so boring, and those in the US, Italy and other places are so much fun? I mean, yes, the Conservative party is boring as hell. The Liberals and NDP are only a little better. Then comes all the parties that have the potential to be fun, like the Greens, the Marxists or the Communists, but no, they aren’t pulling any of the fun moves.

And we, the voters, aren’t pulling our part of the bargain. There are no artists creating memorable pieces of art, like the Obama believe poster, or any of the amazing “go vote” or “don’t go vote” posters and videos. We don’t have the silliness of Obama Girl.

Yes, the federal elections don’t have to be boring; for example you can explain the numerous political divides though a study of Montreal’s nightlife.

So get off from you couch, go to your computer and create some fun/smart/beautiful art, and plaster the streets, the web and everything with it. Or film yourself dancing in a bikini and post it on YouTube. Make our federal elections fun at last.

Here is some inspiration of what our friends down south have done for their elections:

Finally something made here in Canada. Harper’s got to be one the less attractive politicians ever:

You can join the Pucapab Facebook page and spice up your election.

Back to the US, they have the big guns there to get you involved in the whole democracy things:

For those who don’t remember, the Power of Love was hit single by Celine Dion in the early 90ies. Those were pure days, where I was a kid facing the scary trap of teenage hood lurking around the dark corner; those were the days of high school dances when no guy would have the balls to ask a girl to dance. That is until we started having the balls.

All this is long gone today, and has been replaced by giving lame gifts like cards, chocolate or sexy-lingerie for Valentine’s day. The guilty shame and delightful exploration has been replaced by the pressure of socially successful relationship with their artificial rules and their mandatory Facebook status updates.

This boredom is beyond me. I fully agree with the writers at Montreal-Clubs.com saying that this bored of Valentine’s day need no longer be.

And if you still decide to get-off your couch and bring your date out on Valentine’s day, then at least check-out what the Montreal Mirror suggests, a night at the theater.

PS: I didn’t even know that The Power of Love is not a Celine Dion song: apparently some lady I have never heard-of before, called Jennifer Rush sang this song in 1984:

As if it wasn’t cold enough, I went to Igloofest last Friday. But the -30 degrees really didn’t matter, considering I was dressed with all my skiing gear and I didn’t stop dancing and drinking warm wine.

And I wasn’t the only one: the dance space felt more like a heavy metal show at times than an electronic concert. People were body surfing, jumping up and down and rubbing one against each other. I guess the rubbing part was for generating heat, because definitely nobody could feel anything through all those layers of clothing everyone was wearing.

All this to say in a twisted way that Igloofest (which I wrote about last year too) was amazing even a super-frigid temperatures. It was maybe even better just because of the damn cold. It was like we’re all outside together for an experience and we must all help each other to survive.

So if you haven’t been yet, this week-end is your last chance of the winter to hit the Igloofest. And considering that the temperatures seem much nicer today, you should really go for it. Just dress well and find a way to smuggle at least a small mickey of hard booze on the site, to keep you warmer.

The only negative thing I have to say about Igloofest is about the organization at the entrance of the site: why the hell is it so slow to get inside? Can’t they hire more people? The event is such a hit, why are the organizers too damn cheap to hire extra staff at the door? Instead they let us freeze our balls waiting in a lineup without dancing.

Even the Globe and Mail published a piece on Montreal’s favorite winter outdoors party.

Photo credit: Sicnarf

Today is the 29th of December, meaning we have two short nights left of 2010. I will be brutally honest here, 2010 was definitely not the best of years, both on a personal, professional and societal way. I will be happy to see 2010 go.

But I won’t depress you with my problems, I will do what I always try to do, put a positive spin.

The positive spin is that you’re hopefully on vacation, you’re hopefully stuffed like a turkey with turkey and you’re more than ready to party for the NYE. In that case, just read our previous post, about the Mirror’s NYE party guide, or simply buy NYE tickets directly on our site from ClubZone.com.

After your new years party is done and celebrated, I want to wish you all the best of luck and health for 2011 from everyone in the team here.

See you all on the ski slopes and please remeber, don’t drink and drive, even on NYE.

PS: Obviously this photo is not from Quebec, because the slopes are pretty frigid at this wonderful time of the year.

Our professional friends at the Mirror, one of the four free culture weekly newspapers, have already published their traditional new years eve party guide: here are their 3 different sections: Blow-out bashes (which means “big ass parties”), Bars & Clubs (parties in regular non-big-ass clubs) and finally Live Entertainment (like live music and other fun-filled shows).

Obviously no one is perfect (except us maybe) and the Montreal Mirror is no exception. I am saying that because I can’t find anywhere in their listings a mention of the new years party happening at Salon Officiel, I think their party is only 15$ and it is going to be crazy fun (too bad there is probably no tickets left anymore, but you can still try).

And if you can’t get tickets for Salon Officiel, you can always purchase tickets for a bunch of other new years eve parties here, all the party listings are provided by ClubZone.com.

Christmas day is just around the corner, and that means that you’ll have to please tons of people, with tons of nice and expensive gifts, and line the pockets of tons of rich business people with tons of money.

Or you could take the alternative route: instead of buying more and more things, you could give theater, opera or classical music tickets, or even cinema tickets as gifts. You could give week-ends of skiing, or a stay at a hotel or a visit at a spa. Hell, just a nice sensual dinner could be an amazing gift that won’t end-up collecting dust in someone’s drawers. Or how about a night of drinking on you at a fancy spot in the Old Port, like Garde-Manger, or something of the sort.

Our friends at Montreal-clubs.com have created an alternative shopping guide for Christmas.

If you really insist on buying useless electronics and give even more money to Apple, then the gift guide of commercial newspaper the Montreal Mirror is exactly what your soon-to-be-emptier wallet needs.

WOW, believe it or not, but we’ve finally moved our asses and managed to develop the platform to offer you party listings for new years eve events in Montreal right here on the pages of this amazingly famous and popular blog, MontrealNewYearsEve.ca.

After I don’t know how many years of existence of this blog, and considering the name we have given it, I guess it was long due for us to finally offer you the amazing possibility of purchasing new years eve tickets right here.

So yeah, your new year celebration plans just got a whole lot easier.

You can thank us latter. For now just visit our party listings here:

I can’t believe it, but it was already a year ago that I told you about the massive Green Nation phenomenon, the huge cult following that the poor Roughriders have in Saskatchewan.

Unfortunately for their dedicated fans, our own Montreal Alouettes took the Grey Cup home to us for a second year in a row, again upsetting the Roughriders in a pretty tight game. You can see some amazing photos of the action during the game at the CBC’s photo gallery on the Grey Cup.

That’s all very good for us in Montreal, because if we have to wait for the poor Canadians to make us champions again, it might take a little bit longer than expected.

And you can be sure that the cheerleaders had noting to do with motivating the Grey cup victory because the weather was a bit too frigid to allow them to perform their full show:

Thanks to the players, the cheerleaders and all the staff of the Montreal Alouettes for bringing us the Grey Cup a second year in a row.

For those who aren’t afraid of the dark, for those who aren’t afraid of Montreal’s narrow and desolate back-alleys, of the packs of wild cats roaming free and the hordes of drunken young people dresses in all manners of original costumes, then the Halloween week-end is just what you’ll need.

Of course, lots of house parties will be happening left and right, and this is usually where you’ll meet the craziest Halloweeners with the fanciest costumes.

If you want to, you can also join the crowds and partake in any of the awesome events listed in the Mirror’s Halloween party guide.

Nothing better than some original music to put you in the Halloween mode, some Transglobal Underground madness:

And I just hope that you date for Halloween doesn’t look like this picture taken from montreal-clubs’s article on the second-hand clothing store Eva B: