June 24 - Grand Prix Spectacles

Okay, so I am safely back in Toronto… thanks for asking….. but I haveone more entry to praise that whacky Montreal. June 24 in Quebec is'St. Jean Baptist Day'… a day where Quebec celebrates its pride as a'nation'. I thought it was a province of Canada, but that's a wholeargument that is gonna get me into trouble. Regardless, St. JeanBaptist Day was happening as well many other events in the city. Asan aside, I asked about 10 Quebecers, who /what St. Jean Baptist wasor what the actual celebration is based on…. NONE knew. It was a dayoff, a day to drink, party and celebrate the Quebec 'nation'.Also, last Friday it was the beginning of the Grand Prix F1 weekend.To check out the hoopla, after work, I decided I would take a strollover the center of the events…. Crescent Street. My assistant inMontreal told me it would be full of Euro and white trash and, as sheput it in her lovely French accent, tight white top girls. She toldme this I guess to persuade me it wasn't worth the effort…. However,I'm always up to seeing spectacle, especially if it includes 'whitetop girls'.So around 7pm, I headed over. It was a 5 minute walk from my loft. Ipassed one street that was blocked off for cars… ordinary cars. Itwas full of pedestrians given the opportunity to see about 100 or soüber fancy sports car parked along the street. There were dozens ofeach brand…. Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, Lotus etc and some streetracers. It was easily the most AWESOME display of machine and well,decadence/wealth I have ever seen. Usually you see one or two ofthese beautiful machines a year and from a distance. Here, there were plenty that you could walk up to, touch, ogle and peer into the cockpit. In fact, they lost their charm after the first 20 or so…. Oh look, ho-hum, another $300, 000 car… whatever. I've included many pix here, mostly to make Eric Apps upset he didn't visit for the weekend like I offered.

Then I continued to struggle with crowd on my journey over toCrescent. I could hear the sounds of music. As I got closer, I could swear it was "The Tragically Hip" … I actually they were playing onthe stage set up at the corner of Maissoneuve and Crescent. Well their set ended, and I discovered it was cover band as I got closerand asked a few people… but WHOA were they good. I was talking to a roadie/mixer and he informed me that next band was on in 15 minutes…So I strolled around for a bit, enjoying the spectacle then plantedmyself at the FRONT of the stage.Long story short, the next band came on and played a whole 2 hours ofdance and Top 40 covers…. U2, Marley, Outkast etc. They were full ofenergy and were GREAT. I had front row and enjoyed the whole show… ithelped that a few Quebec women squeezed in beside me and insisted onme drinking with them as they celebrated 'St. Jean' and also danced tothe rhythm. I don't know where they kept getting them, but the drinkswere flowing, the music wa

s 'feisty' and the 1000's in the crowd andsurrounding bars were having a great time. A few of the localpatio/eateries had 'white top girls' dancing and tossing free swag outinto the appreciative crowd. After the band left, it was about 11:30pm, as I walked home, I passedyet another street set up for an event. The avenue had a bunch ofcatwalks set up for a weekend of open-air fashion shows. There was one happening as I passed. I stopped and enjoyed this unique event for bit. All free, all within 3 minutes of each other….. Of course there were other things to see that night .... a heavy but amicable police presence, overflowing garbage and preachers telling all the Grand Prix visitors that they are all going straight to hell for their sins... you can see all the pix here....

The next day, I was walking to work as usual, and I came across the St. Jean Baptist Parade....

Montreal WOW….But I'm back in T.O. now…. If you wanna keep me T-dot, you better start wooing me cuz Montreal kinda stole my heart.

There were number of excellent comments on the last blog… I will respond to them ASAP…. Please be patient.