of people will dismiss Steven Brill’s latest venture, Contentville. That’s a mistake though. I can’t exactly get traction on why this might work well – but there’s something in here worthy of some note. Maybe it’s just that Brill wants to grow the business carefully.
Two things happening
this weekend.
- I’m doing the bulk of my move. I’m doing the furniture and stuff with some friends next week, but this weekend I’m going to behave like a drone and shuttle all my books and the other contents of my apartment that can fit in my car over to the new place.
- The St-Laurent Street Festival is on. In my neighbourhood, this is a big highlight. We marvel and feel superior that, twice each summer, they close down the main North-South street for about 10 blocks. For 4 days straight. So people can have fun. Really, it’s just a bunch of the local businesses selling junk off folding tables, and every bar and resto sets up on the street. Very much fun, and very “Montreal”. Today I bought socks (the street sale is also known as the socks and underwear sale) and two classic CDs – the Jayhawks first and Sloan’s first, Smeared. A classic of Canadian east coast pop that somehow I’d lost along the way. Oh, and I had a beer with a couple friends I bumped into and an oyster and a shot with some other friends I met.
How’s this for diversification?
Roots Clothing is going to be the name partner in a new airline venture. RootsAir – you can see it in the original business plan too… “Yup, here’s what we’re going to do: 1980 – shoes; 1985 – shoe stores; 1990 – clothing boutiques; 1998 – those wicked Olympic hats; 2001 – airline.” All according to plan.
Ok so I’m just
sitting here minding my own business and I read Saturn’s bookmarks which leads me to some site with the improbable name “westernhomes” who I notice does a lot of record reviews. And so I’m wondering what a kid who’s probably 10 years younger than I am could possibly understand about the magic that the ‘Mats represented to someone living in the midst of hair-band early 80s hell. Well, it turns out quite a lot. A whole lot, in fact. And he has a damn good turn of a phrase as well, as this quote from a review of a shitty Cracker CD (Garage D’Or) demonstrates: “Eurotrash Girl,” with its thieved Van Morrison bassline and weird nightmare travelogue narrative, became the biggest eight-minute radio single since, like, “Stairway.”
Next Saturday, Belgium
kicks off the first game of Euro 2000 in Brussels. I’m not a huge football (aka soccer) fan but I love the big tournaments. And Montreal is a particularly great place to be a soccer fan – it really comes alive during a big event. My neighbourhood (le Plateau Mont-Royal) is a mix of artists and students – but also of tons of first-generation Canadians, just here from Portugal, South and Central America, and little Italy is just up the way a mile or so. During the last World Cup if you had walked down boul. St-Laurent, you would have noticed that every business had a TV in it – barbershops, hair salons, cafs, bars, restos – and they were all tuned to a game.
My friend Roel splits his time between here and Amsterdam and tells me that Holland is particularly dangerous this year.
