Montreal - Night Out #1

As soom of you keen readers may have observed, there's been an absence of new posts for about the last two weeks. That's because I'd embarked on a whirlwind tour of Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver. As I know you are all so fascinated with my life, I intend to recreate for you what I did during those 2 weeks, with photos where possible.

So the first night, I got a smashing new haircut from one Janet W. We then headed out to the Sala Rosa for some tapas. During the many years I'd lived in Montreal, I'd never gotten around to trying this Spanish style of meal which consists basically of only appetizers. As you can see, we were also in for some live flamenco music and dancing (though we were sitting in the corner and couldn't actually see the dancing).

Here's Janet and I enjoying our scrumptuous dishes: you can see the pile of fennel salad, the two remaining balls of deep fried goat cheese (oh my they were delicious) and some garlicky potato salad:

After dinner, Janet returned home, and I was joined by Rich. We headed upstairs to the concert venue to hear a night of Montreal style avant-garde musics. The opening fellow played some (not so interesting) folky-acoustic stuff, but impressed all when he busted out a lyre (think of that stringed instrument angels are always depicted as playing). The main act was called Esmerine and apparently consisted of several members of the much celebrated Godspeed You Black Emperor! The instrumentation was interesting: the focal point was a woman playing cello who was mainly accompanied by a percussionist who alternatively bowed (the edges of the keys) and hammered a marimba and xylophone, and who were occaisionally joined by another percussionist, a french horn player and bass player.

After that show, Rich and I headed up St. Laurent to a bar called the 'Green Room' where Papa Extraodinaire (aka Luv) was droppin some sweet tunes.

There I sat and stared warmly at the beer tap in front of my bar seat. As you have heard me mention a million times, the micro-brews available in Montreal are one of the things I miss most.

At one point, a bearded Jeff showed up to give Lew a little lovin'.

As we were leaving, Rich found it necessary to sneak into my art-face and foosball composition: