Some definite thoughts on the scent of roasting chicken in the Plateau.
Updates from February, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Montreal’s Fashion Week is early in the season, but apparently that can be a good thing. More on the relative importance of our city’s stroll down the catwalk.
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Michael Applebaum called Louise Harel a liar on Friday and suggested she should step down over her recent charge that an engineering firm faked a city employee’s identity on some documents. However, Harel seems to be on the money that this engineering firm, which has its own offices at city hall, is a mite too close to the action.
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Pleased to note that the Mies van der Rohe gas station on Nuns Island has been revived as a community centre, uniting kids and older people in a unique kind of facility.
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Quebec intends to sue the engineering consortium responsible for the plans drawn up for work done on the tunnel paralume that collapsed last summer – luckily sparing human life, but shutting the tunnel for weeks while the mess was cleared up and the tunnel’s solidity verified.
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Architectural piece about the transformation of the Erskine and American Church into part of the Museum of Fine Arts, preserving its stained glass windows. Shame the windows are not better photographed.
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Doobious
Awesome use of terrazzo aplenty in that thing. Just delicious.
Thanks for the reminder to go see a concert in the new hall.
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Kate
I haven’t been inside the new wing at all. Should try to drop by sometime.
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David Tighe
I was told when I tried to visit the concert hall to see it that I could only do so by going to a concert. Is this true?
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Doobious
I was told the same thing during the opening weekend, David. Although I suppose it’s just a matter of visiting often and keeping your eyes open for an opportunity.
The tunnel connecting the new pavilion to the old is a nice piece of work. It’s actually an exhibition space and doesn’t feel like being in a tunnel at all.
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Ian
Just subtly wander in, and if you’re caught pull the old “wow this is gorgeous I got lost” routine. You can get away with almost anything if you act innocent and full of wonderment.
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Spacing looks at the impending by-election in Vieux-Rosemont to replace Pierre Lampron, and thinks it may prefigure how public feeling is running on the three main city parties. The election will be on April 29.
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Richard Burnett’s Gazette blog has notes on Black History Month; the Mirror’s notes; notes from QMI; Radio-Canada; the official website.
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Piece about a very elaborate wall mural in Pointe Claire has a couple of striking omissions, the most obvious being the artist’s name, but also no challenge to the dubious notion that a picture on a wall can somehow compensate for the loss of a grocery store in an area that’s had one since the 1750s.
Quel Avenir looked at NDG’s Our Lady of Grace mural this week, followed by some thoughts on a mural in Trois-Rivières and a certain other media outlet condemning it as wasteful of taxpayer dollars.
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A Hells Angel on the police wanted list was arrested Thursday aboard an STM bus. I’m always puzzled why these guys hang around where they know their faces are on a list. It’s a big world. Although maybe as a motard he figured taking public transit was enough cover.
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This strikes me as a sign of hard times: used cooking oil is being stolen from temporary storage behind restaurants. Restos used to have to pay to get the stuff carted away, but now it has value as raw material for biodiesel.
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C_Erb
It’s also used in the production of cosmetics.
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Metro riders may have noticed some trains playing a three-note door warning lately – it’s going to be standard throughout the system by summertime.
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Tux
Most metros used to make those notes as they pulled out of the station. I remember reading that it was the electrical hum of several power transformers or something being turned on in stages. I love that they preserved the notes of that sound, but it’s kind of too bad they made it sound fake and synthesized… a recording of the actual sound would have been way more nostalgic…
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Domenico Cotugno
@Tux:
I remembered reading that somewhere, as well. The explanation has (surprisingly?) found its way onto Wikipedia’s pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Metro#Bombardier_Transportation_MR-73.I don’t know why we don’t hear the 3 notes anymore, since the equipment hasn’t changed, though.
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Kate
You hear the three (real) notes on the orange line, which runs MR-73 trains, but not the green, which has the even older trains. Here’s a PDF file from the STM explaining the cause of the notes.
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Michel
(Haven’t read the links)
Strange, before the holidays I was trying to convince my toddler to take the bus & metro with me (an earlier attempt ended in a fright-filled screaming disaster).
Anyhow, one of the ways I convinced him, besides the fact that we would be going to the library, was that the metro made music (or did in the past) to indicate that it was leaving. Sure enough, we get on the metro, the notes are played, and the lad relaxes.
Finally, aren’t those the beginning notes of Aaron Copeland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man”? -
Michel
Oh, never mind. Read the wiki, and I just repeated the Copeland line.
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Matt
@Tux, I believe the door-close chime was intended to sound synthesized as to differentiate it from the sound of the metro departing in the other direction.
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I so regret never having gassed up there back when it was a gas station. It was always on the list of “one of these days, I’m gonna…” but I never made it and then it closed. So glad to see it revived for a much better purpose.