couch tarde

todays forcast:
rain, not vancouver rain, but showers. a build up of of evaporation for months, that finally glosh it all out in a few hours. the kind that takes leaves off trees, wallpaper off walls, chewed gum off the side of bus shelters, the kind that generally cleans everything.

a day in history:
rented bikes on a day that was hot. biked along a two lane bike path through old montreal to ile sainte helene. biked underneath huge rollercoasters by la ronde (6 flags) and saw the biosphere and some more deserted olympic events. these ones had trees growing straight through the concrete stairways, and hundreds of swallows already called the place home. saw a bike trail that goes all the way to vermont. parc du la fontane with beer and italian food. met up with Tamas from vancouver at a venue he owns called lab sythetique. the show was really artsy and abstract. the venue is cool. in the vending machine if you press orange crush you get beer. a film was shown that was too abstract just for the fact of being abstract. it seems realism is a harder thing to do. the music that was "played" sounded like a dead voicemail machine with a pulse that had been microwaved, high reverb and set on repeat. actually i think it was.

next day
had to get a new couchsurfer near berri uqam. ran into steve from vancouver. he hopped a few trains to get here. he was with a huge crew from vancouver, some dave knew. the people we stayed with one is a graffiti artist, the other a mental health worker. they took us to their studio near metro place st. henri. this is clashing neighbourhood of huge 50 foot highways and small houses placed right underneath them. most of the houses were used in the early 1900`s by the tanners who worked at huge factories (now studios and artists lofts) that were probably nice then, but now are low income housing that are all facing eviction. their loft is a huge wooden loft with a view of a train yard and highways looming in the sky.

couche tarde is their version of macs corner store. which means staying up late. oh and KFC chicken is PFK.

went to the tam tam festival on mont royal park. its a huge drum/sword fighting festival that happens every sunday. all the people that play dungeons and dragons come out wearing medieval clothing with chain mail and home-made swords, bows and arrows, spears, and javelins and there are two teams and they battle it out in the forest. theres about one hundred people involved in the fight that happens every week, the rest of the few hundred watch first in comedy, then in a bewilderment as the people are serious about this shit! i think the festival is about the french fighting with the english, the famous battle, but don`t quote me on that.

fuck the keyboards here are all messed up with accents and weird symbols.

horsemeat is a big deal here. they come from old horses tourists ride in old montreal. oh fiddleheds too are good.