Exactly this day 37 years ago I left my insipid existence in Kwinana, WA and joined the army to become one of the greatest aircraft mechanics in the history of mankind. That’s clearly not the case, but I need something else to divert my thoughts away from the Saints loss to Port Adelaide last night. Just watched the highlights and it hurts I’ve gotta tell ya.
“There’s more to life than football” my Mum used to say so we move on. Mind you the last thing she said to me before I left to join the army was, “Always look after those worse off than yourself and keep your dick clean.” Go figure.
Anyway, we had another big day yesterday and as a result we are going to kick back a bit today. We have our last two shows tonight back to back so it will be a late one. We started yesterday as promised to old mate Adam, at Fairmount Bagels and they didn’t disappoint. A remarkable little shop, mainly because the bulk of the customer space was taken up by trays of bagels in six packs. It reminded us of the regime required for the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld because two people could barely squeeze in front of the counter. The bagels were still warm and sensational. You could see everything being prepared and baked in the shop which added to the experience and the shop is open 24 hours! That’s serious bagel demand.
From there we caught the train to the northern outskirts and the Olympic Stadium which hosted the 1976 Olympics. It’s set on 1.2 square kms of land with other stadiums for gridiron and soccer, community space and a huge sports medicine building which I will get to in a minute. There is also a Bio-dome and the old athlete’s village. You do feel a bit cold walking around this giant concrete stadium which holds 60,000 people. There’s something eastern bloc “pre-wall coming down” only because roads and infrastructure around the stadium were designed to provide plenty of space for a million visitors or so and that doesn’t exist anymore. Homebush in Sydney has a similar feel. It’s why the MCG has it over any stadium in the world with its proximity to the city. I have to mention the rainbow coloured street artists and their overnight bags that got on the train to the stadium. They looked incredible and didn’t blink an eyelid. Photos below.
We bought some tickets to the Montreal Tower and the 1976 exhibition and did the long walk around the stadium. It’s like a concrete UFO and looks like it could survive a nuclear attack. It may look like a “red headed step son” right now, but if Trump continues to piss off North Korea, every Canadian and his dog will be making the pilgrimage to the Olympic Stadium! The tower is attached to the stadium and given the sterile atmosphere of the walk there we weren’t expecting much. Wrong again! The tower is taller than the Space Needle in Seattle and you get up there in a glass-encased funicular that gets you up to the top in a spectacular two minutes. The views were 360 degrees and we were blessed with another perfect day.
After an hour in the tower it was a short walk to the 1976 exhibition. This was a bit lame only because they could have had more video footage of the athletes. They had a little documentary on the first Roberto Duran v Sugar Ray Leonard fight over 15 rounds which my old mate Scott would have enjoyed but we really wanted to see some Olympic action. What was interesting was that these were the Olympics that highlighted drug use for the first time. It obviously wasn’t the first time and my heart goes out to Raelene Boyle every time I think of the East German sprinter Renate Stecher who beat her in the 100m and 200m in Munich 1972. This is a woman built like a gridiron running back who, after the East German state sponsored drug program was exposed, came out and said that after 1972 she wanted to cut back her drug taking because she wanted to safely have children! Raelene flagged this to the IOC as a possible issue and that perhaps it was illegal to win 2 gold medals loaded up on steroids. Stecher was inducted into the German Sports Hall of Fame in 2011. It makes me sick. Raelene deserves those two gold medals. So back to 1976 and East German blonde bombshell Kornelia Ender wins 4 gold medals in the pool, all in world record time! Incredible given East Germany didn’t have a pool until 1971 and it was a skating rink for 9 months of the year! Nothing suspicious here. That is why Montreal is now the home of the world doping authority housed in the aforementioned building next to the stadium. Just have an Olympics for drug cheats and get it over and done with. No holds barred, juice up to the eyeballs and let ‘em go. Let’s see how many explode at the finish line. “Another mop and bucket here please!”
Another train back to the city and we went for a walk around Old Montreal which is very like Paris. Buildings dating back to the 1600s and full of restaurants and retail activity. There was beautiful hand-made jewelry and the like and I grabbed a couple of things for the girls. From Old Montreal a bus trip west to check out the two most famous smoked meat restaurants in Montreal. The biggest is Shwartzers. When I say biggest I don’t mean physically because it’s quite small, and there is a long queue out the front permanently. Over the road is the one that a local recommended on our first day here, The Main. No queues and sidewalk tables. Perfect. The food and service was sensational. Marinated beef brisket, smoked for 8 hours, coleslaw, bread and skin on hand cut fries. Case closed. In the window of the shop is a pile of brisket in cryovac bags ready to be heated up. Nothing frozen. Extraordinary and we may well be back there tonight.
As evening approached we headed to St Catherine Street where approximately a mile is dedicated to all things comedy festival. It was seriously packed although very friendly and relatively drunken idiot-free. It has a different atmosphere to Melbourne and Edinburgh. There is a more family friendly feel to it and it may have something to do with it being summer and more daylight. There isn’t the incessant hawking that can happen and it appears a lot more understated. Edinburgh’s Royal Mile is a kaleidoscope of barely controlled anarchy and Melbourne particularly around the Town Hall can get a bit messy during April. I’m certainly not saying Montreal is like an episode of the Brady Bunch because it was lighting up when we walked out of the Metropolis at midnight last night. We went to see the “Nasty Show” where comics let loose with their most disgusting material basically. It had some very funny moments but I’m not a fan of gratuitous for the sake of gratuitous. Still had a great time and we got home and crashed knowing we could rest today. Some photos from yesterday.
