ACCOZZAGLIA

Most of these are incidental or functional, but you tend to notice differences in the first few months of new change. Nowadays, I couldn’t readily make the comparative differences between Seattle and Toronto the way I could in 2005–06 (or U.S. and Canada, for that matter, in terms of products available).

What do I miss here?

1) Shoppers closing at midnight at most locations.
Pharmaprix (to non-Canadians: same company, Québec-only brand) closes at either 22h or 23h (10p or 11p, respectively). I know of one in Côte-des-Neiges that operates as 24/7, but CDN is a long way off from where I am. If it weren’t for the mountain in between . . .

2) Street food.
Montréal does not allow food carts, street meat, or sketchy food trucks. The poutine here is infinitely better, but I think nothing can replace (what I refer to as) Poutine Truck in front of Sid Smith. Then again, for the sketchy food trucks (like the wok trucks and coliform soft-serve frozen dairy trucks), it’s something one can live without. But Poutine Truck was the best. I think it’s time to turn Queen St. in front of New City Hall into a pedestrian bazaar. They can re-route York or something. Where you’re not feeling complete, street meat takes away the heat and can’t be beat — whether or not you’re 1338.

3) The UofT college system.
An old UofT friend and I ran into each other today, both of us unaware that we’d ended up at McGill (where, if you can swallow a pill . . . ). Just after embracing and being impressed by our purple hair (both of us have such now), we went to town on ripping apart how screwed up McGill’s “one-administration-squeezes-all-students-of-all-levels” tack (at the UofT, the confusing-at-first seven-college undergrad system began to make a mess of sense, and I directly attribute that to why I managed to complete my undergrad work). We did this in front of McGill staff, so I guess this made us UofT snobs. Oh gosh. That’s terrible</feigned_distress>. Case in point: you wanna go to the McGill clinic? You can only phone for an appointment on the 15th of the month, and that’s for appointments available after the the 15th of the following month. You can’t phone on the 14th. You can’t phone on the 16th. Or any other day, for that matter. The registrar’s office looks like a bank branch, replete with “now serving” number-ticket gear. At UC, I could walk in, stand in line for a few, and if needed, talk directly to my registrar (who is perhaps the best thing to happen to me at the UofT). I even knew the secret knock to her hidden side door. :)

4) The dearth of TD Canada Trust branches.
Maybe this is a one-two hate-on for All Things Toronto in Gilles’ riding, but the minute one gets out of hanglo hell, the TD branches sort of evaporate. As expected, BMO’s everywhere, as is Banque Laurentienne (which are nowhere to be found in Ontario).

5) The 24-hour supermarket.
This one really bothers me. Sure, some dépanneurs are open 24h, but nothing hits the calibre of even a greengrocer. All the Metros here shut down at 23h. WTF’s up with that, Québec? This is your late-night crown jewel of a city, hi! L’Intermarche on rue Mont-Royal appears to be open very late, though, as I did shopping in there around 12:30a recently. Though their prices suck, they can has PC. We do have a 24h Second Cup and a 24h Presse Café, though I’ve not yet used the former.

6. A compass-oriented grid system.
Ain’t nothing can be done about this, but it sometimes screws with my head. Example: I live on an east-west rue, but on the map, said street is about 5-10° from due north-south. If I head out “east”, I’m going north. This all makes for a fucked sense of pinpointing time of day based on the sun: it can look and feel like “afternoon” from as early as 10a.

7. Chipotle.
I don’t need to say anything further. If you know, you know. If you don’t know, then go know.

8. Yelling at stupid drivers/cyclists/pedestrians.
This is an exercise in futility here, and most people know it. Which makes for a strange peace on the road. Perhaps it’s linuguistic variety that keeps people from shouting at each other (after all, what good is it to shout expletives if the intended has no clue what you’re saying?). Then again, Concordia derives from the Latin “agreement”, as this has been necessary, I’m told, throughout Montréal’s lifetime (hence the four-flower municipal flag of the fleur-de-lis (French), thistle (Scots), rose (Pommies), and shamrock (Irish). But there is still plenty of reason to hand out citizen citations to clueless bastards.

9. Streetcars.
Say whatever, but streetcars are the past, the present, and the future. I don’t miss riding over tracks or getting “tracked”, especially in wintertime.

10. ROSI and Sirsi.
Minerva is a dog, and McGill has an unhealthy, unproductive obsession with Microsoft Enterprise systems. It makes me like ROSI more and more. And as Sirsi goes, that plus the way the UofT library system is structured makes for fast research. I still have access to UofT libraries for a limited time, so I’m avoiding McGill’s equivalent.

11. The sense of your belongings not up and getting ganked at every corner.
When I find the pricks who stole my shit, I’m going to nail them to a wall by their teabag. I pour nitrous down the pipe / Watch them laugh while they die. Portman’s the name.

12. Honest Ed’s.
I already yearn to come in and get lost, but now I can’t. Plus, the prices were often tough to beat, especially on some of the harder-to-find stuff I’d procure from their food section. Clothes, tools, and other crap? Well, it usually is crap, but that store’s atmosphere should be protected under historic preservation.

In time, I’ll probably come to like what I now have and forget that I ever missed this stuff. Now I should go read, like I was supposed to do two hours ago. Grrr.