Canadia... what is wrong with you people?

[satanmcnugget]

laffs!

first of all, i get my smokes from the reserve...costs me about 3 dollars a pack...the "legit" smokes cost about 9 dollars

dont even get me started on the beer...we have brands up here where it costs you about a dollar a bottle...and unlike American beer, it's actually beer...American beer is like water with slightly brownish food-colouring

"we do this trick where we look at the poster first and then say 'fuck that.' "

OMG!!!!

bwuha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!


*tries to reign in the sudden surge of nationalism*

 

[petergunn]

FUCKING rules. And so does Montreal, it's like France but with hot dogs, how great is that?

OUI!


(except they say it like "WAY!", but really quick so it sounds like a small dog sneezing...)

i did a blog post about montreal hot dogs and the music of georges thurston (r.i.p.) here:

h ttp://tetecarre.blogspot.com

i can't really speak on canada outside quebec, although my brother lives in toronto and seems to like it...

i was in montreal during mutek once and went to the opening reception and drank some free beer... however, nobody would give me passes to see anything else and so i did not bother to expose myself to the cutting edge (or AVANT GARDE AS THEY SAY) of electronic music...

i did however drink alot of beer and smoke alot of weed...

yes, beer is more expensive at the store than in the US... however, in general outside the US, the price difference between drinking at home and in bars is less... i remember being shocked in London that there were no cheap deals (outside of pee pee cider) to be found at the off license...

i would say in general, beer is cheaper in bars in montreal than in NYC... and it is MUCH MUCH better... the stuff they consider swill like LaBatts, Molson, and Carling is still WAY better than Bud, Coors, et all... you need to change your pitch up and either drink in bars or just buy a 40oz (or liter or whatever they use up there) of Carling's Big 10. (they sell Carling in like 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10% alcohol.. CONTROL YR BUZZ) and i guarentee you will be tipsy by the end, even if you are a boozehound, for 5 bucks, ok?

i don't think i have had a bad beer up there... Boreale is a solid standard at every bar... their blonde has a Hoegarden-type vibe...

Fin De Monde is a great beer... it is made by Unibrou (HAHAHA!) a company that was(?) owned by the singer Robert Charlebois... it's named after one of his songs... actually, every beer Unibrou makes is really fucking good...

incidentally, everyone should own this record:

lastly, combustables...

while i remember people complaining bitterly about the price of smokes, say ten years ago, when it cost like 2.50 for a pack of Marlboros in the NE USA, now it seems to me that prices are almost exactly the same in NYC and Montreal,...

and the weed up there just outclasses NYC... basically about half the price... like 40 bucks CA gets you almost double what a 50 is in NYC... and, in general, it's better quality...

 

[Poisonous Dart]

Blame Canada!!!

I will say one thing for Canada...it's clean, the colleges are cheap, they have free health care and they provide the U.S. with their greatest export...hot ass Canadian girls and infinitely entertaining teen seriodramas such as Degrassi. God bless Canada! (And ship Stacey Farber and Cassie Steele to Boston immeadiately...throw in that other blond chick for good measure!)

One.

 

[Sick Boy]

I am English and have lived in Canada for about 8 years or so, 4 of which were spent in Toronto.

Everyone in Ontario basically understands WEMF to stand for Weird E-Tards Making Friends. It's more like a festival for crackheads and candy ravers to socialize and feel like there is a place for them in the world than anything else. The fact those Destiny mongoloids are still calling it "World Electronic Music Festival" is laughable after they've booked indie bands like two years in a row now to headline.

That's Toronto for you though. Toronto isn't very culturally rich at all, that's basically something Canada made up because more than one race lives in the Greater Toronto area (though downtown its all suburban white people).

Don't get me wrong, I love Canada, I have Canadian citizenship, my brother is Canadian, and I am proud to be a percentage Canadian. Canada's identity is fucked though - especially in Toronto - where basically what you are getting is 2nd hand cultural product from other parts of the world because you have a city full of Canadians scared to be Canadian.

The alcohol is so expensive because Ontario had the brilliant idea to monopolize alcohol sales through the LCBO. So not only is alcohol more expensive, but you have to walk an average of three blocks to get it.

The beer is good though, the girls are hot, the weed is cheaper, and everyone is reeeeaaalllllyyyyy chilled out (which makes sense when you consider the first three things). I would definitely consider raising a family there, and its also great for decompression from the nasty, hectic, environment of London. If you're young and into the nightlife and being involved in things though... not so great.

 

[stelfox]

canada is a great country. i'm sure that if you went to a candy rave weekender in california or the uk or elsewhere, it would be just as shit. plenty of decent music is being made in canada, too. there's a lot of good techno, tons of rock that's pretty ok, folks like ghislain poirier, kardinal offishall, sixtoo and a really decent reggae and soca scene in toronto.
montreal is a really cool city. i'm moving there in february and canadian girls are really quite special, but i'm not exactly objective about that...
the beer is so much better than american beer its' not even funny and if you live in quebec you don't have to walk several miles to get it. i'm actually quite partial to alexander keith's ipa and plenty of the quebec beers, especially maudite and any of the cheval blancs. still, i do find it all a bit cold and fizzy and maintain my belief that england is considerably better than anywhere in north america as far as beer is concerned. and, by the way, anyone willing to drink carling big 10s can't really like beer that much. it's appalling stuff!
the other thing you can get in canada that doesn't suck like its american counterpart is cheese. canadian cheese is actually very good on the whole, while american doesn't even deserve to be called food.
the weed in canada is much better than american in general, although i don't really smoke any more so that benefit will be pretty much lost on me. unlike america, canada almost has sausages right too, but still not quite.
also they tend not to cause many wars. i like it there a lot.

 

[petergunn]

still, i do find it all a bit cold and fizzy and maintain my belief that england is considerably better than anywhere in north america as far as beer is concerned. and, by the way, anyone willing to drink carling big 10s can't really like beer that much. it's appalling stuff!

good beer is more common in the UK, but i'd say there is ALOT of good beer in the US and canada, the thing is bad beer is way more prevalent... go to a bar in anytown USA and normally the taps are bud, bud light, coors, and miller... but, in most bars in eastern cities, you should be able to get something decent... there are plenty of ales made in quebec that you are more than welcome to drink at room temperature...

re; carling big 10... no one is drinking it for the taste... i have drunk it plenty of times... did i think it tasted better than, say, a chimay? nope... did it get me drunk in 45 minutes for 5 dollars? yes...

 

[stelfox]

oh yeah, there are good micros all over the states - lagunitas ipa in california and shiner bock in texas are two particularly big favourites of mine - and some of the larger breweries are ok, too.
i just like cask-conditioned beer because it isn't ridiculously fizzy or extremely chilled, and it's especially good when the weather is cold. this is one thing i'm really going to have to get used to because nowhere else in the world makes or serves beer in the same way. that or i set up my own brewery when i move.
come to think of it, there are definitely worse career options than that...
re there being nothing cheap in UK offies and the gap between drinking at home and drinking out being less than it is in the US, i'd say that's maybe an illusion created by the dollar being pretty weak against our much stronger, more durable and considerably older imperialist currency.
it costs, on average, about three times as much to buy a beer in a bar here as it does in a shop, so it's lots cheaper to drink at home.
it's even cheaper to drink on the side of the road, however. a can of tennents super or carlsberg special brew is about £1.50. they're pretty much the same deal as carling 10 but contain a secret chemical that makes them impossible to consume in an enclosed environment. after about half a can you have to continue outside, preferably to the point that you can't walk or see (for most people, the required amount is about three cans).
of course, if you're planning on doing this, it helps to be scottish, bright red of face and possessed of a singular talent for yelling incomprehensibly and threateningly at random passers-by.

 

[petergunn]

shiner bock is great... actually, i am not a fan of texas in general, but i have never had a bad beer there... a lotta germans settled there... a pitcher of ziegen bock is a great way to wash down a overly large steak at the Big Texan steak house in austin...

ooh, speaking of meat products, the smoked meat sandwhich at Schwartz's in montreal may be the best food on earth... it comes from the same Romanian jewish lineage as London Salt Beef and NY Pastrami, but in my opinion kicks both their asses...

believe me, i am well aware of Tennant's Super and Carlsburg Special Brew... my introduction to them was thru Gimpo at The Foundry... i walked in w/ a can of hard cider (yes, you must drink these outside, it's true... it's a real shame you basically cannot drink in the street in the US...) and he said "nah nah, you need Tennant's Super, it's got valerium in it and it's made in glasgow where they're all hard..." the next time i was there, he had two cans in the fridge for me...

i still say there is a larger gap between home and bar drinking... in most of the US, you can get a case (24 cans) of cheap beer for under 10 dollars, (in the same areas, you'll pay between 2-3 dollars for a bottle of beer in a bar) in the UK, you're not gonna get much cheap than a pound a beer...

and, there are def plenty of pubs in london (not nice ones, not clubs), where you can get a pint for under 2 pounds... i actually thought the price of beer in pubs (keeping in mind that your pints are biggger than ours) and the price of using the internet were the only two things that you could find cheaper in london than NYC!

in 2000, when i lived in london, it was actually cheaper for me to buy a pint of murphy's (85p) at this pub near me (off of tottenham court road) than it was at the off license... i am not saying this is not a special occurance, (man, that was a hell of a good deal...), but i am saying it could never happen in the US, except for some stupid happy hour deal ("25 cents beers from 6:00-6:15!!!!!")

 

[mistersloane]

a can of tennents super or carlsberg special brew is about £1.50. they're pretty much the same deal as carling 10 but contain a secret chemical that makes them impossible to consume in an enclosed environment. after about half a can you have to continue outside, preferably to the point that you can't walk or see

That always used to be my introduction to people from the US that came to stay in Brixton, I'd be like 'let me show you how we do this south london style' and go get cans of Tennants and bill up and they'd pass out within half an hour and I'd be sitting there going 'fucking lightweights, these yanks'.

 

[stelfox]

i would like it to be noted that i have only ever drunk tennents super once or twice in my life and only once outside - because we thought it would be funny. (obviously this excludes carnival, where it's often all you can get and pretty much obligatory anyway). it's horrendous stuff and extremely, extremely bad for you. seriously, i think you'd be better off legalizing smack and crack and banning this stuff, given the relative damage they can all can do to people.
a good tip to anyone moving here is that you can more or less tell what a neigbourhood is like by walking into an off licence and seeing how much super-strength lager and cider they stock. the higher the quantity and the more budget brands you can find, the more of a shitpit it will be. needless to say my local offie in the sisters has a hell of a lot of it, but harlesden, which is quite possibly the arsehole of london has more than anywhere else i've ever seen - HSL, a generic high-strength lager, sold in a gold can seems to be specific to this postcode.

 

[Mr. Tea]

it's horrendous stuff and extremely, extremely bad for you. seriously, i think you'd be better off legalizing smack and crack and banning this stuff, given the relative damage they can all can do to people.

You know, I think there's some truth to this - obviously lots of people get fucked up (or rather, more fucked up) on hard drugs, or even with a serious skunk habit, but it's childplay compared to what cheap gin used to do to this country* a couple of hundred years ago.

Recently I spent a year in super-rich, super-civilised Switzerland and saw (half-litre) cans of 15% lager in off-licenses there.

*Blighty

 

[Alfons]

Everybody complaining about beer prices should check out Iceland. 10 gbp for a sixpack 0,5l cans in the state monopoly liquor store and a fiver for tap beer in a bar.

 

[PeteUM]

Man, I don't care how beautiful the scenery is... that sounds like hell on earth!

 

[erinmacleod]

i would just like to take a moment here to defend my beloved toronto. full disclosure for any of you folk actually from canada--i'm originally from oshawa (the armpit of the universe--but i mean that in the most affectionate way possible) and i've lived in montreal for the past 12 years. i've spent quite a bit of those 12 years trying to explain to my darling pals that toronto isn't so bad.

if you take a walk around the place (my brother lived in parkdale and sadly just moved to guelph--fricking hippie) you'll realize why it ranks as one of the most multicultural places in the world. it's not "all suburban white people". hell, if someone decided to take central london as representative of the entierty of the city, it'd seem a whole lot more white and, frankly corporate as hell.

the thing about toronto is that there is so much more to it than meets the eye. during my time as a grad student at u of t (hate the school, love the town) i had a terrific time discovering all sorts of cool stuff. cafe diplomatico is lovely--and a great place for jack layton sightings (if you know or care who he is). as my interest in ethiopia runs deep, i'd say that toronto's nazret and addis ababa restaurants are pretty terrific. in fact, i think the owner of addis ababa just came out with a wicked cook book.

the chinese food at 3am is second to none. the cameron house is always entertaining. i've had some good nights at the communist daughter's. the rhino is great. a man called warwick's nights at the gladstone are showcases for music you've never heard before but can't help dancing to. the boat in kensington hosts "bang-the party" and hip hop karaoke, but it's the awesome 1970s cruise ship/chinese restaurant decor that keeps me coming back. "never fogive action" is a great night at gypsy coop; and kensington kitchen is one of my favourite restaurants ever.

toronto has tons of parks, great places to go running, really nice people, and it's within an hour (or less) drive to forests and lakes and outdoor fun.

most importantly, toronto has the best hockey team in the world. and they're gonna win the cup next year. honest.

oh, and as an aside, st. george beer (from ethiopia) is great.

 

[Sick Boy]

if you take a walk around the place (my brother lived in parkdale and sadly just moved to guelph--fricking hippie) you'll realize why it ranks as one of the most multicultural places in the world. it's not "all suburban white people". hell, if someone decided to take central london as representative of the entierty of the city, it'd seem a whole lot more white and, frankly corporate as hell.

I have seen more black people walking in central London in one afternoon than I probably have in 4 years of living in downtown Toronto - not including Caribana.

This is what makes things such as

hip hop karaoke

possible.

Don't get me wrong - Toronto is great, and I cuss it off like I would an annoying cousin. There is love really. It's just a bit of a huge suburb.

 

[stelfox]

toronto has the largest jamaican population of anywhere in the world outside of jamaica, so that would be a suburb with great record shops and really decent food, then. did you ever get out to st clair ot eglinton west, sick boy? if you did i can't see how you can really say that. i'm not being an ass, i just don't get that vibe from toronto at all. it's one of my very favourite places in the world to go record shopping, to be honest. comparing central london and downtown toronto is hardly even possible, either. they're very different places.

 

[Sick Boy]

toronto has the largest jamaican population of anywhere in the world outside of jamaica, so that would be a suburb with great record shops and really decent food, then. did you ever get out to st clair ot eglinton west, sick boy? if you did i can't see how you can really say that. i'm not being an ass, i just don't get that vibe from toronto at all. it's one of my very favourite places in the world to go record shopping, to be honest. comparing central london and downtown toronto is hardly even possible, either. they're very different places.

I understand things are different out in places like St. Clair, Eglinton West, Scarborough, Vaughn and all that shit, but what I am trying to point out is that downtown Toronto doesn't represent this at all. There is hardly any interaction at all between downtown Toronto and the surrounding areas.

I am not trying to argue the fact that the beer, food, record shops, girls, weed, moose, beavers, or national anthem are all great things.

Edit: Also, I didn't start the comparison between Toronto and Central London, I was replying to it.

 

[erinmacleod]

goodness. i was agreeing with you about central downtown toronto. i just don't understand how you can say it is all white people except for the suburbs. take a walk down spadina.

and, my english friends, eglington west is NOT a suburb.

 

[stelfox]

never said it was...

 

[nomos]

I have seen more black people walking in central London in one afternoon than I probably have in 4 years of living in downtown Toronto - not including Caribana.

Where have you been living, Rosedale? Did you ride the TTC?

I'd say Toronto, London and Vancouver are all pretty similar when it comes to the ease and degree to which people mix (though my experience of London is limited). They're certainly much more comparable to one another than to, say, NYC.