The gay pride parade begins at 13h Sunday at René-Lévesque and Metcalfe, moving eastward into the Village. Many politicians and figures of note are expected, as well as thousands of onlookers.
Update: Report with photos from the Journal, reports from CTV, Radio-Canada, CBC.
A report says that predatory evangelists are going into extended health facilities and working on the sick, frail and elderly. Ironically, the report is made by a group called the AIISSQ – the Association des intervenants et intervenantes en soins spirituels du Québec – who go about offering “legitimate” spiritual aid. A section at the end of this piece describes the activities of these official workers, who are called in to soothe people in crisis. They’re paid by Quebec and are now expected to be open to all faiths rather than to be dispensing only one. But the list of activities at the very end of the piece includes the Catholic sacrament of extreme unction, and communion.
La Presse’s item has already provoked a response from health minister Danielle McCann.
And how does this really differ from the Salvation Army, who go after those who may be at the lowest point of their lives?
But the real reason that people are sent out to try to convert people has nothing to do with actually converting people. There are so few who actually convert and even less who stay, once converted. The real reason is that it keeps those people themselves faithful and not thinking about leaving a religion that really doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny.
I don’t know what the Salvation Army’s modus operandi is, Ephraim. But there’s a difference between operating a shelter and actively going into CHSLDs and browbeating people who are in no state to resist.
I agree with you about it being done to give people a reason for being religious, but they shouldn’t be dragging helpless, non-consenting people into their religious activities.
The Salvation Army is a protestant evangelical organization, they help people at the lowest point of their life, homeless and needing help. And rather than helping them as Christians, it aims to convert them at that time. (Also their record on LGBT is horrible….They have referred LGBT people for conversion therapy…. and calls on them to be celibate. They walked away from contracts by the city of SF because they have a clause on non-discrimination for same-sex partners. )
To be honest, I think that all proselyting should be illegal. It’s confrontational in nature and quickly devolves into a form of harassment that basically says that your beliefs aren’t worthy of being respected because they aren’t mine.
But the worst part is that it isn’t about actually converting people in any case. It’s really a way to keep people in the fold. Do you think that the JW really gain new membership from standing at the metro stations? Seen a long line of people at 4489 Avenue Papineau waiting to get in? The LDS people growing by new membership or simply because they have lots of children? No, they go out to knock on doors because they need them to meet the people who REFUSE to be converted.
Heck, the LDS involuntarily convert people after their death, in the belief that it is the only way that they will get into heaven…. so no need to follow the religion now anyway… Anne Frank, the Queen Mother and even Hitler! https://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/ldsagree.html
*If* Evangelicals are right, and not accepting Jesus will result in you burning forever in eternal hell, then these peoples’ behaviour is in the best interest of those hospitalized people.
It’s their sincere derply-held belief, so you have to respect it, right? You don’t want to get branded a Christianophobe! 😉
Imagine if there was a law about people of authority exerting religious influence in government buildings.
I read the LaPresse article. A lot of these activities amount to abuse and something should be done to stop and prevent it from happening.
When my mom was an inpatient at Sacre Coeur Hospital, there was an elderly volunteer who came by. She definitely seemed religious (Catholic?) and she had a very kind disposition. Due to language barriers and the fact that my mom was tired she simply told my mom she would pray for her and that was that. I think my mom really appreciated the sentiment (our religious heritage is not Christian), and the volunteer moved on. For me, this sort of scenario is generally fine.
On another note, re Ephraim’s comment “I think that all proselyting should be illegal. It’s confrontational in nature and quickly devolves into a form of harassment that basically says that your beliefs aren’t worthy of being respected because they aren’t mine.” I very, very much agree with this, and this is how I feel when I see proselytizers.
There is a lot of proselytizing downtown generally, which is nothing new. But, in the past couple of years or so (maybe longer?), there has been a very vocal and aggressive group at McGill College and Sainte Catherine (near Indigo). I’ve seen/heard a proselytizer spew insults about another religion at a guy passing by who maybe said something that triggered the proselytizer. In any case, I find them very aggressive. They use megaphones too. I’ve observed them enough that I’ve considered options on how to file a complaint, though I’m not sure what the legality of it all is. I guess it would be a matter of calling 311.
@Bert: these predatory evangelicals don’t wear any visible signs of their faith that I’m aware of (and even if they wear a cross it isn’t a requirement of their faith). And as for those who do wear visible signs, I, for one, have never been even remotely proselytized by someone in a kippa, turban, or hijab. Point being, the wearing of such signs has little to do with religious proselytizing.
Yes. One time I was on the train and the guy sitting next to me brought up religion, I shrugged and he stopped. But it coukd have been bad.
But the people I’ve known most dedicated to religion, Philip Berrigan, Buddhist monks, Catholic Workers, Sisters of Mercy,, even church ministers, have never said anything about religion. I figure they try to lead by example. There are just some very specific groups who feel an obligation to talk.about their religion.
Michael
Ephraim & JP: some religions require proselyting, so if we ban it, are we not taking away their religious freedom? Why would taking away that freedom be ok, but taking away the freedom to wear silly hats be wrong? Would you ban non-religious proselyting too? ex: loud climate change activists with megaphones on St Cat? Or would you ban it only because of its religious nature?
I always find it interesting how little nuance we allow for people whose views oppose our own. Chris will allow for no hypocrisy or wiggle room when religion is concerned, but in the fight against cars he is as reactionary as the most orthodox faithful.
A simpler, more secular humanist approach is that you should be allowed to do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s right to do the same. The devil is in the details, of course.
Chris – I have a right to not be harassed as well. When does your religious right to harass me and my right to not be harassed start and end?
A religious Jewish family is enjoying their quiet sabbath, no electricity, having a lovely festive lunch. A Mormon is going door to door ringing doorbells, disturbing their sabbath. Who’s religion has a higher value, those who have decided that they should disturb people on their sabbath because they don’t believe in the Jewish sabbath or those who are quietly enjoying family time as require by Jewish law?
You can proselyte without having to harass people or to disturb people. Even if your religion requires it, it doesn’t require you to RING a doorbell or YELL at someone haranguing them. You can stand there with a quiet sign that says “Ask me about Dianetics.”
Ephraim, uh, how does that square with you saying above “To be honest, I think that *all* proselyting should be illegal.”
Verb versus passive… actively seeking to convert someone versus their choosing to find out more and open to the idea. Doing “Christian” work with the aim that others will see and ask, versus making someone pray for their food and a place to lay their head…. or you can’t have it. Or in the case of the Salvation Army, actually asking people to prove that they are in need by requesting them to bring a note from BS to prove their are destitute.
@Blork – I said “exerting religious influence” . Sort of my way of saying kippahs / turbans / burkas / crucifixes don’t try to convert people. People do.
Yet another useless law that does absolutely nothing to address the “problem”.
Still a real shame that people are being preyed on when they are vulnerable.
@Ephraim
“A religious Jewish family is enjoying their quiet sabbath, no electricity, having a lovely festive lunch. A Mormon is going door to door ringing doorbells, disturbing their sabbath. Who’s religion has a higher value, those who have decided that they should disturb people on their sabbath because they don’t believe in the Jewish sabbath or those who are quietly enjoying family time as require by Jewish law?”
Yeah on my street I get little girls knocking on my door all morning when I’m trying to sleep in to get me to be the shabbas goy for their mom who needs the stove turned on or the fridge reset to the shabbas mode so the light stays on. Your gang might not proselytize but let’s not pretend for a second that they don’t impose their worldview on others, this is but one small example. That said, I like my neighbours and am quite happy to help them out even if I live next to a very conservative synagogue and their kids aren’t even allowed to play with mine.
A decrepit church, facing the Met, twice burned out, and originally built in an eye-joltingly unpleasant style to begin with, is still being considered for rescue and renovation by the diocese. The Journal is pondering the fates of church buildings this weekend, although the elephant in the room – the fact that hardly anyone uses these buildings any more and certainly few people want to tithe to support them – isn’t directly addressed. A church like the massive Saint-Eusèbe in eastern Ville-Marie will never be filled with parishioners again.
Even the $20 million promised by the CAQ to shore up the remaining church buildings is hardly going to touch the problem.
This is what they need to do: pick out the buildings that are either of outstanding architectural value or maintain valuable sociocultural purposes separate from their original religious purpose, and let the rest – like the burned-out St-Bernardin-de-Sienne – go. Most churches are not easily renovated for other purposes, and if nobody needs them, they should go. They certainly shouldn’t be patched together on the public dime.
If Quebec is truly a secular state then a coherent thing to do is to start taxing religious organizations and accept real-estate transfers as payment. Many churches sit on absolutely prime real-estate since they were once the center of community life.
Oh would you look at that, the size of the lots just happens to be the perfect size for a potential school?
Eventually even the Roman Catholic church would run out of land to barter for taxes. To repeat what I’ve said before on the blog, many church halls and basements serve useful social purposes. The church nearest me, for example, has an organization in the basement that offers services for the deaf. Another collects and sells used clothing cheaply. I know there are others that offer free or very cheap lunches and so on.
Church halls have offered affordable space for events like Expozine and Puces Pop, which support independent writers, artists and artisans. I don’t want to see those things disappear.
So there has to be some balance somewhere.
I feel like the church across where I live installed office space in the basement; and also they seem occasionally sell the big church and the small chapel for expensive private events, which I’d all not consider not actual social community functions. I’d prefer incentives for churches to be used for local community functions, maybe it would be possible to offer deductions on the real estate taxes that Spi wants to levy.
ant6n, that’s kind of gross. I wonder how the tax people assess that kind of thing. On the one hand, the church probably does need the revenue to maintain the building – but a standard commercial lease makes the idea of a church as a nonprofit kind of a joke.
I think I said it before, churches were often the first shared space in an area. So they saw secondary use for meetings and such. Then later, because they had space and resources !ike kitchens, things like Meals on Wheels wefe housed at churches, I suspect the congregations themselves wanted to do such projects.
Even when there’s a book sale at a church they aren’t raising money to fix the roof, it”s for some project they have in mind related to church activity.
But as congregations shrink, churches have become desperate. So churches close and the congegation combines with another church. Sometines that happens a few times. But even then there can be problems sustaining the physical church.
So they’ve gone to renting out space, maybe at a good price, but a bit more mercenary than in the past. When the NDG Food Depot moved into Trinity Church in NDG, they were paying rent. The church needed the space rented, and even that just postponed things a but, until the church had to be sold.
So it’s a bit jarring, but not too surprising to see a bit more “commercial” use. There’s not too big a difference between renting a church hall for a post-wedding event and something related to a business. I don’t think the churches are putting money in the bank, they need money to pay the heating bill or fix the roof.
The big news is that the Gazette has a story today about how the Westmount Park United Church wants to set itself up as a non-profit to sustain the building. This is to keep the building for the small congregation, but also as a communuty resource. There’s long been a seniors’ activuity centre there, and the Film Society shows films, along with other activities.
So instead of selling the church, and removing the resource, they want to keep it available. A lot if such spaces have been lost in recent years, and gone to private use.
Michael
The price tag for the renovation of Plaza Saint-Hubert has reached $60 million, which isn’t too surprising, considering the size of the site, the underground infrastructure being rebuilt, and the time it takes.
A new type of handgun is being found among our criminal classes – a thing called a Polymer80. At least this weapon isn’t being made with 3D printing, which I was half expecting to read.
80% lower receiver market is quite an active (and legal) one in the US. Donnu about canadian laws…
I 3d print a lot, and I know quite a bit about the handgun thing.
Despite the hype, its never really going to be a thing. Printing a 3d printed gun is actually quite easy, but the problem is that its just not that durable. You might get a few shots up but it’ll eventually fail. There’s just too much explosive power to contain.
As long as actual guns are reasonably easy to procure, it doesn’t make sense to walk around with a gun that’ll jam or explode after a few shots, when (presumably) you’d most want it to work.
Faiz Imam, is it not unthinkable that more durable materials will come along for 3D printing?
A call to 911 for a drug overdose revealed the presence of a drug lab in Montreal North when cops went there Friday. The victim died, but investigations continue.
Le Devoir has one of its excellent features this weekend on the Bauhaus legacy in Montreal including some private dwellings as well as well-known buildings like Place Ville-Marie and Westmount Square.
The Journal conducted a poll and found that, for the return of major league baseball to Montreal, people don’t want a roofless stadium and are in favour of a retractable roof. Oh, and – mentioned in the last paragraph – a majority don’t want public money spent on this chimera, although as I’ve said before (and will continue to point out) you simply cannot have a facility like this without public participation.
The Journal even has a drawing of the proposed stadium.
As was presaged by several reports last week, the city plans to issue an auditor’s report on its state of financial health before the next election, although city hall opposition is carping that it’s not happening fast enough. Ensemble must be waiting to see it to find more things to kvetch about.
The Gazette looks at new things happening in our old Chinatown.
The Grand Parc de l’Ouest should help save several endangered species of plant, bird and reptile.
A patient on a Montreal-bound plane earlier this month was confirmed to have come down with measles and there’s also an outbreak in the Hasidic community in Boisbriand. Time for that measles shot if you haven’t had it.
Anyone born before 1970 is considered immune… but I went and got a booster a few weeks ago, anyway. Costs $5 at the travel clinic, I was there anyway.
Yes, my nurse practitioner said I wouldn’t need the MMR, but I did get the Tdap when I told her I hadn’t had a tetanus shot in a long time.
Are you going away, Ephraim?
A reader pointed out this Globe & Mail piece on how the coming of the REM is encouraging construction “outside the downtown core” – i.e., sprawl. No downside is considered in this piece.
Seeing the mentioned article: we’re living in a world of bad CGI illustrations, selling us what doesn’t exist (and manufacturing consent). Remind me of the idyllic images of Soylent Green finale when the old man is dying…
The article mentions an office tower that has direct pedestrian access to the REM. This doesn’t seem like sprawl to me. If anything the tower will hopefully have lots of people using the REM in the opposite direction in the morning, which seems like a good thing. It’s not feasible for all people and all businesses to set up shop downtown.
Note this flag at the top of the article: “Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec/Handout.”
Calling the REM a Handout to the CDPQ is pretty accurate.
I’d say development near REM stations isn’t super urban, the occasional high-rise notwithstanding, because all those REM stations are on highways, and they don’t make for very urban surroundings. And some of those far-away stations that are basically just parking lots at the end of the developed area of Montreal will definitely induce sprawl.
Meanwhile, there’s actually plenty of space (e.g. in brow-fields) left on the island, most of it without decent transit connections (and the REM is actively preventing improving transit to some of those areas…)
The REM is an incredibly mixed bag with many missed opportunities and a lot of really bad planning, sprawl is a definite concern that can’t just be brushed away with ‘but that rendering showed an office tower’.
High cost of owning a house encourages sprawl, not the transportation.
I wish we would use TOD more appropriately. When I hear people mentioning Transit-Oriented-Development, they are actually very often referring to Transit Adjacent Development. Just connecting a development to a station that is on the other side of a highway is TAD… It’s an afterthought… and hardly oriented toward creating a symbiotic relationship with the transit infrastructure.
Those of you with a background in urban planning will know exactly what I’m talking about.
I went to one of the Solar Uniquartier real estate meetings, read the plans in detail. I’m in no position to buy anything, but I wanted to satisfy my curiosity.
it has one large parking structure, but what they’ve done is place it along the highway to act as a buffer. Once you’re in the development, there is zero evidence that there is a highway nearby. The vast majority of users will only see it when they pass over the bridge to the station. The highway is not a relevant factor to the lived experience of anyone in that area.
The amount of parking is quite large, but if you calculate it per residence and per unit area of office space and retail, its actually quite low and lower than most suburbs. My understanding is that it will probably use the system of having paid parking, with credits given if you buy something.
I also met with the planners behind Mississagua’s downtown21 plan a few years ago. We did a walking tour of Square one and they gave us a idea of the values behind their thinking and what was coming in the decade ahead. The issue they face is the no1 priority for most people is parking. nothing but parking. But they’ve been able to design guidelines to make the urban fabric and street front experience much higher quality, so that establishes a certain baseline. The land values are so high that there is almost no surface lots anymore, all new buildings have underground parking (a lot of it). This unfortunately adds cost.
Which is the common factor among all these projects. They are all huge luxury focused projects that have very little concept of social mixing.
But one of my hopes is that the capital shifted here is money that does not go to gentrification of the urban core.
“Once you’re in the development, there is zero evidence that there is a highway nearby.” And what about atmospheric pollution? You know, like, high level of PM2.5 ?
The “values” of the Devimco “Solar Uniquartier” involves building a sterile fake village bordering two highways, and isn’t there a bunch of parking and like golf courses around? Even if it actually were a place that kind of simulates urbanity while you’re stuck there there, it doesn’t actual create an overall urban area … you know like the actual city. I don’t understand the love for these sterile fake cities (just look at page 3 of this brochure and puke at this shit), while we’re letting the actual city languish.
@ant6n
What is a brow-field?
First of all my use of “values” was about Mississauga planners. I made no comment about devimco.
Also, as seen on the top of pg 3 of your link, the golf course is gone and a large new development is going in its place. As the region is in an official PMAD TOD zone higher densities were required in its place. The role of the PMAD in defining density was explicitly told to me by Brossard planners.
Most of the golf course is now a new elementary school and a massive new park, with low density single family housing mixed in. Then an entire block on the side towards the rail station is much higher density block apartments. An annoying loophole to get a certain average density, for sure.
The only surface parking in the area is in adjacent office parks build under previous planning regimes. Also there is a gargantuan IKEA warehouse that is now abandoned, and is expected to be developed into another high density extension i’m sure you’ll hate.
Like… you might call it sterile and fake, but to me it looks like contemporary design. Looks like any other modern architecture and seems pleasant enough. Regardless, the first phase is already done and open, an accountant friend of mine already works there. And all the units for sale are apparently sold out. So it will be packed and lively enough by sheer numbers.
kevin: brownfields are lands that have already been developed but are low quality or unwanted. For example a abandoned factory or stripmalls. Grey feilds are when you build on large parking lots. What we don’t want is greenfield development, which is building on pristine scrub, farmland or other undevelopped land.
Kevin: I think he typo’d for brownfield.
I very much prefer the city to what the suburbs have to offer. However, A LOT of people do like these sorts of developments. Just because we don’t get it, doesn’t mean there isn’t a market out there for it. Not everyone views things with the same lenses.
And, sure the high cost of owning a house encourages sprawl, but the price of owning a house will always be higher in the city than in the suburbs. It’s ultimately nicer to live in the city. I love living in the city and am willing to pay the premium. If the suburbs were actually nicer than the city, houses there would be more expensive.
I also know people who feel the need to have big houses. They’d be willing to go to the middle of nowhere for a palace. People are shallow and like to show off…
@JP: “It’s ultimately nicer to live in the city.”
But that too is a matter of opinion. Many people don’t care at all about the things that for others makes city living enjoyable. Things like having lots of people around, good selection of shops and restaurants nearby and handy, bars and whatnot…
Many people just like to go home after work, where they spend quiet evenings or entertain friends in their big back yards. They generally buy all their groceries at Costco and Provigo — stores that tend to be better in the ‘burbs than in the city. They don’t give AF about specialty shops and restaurants and bars (and on the rare occasions when they do go out for dinner, the restaurants in their ‘burb are just fine for their tastes).
Many of these people hate crowds and lineups. They don’t like living in small spaces, and they don’t like noise coming from neighbours, especially neighbours they don’t know.
And when they want to do something “cultural,” be it see a performance or an art show or whatever, it’s no big thing to go into town or simply stay in town after work.
Add all that up and for them, living in the city is like living in Hell.
I’m not saying that’s how I prefer to live (although the older I get the more of some of that I find appealing). I’m just saying that this idea that suburban people are all somehow socially retarded or are sellouts is a very blinkered point of view. (Not directing this at you specifically — just generally.)
“If the suburbs were actually nicer than the city, houses there would be more expensive.”
That’s not how real estate or land prices work.
The issue isn’t some judgment whether you like this sort of sterile development or not, the issue is that you can’t walk 100m without hitting a highway or some a strip mall. The fake “urbanism” is contained solely within the single development by this single company. A real city stretches out for many hundreds of meters virtually all of it walkable, and only in this way can you accumulate a reasonable density overall – and reasonably large number of people near each other.
In the end this one development won’t feed that REM station, it’s catchment area will mostly be all sorts of much more suburban developments further afield, which is what the sprawl is that is being warning about.
And it’s not an issue whether we should hate or despise or not people who live in this sprawl, it’s that as a policy, the public should avoid building infrastructure that encourages sprawl, and instead invest in the city. There are all sorts of rational reasons for that; I’m concerned more with having some chance to get anywhere near Paris agreement targets, rather than whether some people actually aspire to unsustainable suburban lifestyles that should definitely not be encouraged by public policy.
Note, this REM station has zero commuter parking, it will rely on local users, as well as many buses that will terminate there.
Of course, on the other side of the highway is the infamous dix30. One of the quirks of this station is that there is a pedestrian overpass over the highway that literally exits onto the dumpsters behind the cinema. Many people have joked about how useless that seems.
The answer of course is that the cinema was build in a previous age, and that at some point it will be demolished and a new high density urban area will take its place to best take advantage of the transit link.
An aspect of this is already visible in the block to the north, which is much higher density and built with a rail link in mind.
This is the key to my thoughts behind this. The current landuse is extraordinarily unsubstantial. None of it matters, none of it will exist for long, all of it it will be subsumed into a new project that will have little to nothing to do with how the current land is laid out.
What you see as stripmalls and suburbs I see as brownfields just waiting to be massively built up.
In terms of climate goals and sustainability, I’d point out that the population of greater Montreal is nearly 4 million. Of that less than 1 million live in the urban core. There is plenty of densification in the city happening, but Even dramatic densification will not make room for everyone.
I’m of the opinion that the lifestyle being offered in these TOD’s are dramatically more sustainable than classical suburbia, and similar to the city, and is a great way to reduce the sprawl that is still expanding as we speak.
@Blork I agree with everything you said. It’s what I was trying to get at in my first paragraph until my biases creeped in.
@ant6n Those are very valid criticisms of these developments and I appreciate the explanations.
This specifically struck a chord with me: “A real city stretches out for many hundreds of meters virtually all of it walkable, and only in this way can you accumulate a reasonable density overall – and reasonably large number of people near each other. ”
I like that I can walk from the Loyola Campus in NDG all the way to the village (and beyond) or, as someone living in Ahuntsic, walk all the way down to the plateau or even downtown (some blocks might not be pleasant, but it’s fairly doable). I don’t live that far from Laval or the West Island, but it’s barely safe or pleasant to walk all the way there and to and fro various points within. I know some might question why anyone would want to walk those distances, but I enjoy walking and do it quite a bit.
Anyone who’s had to trudge the long, inhuman blocks of Anjou or St‑Laurent, or even of the Royalmount area, or any of the other parts of industrial Montreal (and if you’ve never had to go to an interview or a job in any of these areas, you’re fortunate) knows exactly what walkable vs. unwalkable is like, especially in bad weather or blazingly hot days.
Yep. Everything should be within walking distance with lots of greenery to mitigate heat and noise. Also the area is too dependent on the REM and public transit which means if there’s a power failure or ice storm etc. you’re screwed….
Via a tweet from Tu Thanh Ha, an NPR story about the rediscovery of a lost album by John Coltrane via a movie made by Montrealer Gilles Groulx, a non-prolific but influential NFB director who died in 1994. It was recorded for his 1964 feature film Le chat dans le sac, which can be watched online here.
The release date is September 27, just four weeks before my birthday.
This is very interesting news. I don’t buy every Coltrane album, but the local angle is incentive to get this. Unlike some other jazz musicians, I got Coltrane’s music from the first album I bought, Live at The Village Vanguard, only 20 years ago.
Michael
The city is funding a rooming house in the east end to offer living spaces to folks who need them. This is exactly the kind of thing we need more of, especially as rents soar all over town.
It brings to mind this “info-comic” about the decline of boarding houses and other flexible types of housing after WWII:
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-american-sro/553946/
I have lived directly next door to one for three years. They don’t make great neighbors. It’s a lot like living next to a $30.00 a night motel. I’m lucky to have a decent relationship with the guy who runs the place and that most of the units are rented by somewhat stable tenants. However, about 3 of the rooms seem to be in constant rotation and it’s a never ending parade of prostitutes, drug dealers, people who were just released from jail and the deeply crazy.
The cops are there often. Windows have been kicked in. Furniture has been thrown out of windows and because they all share one bathroom, the men will simply piss in the alley whenever they want. I currently have the house closed up and the AC on even though it’s nice out so I don’t have to listen to a dopesick tenant retch in her room all day (really ALL DAY).
Worst of all is summertime “Balconville” when the tenants will sit on the back fire escape from 10:00AM to midnight drinking beer and having a fine old time. Somehow, the beer never ever runs out.
Bill…. but you get the extra benefit of street theatre. 🙂
I too lived near one that was well run. At least once a summer someone would put on their music so loud as to disturb everyone… I would blast back music in Arabic and we would be done for the year, having taken the hint. Every once in a while you would have loud arguments and the such. The owner had no tolerance for it… he didn’t warn them, he kicked them out… sometime so swiftly that you would see their stuff flying. He had a long list of people who wanted a place, he didn’t need the trouble.
@Ephraim – I used to see people getting forcefully tossed out at 6 in the morning but I’m not sure how legal that is. Obviously, you can toss people out of a hotel and you cannot toss people out of an apartment. Not sure where rooming houses fit into that. I think there was a story going around a month or so ago about a bunch of rooming house tenants in town suing the owner for evicting them (via some activist organization of course).
Bill, rules are different and I assume it was in the contract. They didn’t pay monthly, they paid weekly. Rooming houses aren’t allowed to have a stove, for example. Room houses tenants don’t really have a lease, since they don’t pay monthly. No guarantee in EITHER direction… you can leave any time you want and stop paying… I can kick you out for violating the rules… we are both NOT protected by not having a lease.
@Bill Did you know that the rooming house was next door when you moved in? Why don’t you move?
mare 17:37 on 2019-08-18 Permalink
It’s not the GAY Pride parade anymore. It’s a parade for everyone who’s proud to be in the QUILTBAG.
Kate 18:34 on 2019-08-18 Permalink
Ah OK. Eastward into the Quiltbag Village, then.
Mitchell 07:07 on 2019-08-19 Permalink
@mare I do like QUILTBAG. First time I’ve seen it used by anyone other than Bogi Takacs, so it must be catching on?