If bowling is a sport...

...these women ought to be in the Olympics. Montreal is a hell of a town.

I was there for a bachelor party and the 181th St. Patrick's Day Parade. (the oldest AND longest-running St. Patrick's Day parade on the Continent). I can't believe PM Paul Martin was marching. We wake up at 10 to get to some sort of pub breakfast and Irish coffee event. By the time the parade started, we were on St. Catherine Street on a corner church lot covered in snow and ice and slopping down into a hellishly sharp fence. Needless to say, we were completely shit faced by the end of the parade. A guy parked a rental truck on the corner and had a bunch of hippies jumping up and down on it smashing the cab's roof and generally destroying the shocks. Although, our group on teh church seemed to be a little more hardcore Irish. The crowd was generally Anglo, so it was cool to see the mounties cheered and the Quebec police pelted with snowballs. Point being, I had NO IDEA that the Prime Minister of Canada walked by.

In Boston, St. Patrick's day takes over Southie. Its wild and extremely debauched. What was cool about Montreal's St. Patricks day is that they do it in the middle of downtown. So, the whole area is covered in extraordinarily drunk people for most of the afternoon. We were at a cool Irish dive bar called Grumpy's with a truly outstanding punk cover band. By 6pm we were in the executive boardroom of St. Hubert's (best chicken in the world). I'm falling asleep at the table by this point. Later we go to Downtown (a much better and cheaper strip club than Super Sex). The 3 of who were still standing at 3am then went to the Casino.

The Montreal Casino and I have a long and complicated relationship. She was my first, and yet when I come back to town to visit she slaps me in the face and stomps on my nuts. In what is possibly the most bizarre combination of public health logic and desperate financial need by the government, the Montreal Casino no longer serves alcohol or allows cigarette smoking at the tables. Setting that absurdity aside, this place has the meanest dealers and most hard-up customers. I've never won a penny there since the first time. I keep telling my friends on the cab ride over, "this place is like K2, we're not coming back alive." We sat down and the dealer made 20 or 21 for 10 straight hands. Somehow, hours later, I actually left the table up a lot. It was a bloody miracle. I was just being stupid, splitting 7's and doubling down on 9's. That's what you have to do at Montreal Casino, and there's always a bitter fucking storm right on the other side of the valley, waiting to kick your ass.

More later on how I missed the train twice and my thoughts on the cosmic-historic linkages between Montreal and Boston.