I've always believed that you have to leave New York in order to fall back in love with New York. A week exploring Buenos Aires boutiques and art galleries is undoubtedly a life changing experience; but nothing reconfirms that your Manhattan rent is worth it like your first glimpse of that familiar skyline upon return. However, with a shitty economy and even tighter purse string these days, this underpaid magazine employee has had to revaluate the exotic destinations he's been known to jet off to. The south of Spain was replaced with discovering antiquated Acapulco in May, and San Diego surf replaced Hawaii in July.
So when Montreal's Board of Tourism, under the careful guidance of the uber-cool (and former V Mag guru) Nathaniel Schachter at the Sid Lee Agency, recently asked me to check out Montreal instead of Paris, my ears perked up. It was a pretty easy sell. Here's what went down.
FRIDAY
Forty-five minutes in the air, and only half of "Chris Pine in Space" (known to most as the summer blockbuster Star Trek) later, je suis arrivé à Montreal, and I found myself in a very agreeable customs line. I was then whisked over to what would be my accommodations for the weekend, the very on-trend OPUS Hotel. Colorful, modern, Marcel Wanders-friendly, the hotel and its impressive bar/restaurant/patio scene could give the Gansevoort Hotel a run for its money. You can always tell the hotels where the cool kids stay at by the bathrooms (made for sex more than showering) and the curtains (made to keep you from knowing what time of day it is at any hour). This hotel was VERY cool.
I met my blogger partner, Brendan Murphy , who was assigned to me under the very Web 2.0-friendly marketing blitz designed by Sid Lee whereby local experts were paired with bloggers such as I to experience Montreal like a local. And a cuter former club-kid straight boy I could not have asked for. We met at the OPUS's very hip bar KOKO, and I knew we were going to be BFFs when I saw he was drinking the same olive drenched martini for which I had been waiting exactly two car rides and a flight. The crowd was very much a mix of men who were not afraid of a gym, girls not afraid of high heel and an overpriced dress and scenesters with whom I felt right at home. We were lost in conversation about nocturnal life up north, his favorite local bands and DJs (locally, his all time favorite being Plants and Animals. But Brendan had much more in store for our evening…
We checked out Tokyo, where the hits were playing in the huge patio that never I assume gets about three months of use every year. But my favorite stop of the night was meeting all the locals at a dive bar down the street called Copacabana with all the seedy sorts you'd run into on, say, Avenue A. I was at home!
RSS