Back for another taste

There's an old school 80s/early 90s heavy metal song by a group called Helix called "Back for another taste" that, truth be told, wasn't very popular. But I liked it. And in my semi-drunken state right now, I'm hearing the chorus ring through my head. This was my first night of really going out and partying in Montreal. I attribute this (read: blame this upon) my "little brother" Paul from Sigma Nu. He's only 26 years old, but parties harder than most 19 year olds who're still getting used to being legal age.

I drove up with Paul, Derek and Martin (Derek and Martin being his soccer buddies) and, despite the long-ass drive we endured, we still managed to drink ourselves silly on Québécois beer last night. Well, tonight we wanted to actually hit the town. We spent the afternoon walking around downtown, glancing in the Musique Plus building, walking around the McGill campus and hitting Reuben's deli restaurant for some smoked meat. The next task was to find some decent places to go out and have a good time. As luck would have it, we stumbled (almost literally, in some cases) into a pub crawl called Barhop.

Now on paper, it seems like a pretty good concept. They advertise 25 bars within a short distance, no cover charge and a shuttle bus service for the low price of $20. Here's the thing they don't tell you: (1) Most of these bars don't charge cover in the first place. (2) The shuttle bus is pretty inefficient. (3) A number of the "25 bars" are actually made up of 3-level bars, so rather than 25 locations, you're actually going to 8. (4) Though there isn't a cover in these bars, there IS a mandatory coatcheck. So really, we got hosed all-around.

We hit a few of the bars, but it became apparent that Paul isn't well-suited to the downtown Montreal scene. He seemed to have a knack for pissing off Americans. In fact, in the London Pub, we almost got ourselves in a brawl because some loser was SO insecure that he got worried about Paul talking to the chick he showed up with. Fortunately Paul managed to keep his mouth in check and we wandered down the road to Club Super Sexe. Then Fate struck again... there was a lineup so we ended up talking with some more Americans (naturally) that were waiting in line behind us. Paul's anti-Bush sentiments almost caused us to butt heads with a guy from the US 82nd Airbourne division. I managed to smooth things over by relating the fact that my cousin, Craig, was a rigger who supported the troops down at Fort Bragg in the early to mid 90s.
So after waiting in line at the strip club for an inordinate amount of time, we finally ended up going to my first choice: Belmont Sur le Boulevarde. It's a nice place at the corner of St-Laurent and Mont-Royal, right beside the infamous swinger club, Club Nuances . I think this was our best stop, personally. The music was good. The waitresses were gorgeous and there weren't any mouthy Americans to make our lives miserable. All things considered, I give it a thumbs up. Let's see what New Year's brings!