My New Street
I think anyone who lives in town, has “their street”. By this I am not referring to the street that you actually live on, although it could very well be that same street, but instead the street that you buy your bread, cheese, groceries and booze on.
For the past 15 years, I have lived near St-Laurent, or The Main, between the streets of Pins and Rachel. That has been “my street”. It’s the street where I purchased my weekly goods and it’s the street I rode up daily after a workout.. to see what the kids are now wearing, what new shops are opening and of course how long the line outside Schwartz’s is.
Since that time I’ve seen The Main change dramatically, and dare I say, for the worse.
The Main, back 15 years ago, was a street with two faces. The face during the day was a face of ‘old world’ shopping (for lack of a better term). It was the home of the St-Laurent bakery. That bakery with the really crabby ladies who served up some fantastic bread. Find me another bakery that makes a Russian bread..
It was the home of Warshaw’s. The grocery store that sold everything under the sun.
At night, it was and still is, the street for trendy clubbing.
But slowly the Main is losing it’s daytime status. The St-Laurent bakery closed and replaced with a shop that sells overpriced Puma sneakers (how they pay the rent on just that is beyond me).
Warshaw’s closed to be replaced by a drug store with the most disgusting facade on the street. I simply refuse to walk in there because of that facade.
The main has always had waves of immigrants, each bringing their flavours to the street. The latest wave, Asian immigration I fear is having a hard time keeping up with the Trendies and simply cannot afford the rent. The older waves of immigrants selling their goods have long since left because of this (with the exception of Schwartz of course).
As a result, the main is slowly changing into a street of trendies.
My fear, is that trendy shops and people come and go with the times. It’s not organic. It’s not based out of need, but out of want.
Maybe this will all change once work on the Main is completed. Now, the street is a complete mess and will stay a mess until at least next summer.
After 15 years, the Main is no longer ‘my street’. That street is now Mont Royal. After two weeks of moving, it’s fantastic to be able to discover new shops, new ways of riding home after a workout, new people and to see.. what is attracting people and what kind of people.
To all the Plateau cheese snobs who say that the only place to get really good cheese is chez Hamel, well, um, you’re right. I’ve shopped all over this city looking for real Chèvre Frais and have yet to find it until going to Hamel..
And when the hell is le Maison du rôti going to open back up anyway ?
All neighborhoods change, it’s just the way of things. 100 years ago the Main would have been the equivalent of Ste-Catherine, and where Ste-Catherine is now, would have been the equivalent of Mile-End or Outremont. I’m all for neighborhoods being fixed up (trendies or no) as long as the spirit is kept alive. Sure, the bakeries are gone, but now we have these outlets of creativity like Moog Audio and InBeat, for example, in their place. It may have been rising rents, or the lack of younger family members to take over the businesses, or just the difficulty in competing with larger (or dare i say, better) competitors.
To keep a neighborhood persistently downmarket (like stretches of Notre-Dame West, for instance) only breeds a downward spiral. The real art is keeping a neighborhood mixed — mixed income, mixed-use, human scale, balanced between noise and busy-ness and the needs of residents of all ages and backgrounds. I’d be more worried if there were more NIMBYists like the people trying to close down Main Hall.
Where exactly was Warsaws? What pharmacy took over the building?
Warshaw’s was a great catch-all store at on the east side of St. Laurent, corner Bagg, I believe, in and around Schwartz’s and La Vieille Europe (still a favourite of mine). It has since been replaced by a Pharmaprix. *But*… Warshaw’s is far from dead, it calmly moved to the Atwater Market, where it sells all the bargain house and garden things one could ever need. They no longer have a grocery section, but the rest is good ol’ Warshaw’s.
I also discovered a Warshaw’s store in the basement of the Cote des Neiges Plaza. It also sells housewares type stuff.
I’ve been living in the Plateau long before it became what it is today. Back in the day, all the rich kids I went to school with didn’t even know where the Plateau was…And now they think it’s cool. How ironic. I kind of think of it as “my” neigbourhood…but I can share.
Aj,
My argument is that what St-Laurent is becoming less and less of is a street that serves a community.
It would be a severe shame if The Main became like St-Catherines. Would you like to live near St-Catherines if you could afford the rent ? I sure wouldn’t.
The shops now opening on the Main are there to fulfil the wants of Montrealers, not their needs. MOOG and InBeat did not create something that didn’t already exist elsewhere. In the case of MOOG, Italmelodie and Steve’s and Archambault have been selling these kinds of goods for a long time.
There is nothing to these shops that really serves a community. There is nothing to these shops that other cities don’t already have. They exist because of a trend, not because of a need. Therefore, they will not last. It’s impossible to create a community when the shops exist to satisfy the trend du jour.
Forgive me, but the street is Ste-Catherine, or (if you’re going to be consistently anglo) St. Catherine. It doesn’t have, and has never had, an ’s’ on the end.
The Levy family (who owned Warshaw’s, as well as the now defunct Levy’s Fruits and another fruit-and-veg store in the Faubourg Ste-Catherine whose name escapes me at the moment) — couldn’t compete with the influx of huge discount grocery chains to the Montreal market.
They simply didn’t have the volume to command supplier discounts, neither did they have the resources to expand. Faced with Provigo/Loblaws and Sobeys (who supply most of the IGAs), the only rational business choice was to exit the marketplace and focus on their other core business of housewares.
Sure, it’s sad when you lose a familiar, well-known local retailer, grocer or restaurant — but like Pascal’s, Ben’s, Simpsons, and thousands of other Montreal “institutions,” I cannot help but think that some of these places thrived because there was no competition, and failed for any number of reasons – changing consumer tastes, mismanagement, poor finances, family businesses with no more family members left to run them, etc.
The interesting thing is, Warshaws just moved from a big, overcrowded niche, to a niche where they have little competition and can use their strengths and name recognition. And what better place to put a kitchen gadgets store than by the Atwater Market? Likewise, there’s plenty of market room in the space that is “not Pharmaprix,” let’s say, for specialty or upscale retailers, so it’s not like it kills all independent retail on the block. Like an asteroid impact, it kills dinosaurs and spurs evolution.
That said, there is still a thriving Portuguese community with their own stores, churches, community centres, hangouts and restaurants, there are fewer but still many older Jewish and Eastern European delis, discount clothing stores, etc. They don’t seem to be going away, but we often overlook their stores because they’re not particularly new or flashy, they blend in rather than stand out.
So if the Main’s purpose as a retail street is to serve its community, what is that community and what are their needs?
The fact is in the immediate area of the lower main, we have a mix of permanent adult residents, a fairly stable number of whom work in education, creative and cultural industries, and a highly transient student population.
Looking at the mix of stores between Prince Arthur and Mont-Royal then, i would argue that the “market” of the Main is quite responsive to the needs of its current residents. Every need from groceries to bookstores, barbershops, professional services, clinics, photo studios, clothing for every taste and budget, taverns, restaurants, cafés, tombstones, ice cream, art galleries, local crafts, body adornments and jewelry makers, gifts, home decor, electrical supplies and lighting…and yes, pharmacies…is present.
You may see a lot of turnover in the restaurant space, but that’s just normal for the industry.
Moog and InBeat are very much part of that community; Moog was cofounded by local electronic musicians and DJs, and InBeat stocks records for the local DJ market (and well, guess where the clubs are?) Sure, you might be able to get the same gear at Steve’s Music, but — and I say this as an ex-Steve’s employee — Moog is more of a ‘by the scene, for the scene’ kind of place and if you live on Clark street it’s a heck of a lot easier to walk over to Moog and get service than to fight the Saturday crowds down at the megastore.
So I don’t really get your point about trends vs. needs. What we’re really seeing on the Main is a diversification from the old “general store, family business” model to a host of specialist retailers. I went to the old St-Laurent Bakery several times in the 80s and 90s and was never particularly impressed by the bread, and was turned off by the lack of service. I think some people patronized it out of some misplaced sense of loyalty or nostalgia…I can’t say for sure why it went out of businesses, but when you have the choice to go to Premiere Moisson, Au Pain Doré, Cocoa Locale, Cheskies, Olive and Gourmando, or even the bread department of PA Supermarché, why would you go someplace that offers a lesser experience?
Likewise, Goodfoot, the sneaker-pimp store that occupies its old space, has been open now for several years, which would seem to indicate that they have a clientele and are doing well. Much better, I think, to have a “trendy” local specialist retailer, than an empty space and a dead Main.
I don’t want to drag this discussion off-course but, after Justin’s last comment, I must defend Ste. Catherine! It’s a long, long street and you can’t really generalize about it. Of course the main shopping district around Peel St. gets all of the attention but there are many other sections of the street that function much the same way as St. Laurent used to or Mount Royal or Park Avenue do now.
Consider the part of Ste. Catherine west of Guy: most people who aren’t familiar with the area think of it as a dead zone but in fact it’s now home to a thriving and diverse community of students, professionals, various odd downtown people and, of course, Chinese and Arab immigrants. It has a very eclectic, multicultural vibe.
Streets change. Although I’m sad to think that St. Laurent is becoming less of a functional main street and more of boutique/entertainment strip, there are other parts of town that have undergone a parallel transformation into exactly the kind of “old world” main street you describe. Think of St. Hubert in Villeray, Jean Talon/St. Roch/De Liège in Park Ex. Over the past decade, Wellington Street in Verdun has emerged from decrepitude and near-abandonment to being a solid working-class main street home to a growing Chinese community and a number of interesting cafes, bookstores and restaurants.
Seconding Chris’ comment! and may I add Notre-Dame West and the whole Atwater Market area, in general, to the list of community “main streets” experiencing a comeback.
Just another comment about the demise of Warshaw’s. It’s not necessarily the big chains that drove it out of business. Segal’s is one of the oldest grocers remaining on St. Laurent and they continue to thrive. They consistently have low prices and attract a large immigrant and student clientele. To their benefit, they have also evolved with the times by offering a large variety of organic products, all at comparably lower prices than the big box grocers. Warshaw’s on the other hand, was just not competitive when it came to groceries. Their housewares section was where they thrived but it was probably not enough to keep up with the cost of overhead when running a grocery store covering 2 floors of retail space (plus a large number of employees).
As one of the immigrant families who frequented the Main, I have seen a lot of the older stores close but many of them closed because they were family businesses with nobody to carry on the work once the owners got older. Segal’s is still in business because it is now the grandson who is operating the store (very successfully), 3 generations later. Similarly, the tombstone place is now operated by the daughter. Whereas, the hardware store at the corner of Pine and St. Laurent, operated by two aging brothers, eventually closed once both got to be too old to run it anymore. Therefore, I wouldn’t necessarily pin the changing face of the Main on the influx of trendy or big name stores. The owners who closed the old stores on the Main all made decent livings until they retired and probably sold their properties for a tidy sum. Being immigrants themselves, their children were probably educated in Canada with professional degrees and had no desire to continue the family business.
St. Laurent is prime real estate. It was inevitable that once space was freed up to go to the highest bidder, those with money would move in. Just like immigrants who move away from the city center into the suburbs once they’ve “made it”. It’s just the ebb and flow of the times.
That’s a good point. Before lamenting gentrification, you have to consider why many of these old institutions closed in the first place. Segal thrives because it is easily the cheapest supermarket in Montreal — same for P.A. over on Park Avenue. (It’s not hard to undercut Provigo considering how overpriced most of their stuff is!)
One thing that does worry me is the slow progress on the Main’s reconstruction. I think two years is an unreasonably long time to be digging up a major commercial street. The city should have made this project a top priority like the Pine/Park interchange.
AJ, the Boulangerie may have had cranky old service staff, but they had some fantastic bread. I miss the Black Russian most (does anyone else make that in town?) but they also had a seven-grain bread that made fantastic toast. And who sells gingerbread men in these decadent times?
Sure, let’s broaden the Main’s territory to include most of the island! Then we can pretty well find whatever it is that we need!
Location, location, location. Not being on the Main is not being in it. Well, with the exception say of the past 9 months and of the next 12 months that is. The Main is a complete mess and current merchants are all losing their shirts.
But I digress. The argument is simple and has been restated several times. The Main has changed. With very few exceptions, if any, all new shops that have opened on the Main have not been of the older variety. They are not shops that support a community. They are shops that support a want. I don’t need over priced Pumas. I don’t need a turntable or the latest tribal beats. A community does not need those things. Those things exist because people want them. And it’s this inflated want that is helping run out those businesses that have existed on the Main for decades.
A need are those things which a community requires to exist.
Sure, it may be mismanagement that caused their closures. It may be all of the reasons listed above this comment.
However, as many have stated, several have moved elsewhere, to a street that supports its community. A street, unlike what the Main is becoming.
An interesting discussion. For me, the question to ask is not what is a neighbourhood losing but what is replacing that which has been lost? Are recent immigrants moving into the community in the place of those that have moved on? If so, are they running and patronizing businesses that leave a tangible mark on the neighbourhood they call home? If not, why?
As Christopher has noted, new immigrant communities have established a flourishing presence in other parts of Montreal (e.g. Ste-Catherine Ouest, Park Ex), and, increasingly, in its suburbs. This appears to mirror a trend that has been underway in other cities for some time: namely, the marginalization of immigrants from their traditional urban core. In New York City, the trend is toward suburbanization and, more recently, exurbanization as new immigrants are priced out of the city’s real estate market. I would suggest that a similar process is at work in the Plateau and other central Montreal neighbourhoods.
I’m less concerned with the ability of immigrants to adapt to these changing conditions than I am with the city’s ability to adapt to their loss. If a healthy city is a diverse city (and by this I mean economic as well as ethnic and cultural diversity), then we would be wise to think carefully about the changes we observe on our streets. Change may be inevitable, but the nature of change is not.
Besides, does St-Laurent really need any more high-end furniture shops? I once tried to count them all and gave up at twelve.
Justin,
The examples of bakeries I gave are all within walking distance (or at the most, a long Sunday stroll) of the Main. I doubt that any Plateau or Mile-End dweller would seriously limit themselves to what was available on their block unless they were severely physically handicapped or suffered from acute agoraphobia.
What Vila H. wrote dovetails with my point: the Main and the immediate community surrounding it is NOT the old immigrant community of yesteryear. It is a more affluent, professional, homeowner vs. renter, and at least as regards the university students, a younger and more transient population. More to the point they are all from established communities in North America, they’re not immigrants. Even the Portuguese and Jewish / Eastern European communities on the Main are not new, compared to the influx of post-1989 Polish and Russian emigrés living in NDG / Snowdon, the waves of Indian and South Asian groups moving to Park Ex and Cote-des-Neiges, the South Shore, West Island, etc.
Your insistence that “wants” are not necessary to the community, only “needs,” seems bizarrely Puritan. Are you suggesting that we shut down all the stores and live some sort of Amish existence? I’m sure people will be happy with a single fruit and vegetable store, a dry-goods merchant, a blacksmiths and a weaver’s shop so we can all make our own clothes at home.
As I tried to point out earlier, the fact that there are DJ and musical equipment stores on the Main is because there are…wait for it…a large community of DJs and musicians in the Plateau. Shocking, isn’t it? Or maybe you missed Spin magazine’s special issue focusing on the Plateau as the hotbed of new music in North America, or several magazines’ lists which put the Plateau high on the ‘hip, desirable neighborhood’ category?
The community around the Main is not only young and relatively more affluent than previous generations, they’re also stylish, more often than not creative in some way, and well hooked into pop culture and street fashion.
So these stores cater to the residents’ desires to differentiate themselves, express themselves, to not wear the same boring Gap clothes as everyone else. There’s also a hell of a lot of local fashion represented there too, so it’s keeping the money in the community. Of course some specialty retailers don’t cater strictly to the immediate neighborhood, they attract tourists and shoppers from elsewhere — it’s a destination — but how is that a bad thing?
I mean, Justin, is there ANYTHING you personally need for your day-to-day life or even special needs, that you can’t find between Sherbrooke and Mont-Royal? Or even a couple of streets over, if necessary? The diversity of stores for people of all walks of life means the street is HEALTHY. it’s not a problem as you suggest, unless you have some sort of moral opposition to successful local businesses. I’d be much more worried if it was taken over by homogenizing chain retail.
Maybe you don’t like the Pharmaprix, fine. I never liked Warshaw’s as a grocery store. I found it dingy and slowly going downhill. Maybe impressionable university students, who grew up in sterile suburbs think that’s somehow romantic, but
after a while you start to appreciate clean, bright, well-lit places. I wish it wasn’t a chain store, but then again if people didn’t want to shop there it’d have closed by now. It clearly serves some sort of need, or provides some sort of convenience.
To further address that point: If the Main were only to cater to “needs” as you suggest then we’d have what — a small Rona hardware store, an IGA, maybe one doctor’s and dentist’s office, one bank, and a Wal-Mart for everything else, right? After all if that’s good enough for Alexandria, Ontario it’s good enough for Montreal, right?
The street has changed, and it’s going through a tough time with the construction, but I’d be hard pressed to say that the Main is not a vital commercial avenue with a vibrant community today. I remember it from my student days of the late 80s and early 90s and it was FAR different, and not in a good way — it was scuzzy, many storefronts were empty…the businesses were marginal…you don’t know how good we have it today.
The irony, of course, being that many of the musicians who were responsible for putting Montreal on the Spin map can no longer afford to live on the Plateau and now reside elsewhere.
Vila, is that true? got any examples?
I do know that Murray and Natalia of the Dears moved up to Park Ex, but that was to have more space now that they have a kid…and maybe to get away from ‘the scene’ somewhat.
maybe it’s true, like the Facebook group says, St-Henri is the new Plateau ;)
Are we having an Annie Hall moment, AJ? If so, I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here… ;)
“Boy, if life were only like this!”
I’m sure the rents have gone up, but maybe that just means a more well-heeled class of poet and musician’s moved in…and historically speaking aren’t they all kind of a little bit well-off to begin with? Leonard Cohen didn’t grow up poor, exactly…
Let’s put things into perspective: the Main is probably the *least* yuppified of the trendy neighbourhoods in Montreal. Segal is probably the cheapest grocery store in town, there are plenty of great Portuguese bakeries, cheap restaurants, grocers, etc. Compare that with Monkland in NDG or Bernard in Outremont where everything is overpriced.
To be honest, I’m a bit surprised that Justin is so fond of his new neighbourhood around Mont-Royal Avenue. It’s great but, in my experience, a lot more expensive and certainly a lot more gentrified than the Main.