Café Esperanza photo: Joseph Yarmush

How times have changed. The Mile End has been a hipper corner of town for way longer than we've had bars to back it up, but now things are roaring in a way that almost makes me nostalgic. But times are still a-changin'.

Hell's Kitchen became Sergent Recruteur, arguably the best microbrewery in town, which recently pulled up stakes and moved across the street to swankier digs (4801 St-Laurent). Les Dimanches du Conte, their Sunday-afternoon storytelling series, is a place I take out-of-towners for a piece of le terroir. Further up the street, Bar Set, another dearly departed den of iniquity (5301 St-Laurent), is slated to become Boa, a swank jazz lounge, shortly.

The whole neighbourhood breathed a sigh of relief when Mauro and Kiva opened Casa del Popolo (4873 St-Laurent), a music venue that is also a bar where you can get a decent mixed drink, a sandwich or a lemonade to sip out in the backyard. Casa grew exponentially and soon had branched off across the Main. Sala (4848 St-Laurent) rejuvenated the building's roots as a Spanish cultural centre - the second floor, below the music venue, has been turned into a neighbourhood bar of sorts, and remains one of the few places in the area that makes a decent whisky sour.

Though it seems like Sala/Casa have been around forever, in truth it's only been a few years. The stalwart on the strip is actually Snack 'n Blues (named as such due to the availability of snacks and, occasionally, blues), tucked away at 5260 St-Laurent. Not exactly rip-roaring with the younger demographic, Snack's is a really good place to meet an illicit date, hide from your peers, and drink until you half-expect the caricatures of jazz greats painted on the walls to start talking.

Moving up the block, thank God that Green Room (5386 St-Laurent) and its upstairs venue, the Mile End Cultural Centre, opened when it did. Green Room truly feels like a neighbourhood bar, with free-pours and games night (Wednesday) ...and just the right amount of cute strangers on the weekends.

Less homey but definitely movin' and shakin' is the emblematically named Mile End Bar (5322 St-Laurent), which offers a particularly "design" vision of the neighbourhood. There's a certain L.A. feel to the bar and upstairs nightclub, and the bartenders are reassuringly able to mix drinks like lower St-Laurent slingers. (Sometimes you want a goddamn martini, you know what I mean?)

Unless of course you wanna drop in for an apero at the laid-back café-gallery/bar Esperanza, or, conversely, some seriously hot dancehall/reggae at Bar St-Laurent II (5550 St-Laurent, corner St-Viateur).

For many, the Main above the Van Horne underpass is undiscovered country, but membership has its privileges. Quelli Della Notte (6834 St-Laurent) has a fancy cigar bar and beautiful people you've never seen before. Bistro Paparazzi (6876 St-Laurent) has an extensive menu of dirty, delicious things you can do with sambuca, and one of the best people-watching terrasses on the strip. Finally, if you really wanna bring the heat, Punta Cana (literally crowning off the strip at 90 Jean-Talon West, just off Clark) is this city's hippest Latin hip-hop den and one of the strip's new underground classics. Just as it should be.
 
 

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Once you've drained your glass...     Once you've drained your glass in one of Mile-End's many watering holes, what the hell else are you going to do. It's scary that a 29-year-old's only bell-ringing moment is emptying his glass and bending his elbow. You make Mile End appear more bleak than it actually is...too much booze clouds your perspective and leads to clinical depression. I attended the same elementary school as William Schatner...Devonshire Elementary on Sewell just above Pine, stradled by Clark. Alot of its pupils were raised in Mile End and the Plateau. They didn't find it lacking. They were the children of the working poor -mostly immigrant factory workers. I was raised in the McGill Ghetto. I was lucky. I was the daughter of a poor WASP...not poor in spirit. I didn't have the materialism but I had the love. I was raised to respect everyone. We all walked to school...from the Ghetto and from Mile End. School buses never drove in our areas. It's also insulting to compare Montreal's Mile End with New York's Hell's Kitchen...please give me a break. There are many families growing up there today. There are also alot of successful businesses being operated under the influence of hard work like St. Viater Bagels, Ubisoft -a world-renowned digital games corporation, the 1001 Grain's bakery and Yellow Shoes...just to mention a few. Also there is a current trend for small and rising companies to move from their present digs in the Plateau to cheaper and retrofitted space in MileEnd -they're spreading north from Mount Royal to Little Italy. Commercial space, presently under construction on L'Esplanade just above St-Zotique is going for $10 a square foot while similar space in the Plateau goes for $15. It would apear that the majority of commercial/corporate tenants and residents are far too busy and productive in Mile End to be concerned about their neighbourhood watering holes. Ford invented the automobile...the precursor to public transit. People can now leave Mile End for a drink. Pesky peasants.
Heather Lee	{41 votes}	June 10th, 2005
~Feast or famine~     Certain parts of town have reps, some are deserved and some aren't, this article is about one that is well deserved many times over. Personally, I've already got my own favorite dives on a mental rolodex but it's always good to have a short list for certain areas handy because you just never know. Again, I suggest that you go doing some exploring of your own because whatever Melora Koepke or I or anyone else for that matter might think we aren't you and you might have a totally personal idea of what makes a place cool enough to remember and go back to. 'Nuff said...
Pedro Eggers	{2 votes}	November 20th, 2005
The hood     It's "hip" to get drunk. But if you got high tolerance it could be expensive. Hence this justifies the existence of crappy beers as I wrote for the beer festival. I also wrote that there's no point in getting drunk because at the next day you just feel so much worse. But sure enough I see it up here in this article why people look forward to it: A place becomes hip once bars show up and you can drink yourself till you see little pink elephants. That's cool apparently, even though you don't remember yourself having fun, many a brain cell got killed, and you lost a lot of money. Don't get me wrong, I like drinking, but only to get a buzz. Hence I can still act somewhat like a fool, get the courage to ask a girl out, have fun and remember it too. So I thank the article for suggesting many a place in which a guy can get a 17 year old drunk. Or at least not get carded when doing so. However for those of us who are more mature then to just keep on drinking I hope I can find a place there for me. I'll admit my sin is eating and I love food. I love food a lot more then I love alcohol. Hence that's why I can go to the gym a lot and pump iron. I figure if I'm going to enjoy food I should burn it so I can eat more of it. You enjoy eating it AND you remember the experience. Perhaps next time some restaurants or hang out places could be included in the article. I've been to this part of St. Laurent, but I've only quickly drove through it. I wasn't really paying attention to many of the businesses or bars. Perhaps I'll just randomly stop if I have time and check it out. I'm sure the area has its fair share of cool restaurants and time killing locations. That's when I consider a place to be really hip: Bar for the undergrads (I'm at least 2 years past that) who start living wild and crazy, hangouts/eateries/cafes for those who want to sit down and just chill. Or look for hotties to talk to that aren't drunk off their asses. That works too.
Alexander Yu	{22 votes}	June 14th, 2005
Love this Hood     The Green Room/Main Hall and Casa/Sala posses really help to establish a community spirit unmatched in any other part of town. Whether I'm watching DIY punk bands tear it up or catching a DJ set from an out of towner, there are tons of appealing shows in at least one of these venues every week. Add amazing food to the mix and we've got an internationally renowned hood on our hands. Portugese eats at Sala or vegetarian sandwiches, soups and salads across the streets. If I'm still munchie crazy I head up to Esperanza for whatever is fresh. Mile End forever.
Dan Leznoff	{13 votes}	June 13th, 2005
Drain away..     Maybe there are alot of successful businesses being run in Mile End and Plateau, but these articles (all five about St-Laurent) are talking about watering holes in some aspect. Yes it's great to know that times have changed, and no longer is Mile end and Plateau just a small desolate area, and are now being run in a good mannar. No, this article is simply giving us the splenders of a once unknown drinking place (to some), and letting us indulge in the knowledge of new places to "drain our glasses". DOn't worry about the Pesky peasants, Heather, let them drink away their emotions if that's what the feel like doing. But I do agree, it would be good to have an article written on the splendors of the booming businesses in Mile End/Plateau area.
Jeremy King	{15 votes}	June 12th, 2005

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