Artists are crying “Victory” in the Quartier des Spectacles after winning a David vs. Goliath battle that pitted powerful corporate interests against local artists at the Café Cleopatra, a popular burlesque venue and centre for alternative arts. Café Cleopatra hails from another era and symbolizes the city’s once thriving Red Light District. Situated within “The […]
Laser Ads are the latest form of invasive visual pollution staining our urban environments, and they are proliferating all over Montreal, like mushrooms after a rainfall. Not only can these laser ads be projected onto buildings, creating entirely new gigantic corporate billboards with the flick of a switch, but they are also starting to appear at […]
Eyebrows are once again being raised concerning the competence of urban planning on the Lower Main. First came the wholesale evictions and gutting of the now-crumbling historic block on the west side of the Lower Main, effectively transforming an area where entertainment once thrived into a dangerous and boarded-up eyesore. Now, on the south-east corner of Ste. Catherine Street […]
Montreal’s Lower Main has been the site of controversy as of late, with powerful business interests squaring off against artists and heritage activists to determine the future of the historic stretch of road that was once the heart of Montreal’s bustling Red Light District. The battle has been characterized by powerful business interests dislocating the area’s […]
What will you do to preserve the Main’s historic status, promote the interests of those who live and work there and protect against corporate intrusions?
Maybe they don’t want any record of what Time2Ad and Matthew Alzubi said to us to exist.
Today is the beginning of “MainFest”, a 3 day “street fair” on St. Laurent Boulevard, or “The Main” Historic site. The boulevard will be completely closed to traffic and is expected to receive an estimated 300 000 visitors. According to The Société de développement du boulevard Saint-Laurent (SDBSL), organizers of “MainFest” and other “street fairs”: […]
Last week, OTL finally got a letter from the Ville Marie borough. If this is their idea of a Christmas present, it’s definitely one that we’d like to exchange. It’s in response to our question about the giant billboard from Time2Ad on The Main, asking just what the city was going to do about it. […]
Well before Time2Ad‘s giant billboard reared its obtrusive head on St-Laurent Boulevard, OTL’s Reclaim the Main campaign had been challenging corporate and monoculture intrusions our heritage site through culture jamming. Every summer during the street fairs we were greeted with a new corporate sponsor monopolizing a celebration that’s supposed to be for the people as […]
A towering billboard has finally been removed from The Main historic site, causing a collective sigh of relief from local residents who had been subjected to its gigantic advertisements since March, 2008. The 2-storey-high billboard was wrapped around a building on the South-East corner of St. Laurent and Sherbrooke, and for seven months citizens have […]
