Welcome to another edition of Word On The Street, in which we ask people to talk about their hometown and their lives.
This time, we spoke with stylish gay locals during Montreal‘s annual Divers/Cite party weekend. Of course, we made sure to spend time in the gay village on St. Catherine Street East at amazing drag bar Cabaret Mado, the three-level dance club and bar complex Sky (which has done away with its cover charge!), latest and greatest dance hotspot Bar Apollon, woofy bear and leather club Le Stud, and, of course, matriculated at male stripper heaven Campus. In the process, we learned a lot about Montrealers by asking:
How are Montreal gays different? What makes them special?
Alex, 32
TV Director
“We love life. Honestly, Montreal is a sleepy city in the winter but when summer comes everyone goes out, wants to drink, nobody wants to sleep, and we just enjoy life.”
John, 30
Student
“Laid back culture, I would say. People don’t worry too much here, I find. That’s what I like.”
Kevin, 22 (right, with friends)
Hairdresser/ Bartender At Club Unity
“I think we’re special just because we’re trying to be ourselves. Sometimes I have gone to places where people try to be somebody else. That’s why we call it diverse city. It’s many people, we’re trying to be ourselves, and it’s about respect. People respect others and nobody cares about what you look like. You do your thing and that’s it!”
Robbie, 30 (left, with his boyfriend Sasha)
Sales
“I would say there’s more of a dynamic in relationships because it’s bilingual here. I’m English and he’s French and I really enjoy going back and forth with language and bouncing things off of each other. It makes things more interesting.”
Michael, 22
HR
“Good question. I don’t know.”
Joseph, 24 (center, with friends)
Hair Salon Owner
“Their style is really good. I don’t go out much so that’s a problem. My friend says they have big cocks. But I don’t know. I haven’t done enough of a sampling, I only had one [so far].”
Jeff, 24 & Jason, 31
Academics
Jeff: “It’s an open expression to art. There isn’t an art influence in another city as much as Montreal that I’ve seen. It stands out as something that embraces the culture in something profound.”
Jason: “Open-minded, exuberant, very loving and happy and multicultural. That’s the big difference with Canada in general – we’re open to all gays and we realize gays come from around the world so we embrace it all.”
Joseph, 34
Nurse
“Beautiful people. The guys are beautiful more than any other place.”
Martin, 39 (left, with friend)
Hairstylist
“They party, they’re open minded. We have a big gay village to hang out, to be free with our friends or husbands.”
Phong, 35 (right, with friend)
Sample Dress Displays
“Everyone loves to dance!”
Simon & Danny, both 22
Hairdressers
D: “We’re fucking hot. We party fucking hard. That’s pretty much it!”
S: “They’re all bottoms!”
D: “Of course, we dress better!”
S: “We dress better!”
Caine
oh i thought it was their tank tops.
Sweet Boy
Things that make Montreal guys special:
1. Hard drugs use….
2. Barebacking…official Montreal sport for the gay community
3. Tats…you are a pariah if you don´t have one
4. Believing to be special because you speak a French of sorts
5. Being rude and hostile to tourists, even when the gay Village makes all its money from American tourists who come to Montreal to spend their money and get their jollies
6. Being against anything…or anti anything, you name it, they are against it
7. The delusion of being European, just because they speak French, well, sort of
8. Poor personal hygiene
9. Being über-hipsters
The list can go on and on and on…
I live in Montreal, by the way….so I know what it is like
masc4masc
While Joseph is definitely hot, I disagree with him. From the pics posted, Montreal just looks like a bunch of “fabulousssth” fem twinks.
Franco C.
I love Montreal but have always found the locals in Quebec City to be much friendlier to visitors.
Dxley
Yuck!
TampaBayTed
@Sweet Boy: Have to agree with you Sweet Boy. Was often a tourist to Montreal when I live in the Northeast. On the positive side, I loved their big uncut Canadian bacon. And the food in Montreal is the best. Other than that not much more to say about the city. Toronto is much friendlier and open to us Americans spending our money in the Great White North.
Ms Urethra Johnson
Toronto is a dirty, ugly dump, super boring and dangerous… Canadian Detroit…
Montreal is perfection. Live and let live. Some bitter queens are not going to change that. Cute though. Ignorance is indeed bliss… last time I checked, no one in America or Canada spoke “proper” posh English… Madge tried that…
Realaw2
I lived with a Montrealer in Ft. Lauderdale, FL for years and I hate to say it but I look back and realize she was just complete trash, and trash that talked smack about Americans on top of that and her friends talked that way too. I always thought “Well at least I bathe, brush my teeth, and don’t keep getting ‘infections’ all the time. The men that came down (except for her mother’s loser boyfriends) were always super nice and considerate but her girl friends were always really arrogant and not-that-hot. I don’t think I’m all that because I’m American, what makes them think they are because they speak french and rarely bathe? Just don’t get it. She actually had sex with a guy on the sidewalk next to a movie theatre…..with her friends from work right around the corner waiting for her. Classy huh!?
Sweet Boy
@Ms Urethra Johnson: English-speaking Americans and Canadians can go around the world and people will understand their English, the Quebecois cannot, sometimes not even the French understand joual…Montreal perfection?…far from it, unless you like streets covered with potholes, bridges that crumble down and a gay neighbourhood where used needles and condoms mushroom on the sidewalks.
I can tell that you have never set a foot in Montreal
stadacona
Montreal is putrid and disgusting. Just look at the ridiculous clowns in these photos and imagine their quacking duck pidgin french accents. Canada has forgotten that Montreal even exists, as their economy has evaporated by ethnic cleansing all english speakers.
Nixter
I’m from Montreal, and I have to agree with most of the negative comments. The French-Quebecers are quite rude and the winters are ferociously cold. I don’t know why I stayed so long, but I know I have suffered too long . Thankfully, I work for the government so I may transfer to Vancouver.
seaguy
@Sweet Boy: Why do you still live there if you dislike it so much. I mean it sounds like you do unless your just being brutally honest?
seaguy
are the Quebecois the ones who want to separate from the rest of Canada. They are weird.
onthemark
@stadacona: LOL – and judging from the Queerty photo captions, apparently most of Montreal’s gay economy consists of cutting each other’s hair!
lcandela123
Montreal must be the fittest city in the world. I didn’t see one overweight person.
Sweet Boy
@lcandela123: I suspect you spend all your time visiting the strippers at Campus and Stock…LOL
Sweet Boy
@seaguy: I am being brutally honest, and yes I live here, my partner and I have not left the city because his business is here and it´s a bit complicated at the moment to wrap things up and leave. I work in the healthcare/social services sector and Montreal has public health statistics that are really scary…all of them related to mental disease, use of hard drugs, STD´s and HIV…
YesIDid
Simon & Danny: “We dress better.” Oh, really? Get some Windex!!!!
Arkansas Razorback
Ridiculous hair.
whatsaywhat
Montreal is fun because its full of students, hair dressers and low-skilled service industry workers. Anyone with any brains or ambition leaves that city eventually. It is also crumbling, bankrupt, and dumpy… nothing has been upgraded or improved since about 1982. Nice if you like “grit” or whatever. One other thing I noted is that there is a weird delusion, common among Montreal inhabitants, that they are “special”, i.e. better, than americans and English language Canadians, and that they live in some magical, urban shangri-La. This parochiality is cute, if blatantly deluded. Finally, the backwater patois many people speak can be a total boner-killer, although some of them speak French more clearly than others do, and they can be cute when speaking English in a Quebec accent. Many of he French ones are kinda hot in a sleazy way, so go for it… But take precautions- vd is rampant.
Nixter
@whatsaywhat: Asd a Montrealer,I find your comment/insight very accurate.
jmcmtl
My god people can easily become bitchy in front of their keybord!
Montreal is a unique city. Yes we are proud of our French heritage and by the way we are the second biggest French city in the world just after Paris. It s mixture of many cultures that makes us so open minded. From queeny bitches like most of you that wrote theses comments to masculine sexy dudes , you can find them all in here.
dencentral
I’m québécois but I gave up on Montreal for a real career in 1990, and never looked back from Toronto. IMHO many of the mostly negative comments here are true, if some exaggerated by disappointed sex tourists.
There are still great things about life in Montreal when I visit today, but there’s a frozen-in-its-glory-days, Funkytown kind of vibe .
But there’s a ton of fine men in Montreal, too bad Queerty only found one one (Martin’s friend is hot!) among all the identical twinks on this visit to the Old Port on a summer day.
Vidontag
I’ve lived in Montreal for most of the past 16 years. It has its charms, but it can indeed at times feel parochial and provincial. Montreal is no more “European” (whatever that means) than any other reasonably cosmopolitan North American city. The winters here are indeed unforgivingly brutal, but it’s a decent enough place for a middle-aged slacker like me. Yeah, there is a discernible “trashiness” quotient, but that’s part of the charm: the strippers at Stock and Campus are hot until they open their mouths, and that’s a good enough balance for me – if they were hot AND eloquent I’d have to put them on some sort of pedestal. The bathhouses are crumbling and there are no darkrooms, but I can head to Paris for good saunas or Berlin for decent darkroom action. Old Montreal is just an upscale tourist trap, but there are some very charming neighbourhoods here. And no disrespect @jmcmtl, but I used to hear that old saw about us being the second-largest francophone city after Paris, but I don’t hear it so much lately, because it doesn’t quite add up: Montreal is actually not a “French” city, but a majority-francophone bilingual city. There are more French speakers in Lyon and Marseilles, I’m pretty sure. I must concede that most visitors I meet seem quite taken with this city, but at this point I just take it for granted.