Saturated By Verdun
Well that didn’t take too long. I moved to Verdun for purely logistical reasons.
- The Cheap Rent
- I was moving back to Canada and starting all over again, as in from scratch. All I had were my clothes, a laptop and my camera (and my books in storage) so I knew the cost of refurnishing a whole apartment was gonna be heavy financially, plus washer dryer, oven, fridge, TV, Theater (and PS3 – because I wanted one damnit)
- I wanted to be very close to downtown/work
But Verdun aka Verdump isn’t the best area of Montreal and I knew this ahead of time. But there are only so many welfare whoring drug addicted lazy assholes a person can stand; at least that I can stand. It’s ridiculous. Everyone I can see around me is on welfare and proud of it. My downstairs neighbors moved out and the new ones had not even moved in that they had already rigged coffee cans to the balcony rail as a permanent outdoor ashtray and there were already a 6-pack of empty bottles lying on the floor. I mean COME ON!!! That’s just disgusting.
What’s the point of having a BBQ/Grill if all the local Butcher shops have gone bankrupt because everyone who lives here can’t afford a good steak, and would probably not know the difference between a butcher’s prepared steak and the cheap cuts of meat found at IGA. I think the nearest cleaners are 10 minutes away because, seriously what’s the point? The welfare junkies here don’t have clothes that need a cleaners, everything they own was purchased at a second-hand store.
Every time I see someone heading to the convenience store, they are going with bags and bags of beer bottles. The convenience store is let’s face it a beer store. Half of it is beer. One quarter is chips and other kind of snacks and of course, cigarettes. I think I’m the only non-smoker in the area. I’m surprised High Times hasn’t opened a store here, they would make millions. All these people on welfare who can never pay their rent on time sure do have a lot of petty cash for pot. It fucking reeks of pot all the time. This winter I could smell it coming through the electrical sockets.
There’s nothing more ironic than watching these losers shopping at IGA buying only the things that are on special for which they have coupons and they dozens and dozens of them and yet I can smell their alcohol content from 10 feet away. Serious priority issues at work here.
I talk to these people and they all have excuses, reasons for being down on their luck. Well don’t we all? I don’t want to minimize anyone’s hardships but we all have childhood traumas, we all have problems. But for fuck’s sake stop whining about it, get the fuck up, dust yourself off and move on. I know a lot of people who should be catatonic from their past (myself included) and we can still function in life, so I don’t accept this shit about life being too hard.
That being said, I think being surrounded by all this low-life classless ambitionless prideless resource-sucking human garbage is getting to me. What? Was that too harsh? Try living here. They ain’t poor because society don’t work, they poor because they don’t work. I think I’m gonna go back to a better neighborhood, with trees, life, culture (other than just beer and pot), parks, restaurants that offer more than hotdogs or 99¢ pizza and get away from the toothless welfare freeloaders populating the Verdun borough. It’s revolting to me to see people doing NOTHING to fight their way out of their so-called misery. Life is hard? Fight. Meanwhile I’m looking into getting out of this depressive area to a better place.
Quand j’habitais à Verdun, j’avoue que j’étais à la limite du bord de l’eau et de Lasalle, là ou les loyers coutaient hyper cher à l’époque, donc pas de pauvres B.S. Les avenues et l’est de Verdun sont malheureusement remplies de personnes de la sorte. Et en plus, tout ferme tôt
Rien que du low-class là-bas…
Au moins, dans Pointe-St-Charles, je suis à 10 minutes de marche du Marché Atwater, donc de la bonne bouffe! Et oui, j’ai quelques B.S., mais ils ont un peu plus de classe et ne se laissent pas traîner.
You must live on one of the Avenues between Wellington and Verdun, right?
That’s always been the nasty part of town, likely always will be, unfortunately.
But Verdun isn’t all bad (lived here for most of my 33 years of life – and keep reading, this isn’t an pointless attempt at trying to defend Verdun). It’s not nearly as bad as it was even just a decade ago. Try my street for instance (Gordon), there are so many trees it ain’t even funny. I can’t see down the road nor can I see most of neighbours across the street (not always a bad thing, we get plenty of privacy this way). Speaking of neighbours, mine are very nice and seemingly non-pot smokers, super friendly and one of them plays in a band that has performed at the Montreal Jazz Fest last year!
But yes, I still have to shop at the same welfare-ridden IGA and Depanneurs as you do my friend. I understand. It’s horrible to see and experience sometimes. Overweight, middle aged women wearing tub-tops and missing a few teeth with a cigarette dangling from their lips ain’t exactly what I call classy!
It’s unfortunate that welfare-like people seem to stand out way more than us regular working folk because it does give the fair city quite a bad reputation. Living here for more than 25 years I’ve heard so many people trash talk the place, I used to get defensive till I was blue in the face, but now I just point out a few of the nicer things (have you checked out GameZone on Wellington yet?) and say I’m sorry that people think that way about Verdun.
As for butchers, there are a few decent ones around, one of my faves is on the corner of Verdun and Osbourne, Boucherie Codive, I believe is the name. Fresh fruit and veggies as well, nice people running the place. There’s another butcher on de l’Eglise near Verdun, don’t remember the name, but it a big, new one that I believe moved their last year from a small little spot elsewhere on rue Verdun. I’ve yet to check it out and I was actually considering going a little later, I’m in the mood to BBQ today!
Hey Jason. I dunno man, it’s insane. Drunk people screaming at each other from balconies from the other side of the street. You’re telling me that 3 streets down the road things are better? Everyone looks like they should be in rehab and forgot to make their AA meetings around here. The landlord here is a corporation and the stories I hear from the administrator are borderline scary.
One of my neighbors (2 doors down) has so much junk on his balcony that a horde of pigeons have made nests on it and now I have to clean my chairs and tables weekly. My floor neighbor has filled her back balcony so much there’s barely enough room for a person to pass.
I can barely get fresh food at my IGA. The veggies are always busted up. The meat is cheap. They never have any of the cold cuts I want. Next time you go, take a look at the packaged foods they prepare and take a good look at the packaging dates. Often they are DAYS old. Everything else is super cheap.
I dunno I’m depressed about this right now. Having one sloppy neighbor is one thing but being surrounded by slobs is horrible. I’m kinda fed up. I gotta year to think about it.
@Sekmet. Ouin des fois je regarde PSC et je me dis que j’aurais mieux fait de me planter la bas.
I dunno fellas, I left the Plateau for Verdun screaming for my sanity three years ago. I traded in overflowing garbage cans, squeegee punks at every corner and syringes in the playgrounds for bike paths, the waterfront, red-winged blackbirds and relative quiet.
The way I see it, Verdun is in the process of transformation. There’s a great butcher shop on de L’Eglise (Viandal) where you can get any cut of meat you want. There’s a new cheese shop on the corner of Wellington and 2nd., two or three of the city’s better restos – Cuisine Mas, Su and Chez Antoine, as well as several new bakeries and cafés. The growing immigrant population is a good thing – more fresh fruit stores and specialty shops to compete with the hot dog and pizza slice joints.
It’s true that the avenues remain rough and poor, especially between Verdun and Wellington, but there are more things to like that hate.
Now if only we could find a place to stay open later than 7 p.m., That would be really civilized.
Oh, Dave, you insufferable snob! How can you live with yourself after coming down so hard on the struggling masses?
HA HA HA HA.
What you describe is very similar to my “St-Henri Experiment” a ways back. I thought I’d save myself some rent and go live with the “real people,” the great unwashed, from whence, BTW, I came (by way of Nova Scotia).
Mistake!
While it wasn’t quite as bad as you describe, it was endlessly grim. The depanneurs were ghastly, the grocery stores were awful (in the end, I would walk up the hill to Westmount, where the food was fresh, plentiful, and in most cases, cheaper). Then there were the neighbours. Hooo, boy!
I remember standing in my kitchen on the 4th floor hearing the dishes in the cupboards rattling to the bass notes of the competing car stereos across the alley. These guys, with their roll-painted crap Chevys and broken down Mazdas managed to cram 18-inch subwoofers into their rust-buckets and they loved to sit out there during the day trying to out-blast each other.
I could go on, but I won’t. I ended up moving back to the plateau with NO REGRETS.
BTW, by “cheaper” (groceries) I mean “less expensive.”
Gee, I am currently looking for a place in Verdun to escape the high rent of the West Island… The economy of rent may not be worth the chance of scenery! But I can’t get a roommate here because I live ’so far away’ from everything and I have this huge empty house! Argh…
Dave…i hear there are lots of vacancies in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.
Seriously I totally agree with parts of today’s rant. All it takes is one savage, living next door/above you/below you to ruin your fucking life. Just a complete drain on your ability to enjoy the simple pleasures of existence. Living in st-henri (ala Ed) was incredible, with an awesome neighbourhood (the square of civilization between Atwater and Greene, between StAntoine and St Jacques). But just one Neanderthal neighbour living next door ruined many a day.
They had a giant StBernard (named Budweiser for fucks sake) that would PISS right on the balcony forming a massive yellow waterfall. Oh and with the piss, there was the huge dumps that would attract flies all summer…just unbelievable that people can live like they were straight out of the middle ages. I mean “Bring out your dead” types. We got that straightened out by calling the city to inspect the premises, which pissed them off to no end. Anyway blood pressure rising gonna end this. BUT the best day of our time in the hood was watching them pack there worthless belongings into the most dodgy of moving trucks and head off to WHO THE FUCK CARES!!!!!
Move. It’ll do you good.
I have lived all over Montreal and Verdun is still one of the best places there is! It’s all perspective and expectations – I can get pretty grossed out by a bunch of yuppies or suburbanites standing in line at a grocery store, the so called normal people are the grossest offenders in my opinion. Why move to the poor part of town if you hate poor people so much? What were you actually expecting? Moving for cheaper rent is never a good idea because the chances are good to excellent you would rather be somewhere else, simple as that.
@ED You couldn’t pay to live on the Plateau. But I’m considering going back to Villeray which is a nice tradeoff.
@Eva, I fear your move might create a culture shock.
@Bryan. Got a year to consider. So far leaning on the MOVE option.
@Neath. I come from poor upbringing also and we were still raised to be polite and with some civility. Being poor does not mean you have to be a pig.
I lived all over Montreal, including St-Henri and Verdun.
Most memorable moment from St-Henri: walking to the Place St-Henri metro stop at 8am on my way to work, and seeing welfare junkies come out on their porches with bottles of Molson Dry in their hands. Walking back home at 6pm, and seeing the same people sitting on their porches sipping their Molson Dry. It looked like they haven’t gotten off their asses the whole day.
Most memorable moment from Verdun: neighbors across the street letting their kids play street hockey, even though there was a park a block away. The mommy sitting on the stoop, cheering the kids on. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, except that the kids paid absolutely no attention to the fact that there were cars parked on both sides of the street. They kept smashing the cars with their sticks the minute the ball ended up anywhere near the car or underneath it. To protect their own, the mommy or daddy would move their van to the driveway before the kids started playing.
I pleaded with the parents several times after witnessing their kids batter my car with sticks. To no avail. ” Mêlez-vous de vos affaires, esti” is all I got. So one day I called the cops, who showed up and gave the parents a warning. Let’s just say that from then on I had to put up with a lot of verbal abuse from these low lifes anytime we run into each other on the sidewalk.
Let’s just say I don’t miss these people.
Vedun has one major advantage – the proximity to downtown. Does it make up for all the other crap? That’s debatable.
Hey Dave,
When I first read this post – it kind of pissed me off. Hell – you’re dissing my neighbourhood (at least it has been my neighbourhood for the last 8 years). But then your words sank in a bit and I started to think – why the hell would I want to defend Verdun – it is a dump.
Fortunately, I live in a decent building with decent neighbours – most of them being older. However, I think I’ve become desensitized to some of the shyte that goes on around me in. Cops show up on the street all the time. There is a guy down the road that gets dragged out of his apartment about every two weeks by the cops – and it takes about 8 of them to do it. There is a riff-raff “Career-welfare” couple that are always screaming at each other on the balcony (I think they drink 24 hours a day) and their front lawn looks like a refugee camp….etc etc.
I don’t think I see it anymore. Though since reading your entry a few weeks ago – my eyes seemed to be open again.
Hmmm. not sure if I should thank you for that…
…thanks, asshole. LoL!
CJ
Glad to hear that Verdun hasn’t changed ….