Saint-Paul will become a pedestrian street!

Fresh off the press! Rue Saint-Paul in Old Montreal will become a pedestrian street this July!   Yep! Terraces, street acts, and candies and lollipops shall abound this summer!

Saint-Paul is of course THE tourist trap of Montreal (ok, maybe #2 after Club Super Sexe on Sainte-Catherine which has indebted so many visiting American students who are not yet 21 years old). But I’ll be the first to come clean, Saint-Paul/Place Jacques-Cartier is the first place I take any out-of-towner (unless it’s an American student who is not yet 21) to show them how awesome Montreal is.

Of course, the whole issue has a huge political undertone, with Montreal Mayor Gérald “too nice to rule a city” Tremblay having opposed the project, and leader of the opposition/mayor of the Ville-Marie borough Benoît “people don’t really like me” Labonté deciding to implement in anyways.  To be fair, the whole thing was initially Mayor Tremblay’s idea, but he backed out because the Old Montreal businessmen were opposed to the idea.  Mayor Tremblay, unsurprisingly, didn’t want to insist…

Political considerations aside, I think this is pretty good news for Montreal.  Anyone who has worked/lived/passed by the Village in the summertime will tell you that, quite frankly, it’s an awesome place to be.  Plus, Rue Saint-Paul’s cobbled streets and Europeanish buildings make it, in some regards, a more obvious and cozy choice than the Village which, let’s face it, has a staggering number of porn shops.

PRO: Pedestrian streets rock.

CON: Say goodbye to some prime parking spots

PRO: All those cars on a tight street like Saint-Paul kinda make it lose its charm anyways

CON: hmm, looks like I’m out of CONs..

PRO: When Les Deux Pierrots closes at 3, we can just move the party outside!

CON: oh, just thought of one.  The few people actually living on Saint-Paul probably don’t want a bunch of drunk people singing Paul Piché at 3:01AM (though honestly, if I lived there, I’d definitely join in)

PRO: More pedestrians = more people who will marvel at the hilarious “I COME FROM CANADA EH” t-shirts that are showcased in 95% of the stores on Saint-Paul

CON: Damn it!  One more.. The pedestrian street experience just won’t be all it can be as Montreal STILL has no street hotdog vendors.. (Note to self: look into why Montreal still has no hotdog vendors)

PRO: Opens up a whole new option for guys who nervously notice on their first date that you can only walk around Place-Jacques Cartier for so long..

CON: Aha, one more! Will probably invite a whole bunch of people engaging in unfortunate public displays of affection on an otherwise charming street.

Uh-oh… final CON: the project in itself should cost about 20,000$.  I predict we will be entertained with a whole new only-in-Montreal-and-possibly-Sicily scandal a few months later, where we’ll find out that we ended up spending $47 million to close off a street and put a few chairs and tables outside..

So, Montrealers, what do you think?

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