In a city with a long-standing reputation for supporting the arts, watching popular Montreal venues and beloved cultural landmarks shutter is infuriating.
The news this week that Montreal’s legendary La Tulipe was temporarily closing its doors after a years-long legal dispute over noise levels at the century-old venue hit me with a bad case of déjà vu.
Are we doing this again?
Imagine moving above a music venue and being surprised by … music!
What’s next?
In a city with a long-standing reputation for supporting arts and culture, watching popular music venues and beloved cultural landmarks shutter is infuriating. I feel for venue owners who spend thousands of dollars soundproofing their spaces only to deal with constant noise complaints.
His frequent outbursts are snarky comedy at its finest, but the situation is far from funny.
Creeping gentrification has changed the look of some Montreal neighbourhoods, attracting people who may love the hipness factor these dive bars and small grassroots venues bring, without necessarily loving the noise that comes with them. These spaces are essentially victims of their own success.
But Montreal’s music venues should not be held hostage to the whims of someone who freely chooses to move directly above or next to a music venue, only to then turn around and complain about it.
Venue owners have long urged Montreal to update noise bylaws and apply the “agent of change” principle to development around music venues, placing the onus on developers to adapt their projects to existing noise conditions. The person or business responsible for the change would essentially be responsible for managing the impact of the change. Toronto implemented this in 2018.
As someone who’s no longer in the party-till-I-drop phase of my life, I understand the need for a good night’s sleep. No one wants to be kept awake by loud music or rowdy drunk patrons idling outside your window.
But can people please stop moving to the city (especially its liveliest and loudest spots) and expect the neighbourhood to change for them? Demanding that an area’s entire vibe — likely the very reason you were attracted to it in the first place — should now cater to your lifestyle is obnoxiously self-centred. It’s like moving to the countryside and getting angry at the sight of tractors or the sound of roosters.
If we value our nightlife scene, we need to get this right. Or we risk losing an essential part of what makes Montreal so special in the first place.
Toula Drimonis is a Montreal journalist and the author of We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada.