HANDLE THE TRUTH

I don't know if you gentle readers can handle the truth in large doses. So
here are some brief-y notions stuck on the roof of my mind by virtue of
their gluey truthfulness. They mostly dawned on me while scrubbing my ears
in the shower. Some leapt from the mess of papers on my desk.

A ridiculously persistent rumour has Wal-Mart buying and demolishing the
Super C on St-Jacques West. Peter Sergakis will rebuild the Amazones and
Picasso strip-and-eats joint across the street. Then a massive Wal-Mart
will spring up, complete with grocery store inside. The tale is denied by
all involved.

Add Louise O'Sullivan -- the downtown city councillor who recently quit
Mayor Tremblay's party -- to the list of politicians who lost their careers
after speaking out in favour of street prostitution. Other past council
vets voted out after expressing tolerance to the ho factor include Sam
Boskey, Sammy Forcillo (who's planning a political comeback this fall) and
Filippo Salvatore. Right or wrong, voters want their councillors to be
hardline proponents of NIMBY politics.

Since last year it's easier to get a syringe than a swizzle stick in dry
Verdun. The authorities snuck a needle exchange into the area without too
much outcry. Needle exchanges are meant to reduce the spread of disease
among IV drug users, but a St-Luc Hospital trial in January 1998
embarrassingly demonstrated that HIV rates actually doubled among locals
using needle exchange. Unlike cities like Vancouver, where heroin is the
soupe-du-jour, Montreal injectors prefer cocaine, a drug that requires
transforming yourself into a human pincushion. So users would make new
junkie friends through the needle exchanges, then share needles anyway. The
solution has been to give junkies a totally unlimited number of needles
(the 1998 report's authors and the American Journal of Epidemiology
suggested expanding the needle exchange program).

Long ago I lived at 4221 St-Urbain, a building owned by a hardworking,
gentle Portuguese. Since then Peter Vasilopanagos bought the building and
informed the tenants of dozens of new lease clauses, including one that saw
rents raised hundreds of dollars a month to reflect the average in the
area. The rent raise attempt was shot down at the rental board, but most
tenants scurried out soon after. Now rents are way up at St-Urbain and Rachel.

Charlie Biddle's widow is losing her Griffintown apartment of 25 years. The
longtime home of the legendary jazzman and fabulous four kids is going the
way of landlord repossession...

I blame Jughead, that comic book glutton who never gets fat, for
contributing to America's obesity. While I'm at it, Charlie Brown is partly
responsible for adult male depression.

Before Westmount officially demerges, I'd love to see Montreal force a huge
social housing complex on the area. Last summer Westmount ratfinks exiled
their own local rugby team, claiming not enough of its players live in
Westmount. I will protest, when I get a chance, by tossing stinky old rugby
shoes over their phone lines and leaving them hanging up there ghetto
style... and you might've noticed that Westmount is now zoned only to get
the money-making housing component of the superhospital project while NDG
shoulders the industrial side of the affair. Who negotiated this, Irving
Grundman?

You're crazy if you're out walking a pit bull and imagining that police
won't secretly consider the possibility that you're involved in a drug
ring... Albert Broccoli's ancestors invented broccoli by combining
cauliflower with peas. I am trying to cross a banana and onion to create
the banonion.

I'm lobbying the city to turn part of the walled-off city parking
lot/former dump at Madison and St-Jacques into a park, dog run or
basketball court. Phone la ville if you're onside. Also, I continue to urge
Canada's weather mafia to calculate a "sun warmth factor" alongside the
gloomy sounding "wind chill factor," but so far, no commitment.