The eighty

The eighty.

Straight up the hill from Place des arts metro if you are coming from downtown. Stare at the lips and the smoke coming out of them on the brick wall. Admire the fancy football lights for the jazz festival. Then get on the bus. Up the hill that is killer on the bike unless you have been biking all summer and then it is easy and awesome. Left on Sherbrooke then a quick right on Parc where that really nice art store used to be. I stood there for ten minutes one morning, not understanding how it could be closed in the middle of the day, really wanting paint, and only after a while noticing the official-looking bankruptcy sign. Then up through the McGill ghetto (students, students and more students! Will they ever get dressed or live perpetually in pyjamas?), before up the hill, across the mountain's toes and into Mile End. Through Mile End where the abundance of the good looking and well dressed always leaves a slight taste of envy. Through the industrial wasteland to the north (international bowling!) and a left on Jean Talon, right on Hutchison. Parc metro. Then up into Parc Ex. Ugly buildings but fantastic allies. But then, I am biased. All the way to the end, the forty, with booming traffic, and a feeling of being hemmed in.

So much for the view. People watching is layered on the eighty, as we pass from neighborhood to neighborhood. At the start of the ride, a mix of ages, colours, styles, attitudes. Students in dishevelled school uniforms, lounge in the back. The older Greek immigrants hog the single seats near the front, gossip across the aisle. The Mile End hipsters, over-sized glasses and hair hanging in their eyes but skin fresh and young, lean on each other or crouch over their cell phones. South Asian women clutch plastic carrier bags and stare straight ahead. Teenagers plugged into some sort of technical device, slouch or pout depending. Depending on what? On how pretty they are, on how confident they are are in their youthful beauty. All youth is beauty. No, that's not true.

By Van Horne, all of the hipsters have gotten off, to totter (those shoes!) to overpriced and shared apartments, some of the school kids, too. There are still a gaggle at the back, the immigrant kids, heading home, flirting and yelling. The old guys are still there, firmly rooted to a seat, legs wide apart, hats askance. The South Asian women have spread out their bags, taking up more space now that the hipsters have gone. And the Muslim couple with the over-sized stroller, did I mention them? Their baby has started to cry, wrapped up like a treasure, like a gift. Which it is.

Yesterday, there was a woman, young, beautiful, with long dark hair. She was wearing one of those tube tops that have come back into fashion, just a stretchy bit of fabric across one's chest. But the young woman was having none of it. None of what? The lack of support, the fear of the downward pull of gravity on her shirt. She'd put on a very bland white bra underneath and sat looking about as if the world was owed to her. She made my heart happy.

Just finished "The Smoking Diaries" by Simon Gray (2002?) which has made me want to embrace my inner curmudgeon.