Quote:
Originally Posted by GernB
Reminds me of the beverage rooms at the Butte and Shaughnessy Hotels near where I grew up. Of course, no one really cared if you were underage then, it was easy to get in if you looked like you close to legal. 25 cents a glass for draft with the ALCB lines, cutoff at midnight when your table would order a hundred...
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Indeed. My first ventures into the bar scene (at the tender age of 14...that would have been 1983) were in these types of places. Namely, the erstwhile
Cousineau's Tavern (off limits to women), and the
Brasserie Bellevue (open to women, but basically a tavern), both in Sainte Anne de Bellevue (western end of Montreal Island). They usually didn't ask for ID (even though I looked about 11 when I was 14). When rules started to tighten up, I easily procured fake ID at a nearby shop that would laminate
anything for a buck or two. Nobody cared.
There was generally only one beer on tap (Molson Export, or maybe Labatt 50 ["Cinquante!"]. Beer was often sold as cheap as 25 cents for 8oz. You could also buy "quarts" (large bottles of about 700ml, with non-twist caps that had to be opened by the bartender). Molson Export, O'Keefe Ale, Dow, Laurentide, Labatt 50, Brador, and sometimes, Black Label or Molson Old Stock or Labatt Porter were the only options. No fucking Budweiser or Coors light.
If you were hungry, you had a great selection of food items to choose from: Pickled eggs, Pickled pork tongues, bags of Yum-Yum chips, and peanuts. And salt. That's it.
Of course they also sold cigarettes (really helped my budding addiction which took me decades to finally conquer). Players (filtered and unfiltered). DuMaurier Regular and King size. Green Death (Export 'A' greens; filtered and unfiltered). Sweet Caporal. Rothman's. Maybe Cameo or Peter Jackson.
A shitty 14-inch black and white TV for hockey games. Sometimes some old newspapers and magazines. Ubiquitous Molson Export clock on the wall.
The places may have been shit holes, but I had a lot of good times there.
Over the years, almost all of the old-style bars and taverns in the West Island (Montreal) were burned down. Mostly on purpose (Mafia and their minions).