Montreal's Bixi Bikes

I tried out the Bixi bike rental system last weekend. Many people have already written about them so I thought I would add my cents as well.

Pros:

• Convenient locations around downtown
• Cheap prices if you get a yearly subscription and use less than 30 minutes each time
• You can rent friggin’ bikes!
• Promotes biking in the city

Cons:

• Requires one credit card per bike rented
• Puts a hold on $250 in your credit card each time you use it
• Instructions for some things (like the 24-hr access) not very clear
• Lack of billboard with info on nearby rental stations.

Another side-effect of the design of the system: When I tried to get a bike to go back home, the first station had no bikes, but luckily the one where I had returned my bike still had one left.
Oh, and here’s an official video from Bixi explaining how the 24-hr access works.

BIXI – 24-hour access from BIXI on Vimeo.

Festival on the Main

This weekend, the Main was closed from Sherbrooke to Mont-Royal and was turned into a pedestrian street. All businesses put out their merchandise, or food, or anything else and that part of the city was alive!

While on our way back home we ran into a breakdancing crew doing their thing, so I broke out the Qik camera.

Noteworthy: At around the 3 minute mark, the breaker in green seems to have hurt himself but I never figured out if he actually did.

Tamtams and journée des Patriotes

I was walking home yesterday, when I saw a huge crowd and what appeared to be a protest next to Mount Royal Park. My first guess was the usual Sunday Tamtams, but when I got closer I saw a large number of Fleurdelisé. I assumed it was just a pro-sovereignty rally and continued walking to go record a bit of the tamtams madness. But last night while doing my rounds in the blogosphere I found this interesting article on the topic which answers my questions about the rally and I think it’s a good read.

And here’s the video I took yesterday, but unfortunately I had my earphones on and didn’t get any of the audio. I have to say the sounds of hundreds of drums playing was incredible!