I hated that damn pig, and he hated me. It was forever a contest of wills, of one-upmanship. And there wasn’t an ounce of quit in his Vietnamese pot-bellied body. I hated that pig.
"Pig," as he was called, was a vindictive sonofabitch, and he wasn’t afraid to mix it up. He patrolled the loft space on the third floor of 494 De la Gauchetière with a proprietary air, and God forbid you should leave anything that you valued unattended at pot-belly level. He was also a thief.
The 2,500-square foot loft space was home, jam space, crazy party place and personal playground for members of my first band, Shine. It had a swing, a ping-pong table, a DJ booth protected by chicken wire and a fun-fur-covered bar that also housed an aquarium – what more could a young, underfed and underemployed, aspiring artist/musician type like myself ask for? For the amount of time I spent there, I should have been paying rent.
It was the early-’90s, and when we weren’t smoking our body weight in hash while watching The Simpsons, or popping trucker speed and rollerblading insanely around the space, or burning down the parking attendant booth in the lot across the street, we were preparing for imminent rock stardom and living about as large as one could on next to no income at all.
We played a number of rent party/concerts in the loft – many with a young Brit-rock-influenced band like ourselves called Wren, who would later evolve into The Dears of today – which eventually came to be known as Seapig because of the barquarium and the nasty-ass lush of a pig that would spend all night knocking people’s beer bottles over so he could finish them off. (Pig was both the unintended drinking buddy, and porky property, of our keyboard player, Rob.)
On one particularly memorable occasion it looked as though Pig may have licked up an errant tab of acid, the consequences of which were, shall we say, interesting. I will also say – apart from the time he fished a $10 bill out of my jacket and took off with it – it was the only time I ever saw the porcine prick look truly happy.
We weren’t the only band in the building. Goth-rockers Seven Deadly Sins were on the second floor, in the space that formerly housed the Sex Garage parties, largely attended by Montreal’s gay, lesbian and drag queen communities. In the early morning hours of July 16, 1990, Sex Garage was raided by police and many of the 400 in attendance were beaten, arrested and detained, a provocation that is now widely referred to as "Montreal’s Stonewall," after the Stonewall Riots in New York City. Sex Garage galvanized the queer community here, leading to the creation of Divers-Cité, which launched Montreal’s Pride Parade.
There was a recording studio/band crash pad across the hall run by Montreal underground producer Steve Kravac that catered to early punk acts like The Nils, Asexuals and The Doughboys (Kravac now lives in L.A. and has worked with the likes of Blink-182 and Less Than Jake), and there were numerous other bands, artists and assorted skeazy people scattered across all five floors. Good times, indeed.
And as it pertains to fond loft memories, perhaps not so significantly, I performed my first – and last – nipple piercing there, with a safety pin, on my buddy Mike. He bled like the proverbial pig. Damn pig.
Brazen Montreal indie-pop band The Snitches – among the best the city has ever produced – eventually took over Seapig, and exploited and expanded its virtues and vices in grand style until they too retreated to higher ground. Much of the building then reverted back to commercial use, up until recently.
Anyway, it was with no small sadness that I saw an ad in Monday’s Gazette hustling units in a 35-storey condo project planned for that very same southeast corner of Beaver Hall Hill and De la Gauchetière. The towering steel and glass construct, titled Altoria (a combination of "alto," meaning height, and "Square Victoria," over which it will loom), is scheduled to break ground this spring. And by ground I mean the building that is imbued with the memories, both rad and sad, of so many Montrealers.
The Seapig/Sex Garage building is located in an area of Montreal once known as Paper Hill, which in 19th-century Montreal was home to many paper manufacturers and printers, and which according to Heritage Montreal still has a number of historically significant buildings. Among these would be the imposing Unity Building on the canyon-esque (southwest) corner of St-Alexandre and De la Gauchetière, the enormous Southam Building on Bleury, and Saint Patrick’s Basilica, constructed in 1847 and designed to provide a symbolic line-of-sight link to Square Victoria. Saint Patrick’s will soon exist cut off from, and in the shadow of, both figuratively and literally, Altoria. And 494 De la Gauchetière will be lost altogether.
Heritage Montreal says it best: "Commonplace construction and overscaled buildings have been authorized [in Paper Hill] by the City of Montreal, whose regulations seem to disregard the heritage value of this sector… Paper Hill is thus threatened with disappearance by the heedlessness of revenue-hungry municipal authorities." The more things change…
I went for a walk and paused in front of the old Seapig loft earlier this week and felt a tangible twinge of missing it. As for the pig – which left town, grew tusks, got fat, died of cantankerousness, got stuffed and now resides in a garden shed behind Rob’s house in Toronto – I don’t miss that swine at all.
5 comments
So many fond memories of the loft building at De la Gauchetière and Beaver Hall Hill… the infamous Sexgarage party, running up the steep hill photographing as “Flics Gone Wild’ beat us, the ejected party goers, for no apparent reason other than sexual orientation.
And later, less sinister nights filled with music and friends at the Snitches space in the same building.
I am sad to hear that another heritage building is scheduled for destruction in Montreal. This one should have been made into a museum- it is Montreal’s Stonewall. But then again, isn’t former police Station 25 now an internet cafe called Battle ? Is nothing sacred?
*(Police Station 25, 1684 boul de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, where many the perpetrators of the Sexgarage violence were stationed. For this reason, it was chosen as the site of the “Love-In” protest against police violence, and is the location where many of us were beaten again and then jailed.)
PS Wasn’t the pig called Mitsou (no resemblance to the original), or is that a different Vietnamese pot-bellied pig?
The 1029 Beaver Hall Hill (and by association 494 La Gauchetiere) was my home for more than 10 years before I moved to Los Angeles.
Room 201 was where court was held and the future decided. I built my first studio there, learned to make records there and learned who I was, through the amazing associations and friendships I formed and still maintain.
I met the love of my life through that space and had my heart broken there as well. My band My Dog Popper regularly peeled the paint off the walls during rehearsals that rivaled sound pressure levels of a 747 taking off at Dorval. Psyche Industry Records had their offices there and my dear friend Alex Soria (R.I.P.) lived there as my roommate and bandmate (Los Patos) for a few years.
Many steames and toastes were carried up from Victory Hot Dog and devoured. The annual demolition derby on Beaver Hall was always a great event as the first snow would invariably send cars trucks and buses sliding down the hill into each other. My pool table in our front room got plenty of use and served as a pre-facebook social network.
There are so many memories associated with that space that I cannot fit into this space but one firm memory however, is that management always cut the heat off at 5 p.m.
Damn that place was cold… cold… cold!
I am grateful that this article celebrating this incredible place and moment in Montreal’s history was published.
Thank you
visiting this building in 1987, when steve k & dan webster were living there, literally changed my life. it completely defined how i wanted to live, and what i wanted to do with my life. getting to see steve work in the studio…getting to see the asexuals jam…crossing paths with so many interesting musicians…it was an education that couldn’t be bought. some 9 years afterwards i was running my first recording studio “mom & pop sounds” on the 5th floor of 494, and living there as well. dodging city officials who wanted to know “is this a business, or a residence?!”…knowing full well that neither was the correct answer. so many recordings….so many after-hours parties…so many sunday mornings spent picking up empties & cigarette butts. yes, steve is right, the heat got turned off for the weekend at 5pm on fridays…that was until i found where the thermostat was hidden in the basement sometime around 1998…and then the heat got turned back on at 5:05pm, right after the caretaker left for the night. eventually, we all got kicked out…a legal dispute between the (cheap) landlord & the city. apparently the landlord didn’t see it fit for the building to have a fire-escape…go figure. but yes, so many memories! and so much “growing-up”. a side bit of trivia, i believe that building was built as the north american olivetti typewriter factory. more trivia…the picture of dan webster on the cover of the PRIMITIVE AIR RAID comp was taken on the roof of that building. RIP 494 de la gauchetiere…you will forever have a place in many of our hearts…
xh
It was beautifully located: Close to the heart of the live scene while far enough away from the bustle of the city. Transporting the gear to Foufounes could be done for less than a tenner with a local taxi, guitarists could walk it with case in hand, Vietnamese soups and other cheap meals within minutes.
I visited the building several times between the “Kravac” era through to when The Snitches were the keepers of the keys (though I actually don’t remember the doors ever being locked).
I remember visiting Psyche Industry; stacks of boxes containing 12-inch vinyl, the air always having that unique smell the posters that were printed in China town had. Randy Boyd managed to bottle some of the ‘spirit’ and carry it on when he created Cargo MTL.
Many bands tried to replicate it through the years but, in hindsight, it was truly was Montreal’s most creative hub that welcomed anyone with an instrument or idea to join in. Those without were still welcome to come in, find a place on the floor of the rehearsal areas that didn’t have cables or power chords and grab a seat to listen as the music came to life. It had a pulse that could go from a surreal calm to the brink of exploding in the same day.
Every other month, flyers and posters would go up around the city simply with the word “C-Pig” and a date on it, no address to attract a clamp down. Then from dusk to dawn, the parties offered up music and collaborations that were there for the moment, the purchased cans going directly to the rent and bills so it could continue. And I witnessed how much heart the building had when the community gathered to say good bye to friends on two occasions.
I never did meet the pig. I did, however, have a stare dare one night with a cat the size of a dwarf.
wow such sad news .. great memories and crazy after-foufs parties!!