Those were the days, my friends
 

The way things were. Bittersweet nostalgia, gratitude for the passing of those days, or what not. Not restricted to skylines.

A little bit of theme music.
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here is one to get started. Remember Taverns (appropriate given the Mary Hopkins song), that staple of working-class Montreal? No women permitted? Pickled eggs and perhaps, pickled pork tongues?
https://dcmontreal.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/tav1.jpg
https://dcmontreal.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/tav3.jpghttps://dcmontreal.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/tav2.jpg
dcmontreal

Look like shit holes. Should be in the ugly thread

what a wonderful contribution! thanks!

Looking for, but can't find, videos of Super 2 flavoured milk commercials. Reminds me of youthful summer days at the campground.

The old prairie coffee-houses, often named simply "Koffee Korner". Part coffee-house, part diner, part bar. Bakeries still exist with their offerings of coffee, but it's not the same.

Often built like this but dotted in villages.

https://www.google.ca/maps/@53.55983...2!8i6656?hl=en

One man's shit hole is another man's palace.

The wonderful thing about coffee houses and cafes "back in the day" was that they were great places to meet new people and exchange ideas. From good old political conversations, to talking about the weather, poetry readings, or just sucking up the ambience and watching the world go by.

Today you go to a cafe {ussually a boring change ie Starbucks} and no one talks or watches the crowds go by but just sit there with their eyes glued to the iphones. Even when people go in as a couple they rarely say a damn thing as they are too worried about missing their latest message or tweet. Our "social media" and all it's gadgets have made people decidedly unsocial..........they ttweet everyone and talk to no one.

^^This!

i disagree.

http://i.imgur.com/WkHHpZ1.jpg

http://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/wp-con...nda_Street.jpg

http://thefuturebuzz.com/wp-content/...4/10/train.jpg

People were always this way, now we just have a way to do it.

People talked to each other more though despite a brief distraction with the daily news. Too many douchebags cannot even put their phone down to cross a f*ckin street, not realizing the light turned green.

I'm sure that piece of land is now some condo building named after the buildings it replaced. That tavern reminds me of the Station Hotel in Kitchener. I believe it has been knocked down now but as per the name it was next to the train station and the announcements of which train was approaching and where it was going was piped into the bar and patrons would have to quickly scramble and power drink the 'draft' that they had ordered. It was the kind of place free from beer snobbery. It was just beer and pickled eggs were the main food to eat. A salt shaker was available to add 'flavour' to the beer.

This constant distraction is a new phenomenon I agree, but people weren't really more talkative with strangers before the advent of smart phones.

Not sure about that, but even couples are immersed in their phones (at restaurants, that is so sad to watch).

I dunno - is it really any worse than my parents who sit there in silence until their food comes then eat? I know I've been in situations where after spending an entire day doing stuff with someone just don't feel the need to chat. If it's single sided then it's very much obnoxious though.

I still like to go to certain bars and meet new people though, which is incredibly easy at the right places. So things aren't all that bad!

A few pictures (MUN Archives) of the end of an era, and though it is likely the second-most significant change ever in rural Newfoundland, it certainly gives the first-place cod moratorium a run for its money.

Post-Confederation, but before the Trans Canada Highway was built and provided our first reliable form of overland travel. Highways, called high or back roads here at the time, were little more than horse paths and every community on the island was instead serviced by the "coastal boat." Dozens of them circled the island ceaselessly and, in contrast to today's ferries, they almost all ended up in St. John's.

People would put on their Sunday best to catch the ferry...

http://i.imgur.com/TehELIe.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/ORMsFDM.jpg

And spend a few days shopping or looking for work in St. John's...

http://i.imgur.com/xFR0FV1.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/dLM0lVK.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/tUTrfm0.jpg

Boat travel was the norm - and I love being in a boat so much I think I would've very much enjoyed that. I love it perhaps even more than I love being in a tram.

Nice, thanks for those.

Wow, rural Newfoundland females back then dressed almost like their Ukrainian counterparts (covered hair and strongly contrasted colours on their frocks and tops).

(Some of us still do, mistercorporate... lol; but seriously, a lot of old ladies with clear plastic scarves).

Throwback to when Switzerland's Celine Dion won the Eurovision Song Contest.

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You know how so much of what Hollywood does doesn't ring true? They consistently get accents and period hairstyles/fashion ridiculously wrong, and most of the tropes in most of the dreck made in movieland are as untrue to life as you can imagine.

And this is one of them. It's obviously the product of unhappy screenwriters. It shows up over and over again. Single guy/girl thinks about future with partner. Cut to older married couple sitting in restaurant not talking to each other. Presto! One portrayal of existential anguish produced by hell of domestic tedium served right up.

But it's ham-fisted and does no justice to the rich tapestry of shared knowledge, emotions and history that living with someone for a couple decades can produce. Sometimes you talk about stuff. Sometimes you laugh about stuff. Sometimes you sit there quietly, thinking of different things. To the outsider it may look like boredom, and sure, there are indeed moments waiting for the food to arrive that you wish you were somewhere else, but the idea that that moment serves as a blanket characterization of the entirety of a marriage is ridiculous.

I remember the exhilaration and terror of dating. Having conversations like that for years and years would be exhausting. A guy I know in his late forties had a brief marriage when he was younger, but since then he's worked all over Russia in the mining industry while living a nutty bachelor life. The last time I saw him in Toronto he spent our dinner bragging about his crazy romantic exploits in between trying to chat up the waitress with the most excruciatingly cheesy pickup lines. I was embarrassed for him, and embarrassed to be in his company. He was an alright guy in his twenties, but after two decades of "chasing tail" (I think he actually used that term--cringe!) he'd coarsened into a creepy cad.

Did people really eat pickled eggs?

You can get them at the bar at our local Legion still, so I suppose people still do.

I've never been brave enough.

They're as good as anything else pickled. Especially great sliced on a sandwich.

Spent a snowy Saturday night eating pickled sausages and drinking Extra Old Stock with a buddy in college while we played Dino Crisis for like 14 hours straight

It was a rough Sunday morning

I know. Thx for pointing it out? Were we all supposed to fawn over those dumps? They look depressing.

I've drank in many old Taverns very similar to those in small towns in BC

To each their own but I find them fascinating. Still stop in at the Ymir hotel bar when I am through the Kootenays. So much more interesting than the banal and soup-du-jour bars that you find virtually everywhere today

There's nothing depressing about dumps, they're fun.

The epicentre of cool for me as a kid - I watched an absurd amount of MuchMusic and 299 Queen West was a must visit whenever I made it to Toronto:

http://www.blogto.com/upload/2014/07...17-STROMBO.jpg
blogto.com

Where's the thumbsdown button for your comment?

And as if hipsters wouldn't be weeping tears of joy into their beards to find a place with that vibe that served their latest fad of overpriced craft beer!

WOW - the waterfront back then looked fantastic!!! Gorgeous.

I totally agree with you regarding boats - we took the Lévis-Québec ferry a few times and it still feels super exotic - I would find it so cool to have that be my daily commute.

I believe it would make sense - as I pointed out already on here, our neighbor worked in Old QC and commuted like that. There's a bus line in front of our place that goes straight to the ferry terminal. Not sure how early you have to get up in the morning though, because the entire ferry process (boarding, trip, unloading) is far from instant.

Almost every building in that shot is still there, it's just that they have built a road on reclaimed land between them and the harbour.

Doesn't sound too bad to be honest, but I wouldn't feel comfortable buying one off a bar counter! One has to wonder if the egg had passed its expiry date to warrant pickling.

Barber Shops!!!

https://transylvaniabounty.files.wor...7/dsc_1055.jpg

They virtually don't exist any more. They've been replaced of course by hair styling salons, but when I was growing up, they were dens for men. Men would go to barber shops just as much to talk about baseball and hockey as they would to get a trim. They were a manly getaway.

Not any more..........

We're so far behind the times... but in a good way. I swear to God I'm going out shortly, I won't be doing this to every post. :haha: But barber shops are still very much a thing here. And they serve beer (limit of one only). There's a whole subculture surrounding the famous ones, like Fogtown, and every neighbourhood has a couple. There's one three houses away from me:

http://i.imgur.com/vQAX9xa.jpg?1

And another one about a block from me:

http://i.imgur.com/z6GYfhf.png

I'm balding (bald?), and there's no hairstyle one can have with bald that I like, so I buzz my head. But I'm also lazy as fuck so I can just go to the barber and get it done for a twonie at one place, $5 at the other (including beard shaving and moisturizer). :D

Just in case it's weird everywhere else... we also still have neighbourhood butchers and shoe repair and tailors and superettes and nail salons and hairstylists (where women go in the morning to get their hair styled, NOT cut) as well.

I wish I had access to pictures which made me nostalgic to my hometown when I was a kid. The mid 80s to mid 90s were the point in time where things were most positive. We had tons of stores, restaurants, and other businesses back then that don't exist anymore (buildings demo'd too). Seeing a town completely rot from a population of about 1000 to about 400 in your very, very brief lifetime (27 years) is a real experience.

Ahh memories.

I can still picture the Electric Circus dancers in the windows :haha:

I miss Rap City/ DaMix and The DownLo the most. I miss Namugenyi Kiwanuka :(

^ Would love a beer with each haircut. I'm not sure it's legal though.


Maybe dumps make people drink more? BTW, I think it used to be called Rob Roy's at that location.


Isn't that Canada's Mr. Cool, in one of his incarnations? We aren't as cool anymore, except now we have Justin.

I'll at the very least share this for anyone who was a child in the mid 90s and watched hours of YTV.

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Could be but now Rob Roy is on George Street, it's the basement of Konfusion.

Demolished years ago after a bad fire. Now, you can grab a flat white across the street at Smile Tiger and scurry over to catch a morning GO Train. Much more sophisticated but not as interesting, istm.

There's a terrific barber shop in the Walper Hotel in Downtown Kitchener. The "updated" stations (powder blue formica!) date back to the 1950s, the original mosaic floors date back to the 1890s. The hotel is also home to the Walper Tobacco Shop, which claims to be the oldest such in Canada, also dating back to the 1890s.

There has been a resurgence in barber shops in Moncton over the last few years, partly because of a successful legal fight between the barbers and the hair stylists association in NB. For about two decades, anyone involved in barbering had to sit the hair stylist examinations, which was absurd, because that had nothing to do with giving a guy a decent hair cut. Since their suit was finally settled, barbers are making a comeback, but it isn't the same. Most barber shops in the city are non traditional, and offer other services like tattoos as well. The owners are all young and hip. There may still be one traditional barber shop left in the city on St George St. :(

Moncton needs to get on the hipster train of barber shops offering beer and other nonsense. I feel like Uptown Saint John is on the cusp of too many of them opening soon.

Tide and Boar has beer under control. It was so small batch size that they'd tap a keg, I'd get a pint, and by the time I was ready for another they'd be out of that beer. Essentially homebrew scale at a restaurant.

Thanks for this. You understand the simple pleasures that are...the spice of life.

Ranks with the Tavern as a long-lost bastion of working-class male camaraderie.

I'm guessing this one's from the 60's or 70's. There's a nautical kitsch themed pub in Dartmouth called Ship Victory which is dedicated to the HMS Victory. It is still there:

http://theshipvictory.ca/wp-content/...07/dining2.jpg
http://theshipvictory.ca/

Inside it has a wheel, rigging, cannons, etc. Two-for-one haddock on Mondays for $10.98! They also have breaded clams and breaded scallops, something you don't really see in pub menus farther west. Shellfish used to be cheap stuff.

:previous:

The best tavern by far in Halifax was the previous iteration of the Midtown Tavern. I went there quite frequently when I was in med school, mostly on Fridays after the end of classes. Good beer, great steak and tabletop shuffleboard!!! :)

http://jimleff.info/chowtour/assets/..._6_500x362.jpg

Good memories.

They tore it down for the new Nova Centre (Halifax convention centre & hotel). I haven't been to the new (relocated) Midtown though. Is it still good???

I haven't been to either incarnation of the Midtown. The old one had been there since 1949. It's now one of many restaurants in that area that cater to the late night crowd.

There are a lot of restaurants I'm a bit nostalgic about from when I was a kid but I'm not sure they'd hold up today, or if the ones that are still around are as good as they were. Another example is the Bluenose II restaurant on Hollis Street. It has apparently undergone gentrification; no more backlit white plastic sign:

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OUF1d-qvL...ture%2B208.jpg
http://www.teenaintoronto.com/2016/0...alifax-ns.html

Other similar places were Athens and Sparta on Quinpool Road, King of Donair (various locations), and Chickenburger out in Bedford. A lot of the greasy spoon restaurants in Halifax are either Greek or Lebanese.

Willman's Fish and Chips in the Hydrostone area has been there since 1946, but it's another local institution I've never visited. John's Lunch is supposed to be good too. Maybe next trip.

Paddy Greene's, in west Hamilton (Westdale, not far east of McMaster U.)
It was taken down in 1984, and replaced by this: https://goo.gl/maps/2nE1jZ5BJS92

While it was demolished about 5 years before I hit 'legal age', I do recall it well. And especially the separate men's and women's entrances that were a legacy from yesteryear.

http://thespec-stories.com/wp-conten...8-1024x638.jpg
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http://media.socastsrm.com/wordpress...y-Greenes2.jpg
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Still do. Not sure about the bar-top jars in pubs, but Strub's makes them for sale in grocery stores. They're not bad, in moderation.

https://assets.shop.loblaws.ca/produ..._front_a06.png
Blah-Blahs and their subsidiaries sell 'em, and I see them at Longo's where I shop in my town.


But I wonder how many Luke could have downed.

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