Chair battle heats up on the Main
City has twice ticketed shop on the Main $475 for putting out seats on sidewalk
The city is waging chair warfare on the Main.
One of the street’s most famous shops, Vieille Europe, has put some plastic chairs out on the sidewalk for many summers. They’re tucked under its awning, so passersby can hide from the sun, or more likely the rain, this summer.
But city inspectors have recently walloped the gourmet grocery with two $475 tickets, for having illegal terrasses. The store’s normally easygoing co-owner, Paulo Raimundo, refuses to back down — he’s appealed the tickets and left his six red chairs out in defiance, while waging a website campaign to save his seats.
“Let them keep ticketing me,” he says. “It’s a principle I’m willing to pay for. We’re not a night club serving drinks, we don’t have service outside. We’re just a grocery that closes at 6 p.m. — and our chairs are a nice community gesture.”
Vieille Europe is the Main’s best-known landmark after Schwartz’s, a smorgasbord of a place overflowing with exotic teas, biscuits, cheeses, spices and more — a slice of the Main as it once was. Its six flimsy outdoor chairs are meant for all — whether customers or not.
I’ve often plopped down in the chairs to watch street life — but mostly they’re filled with passing seniors, pausing for a rest. People like Diane M., who writes on the store’s website:
“I’m in my 80s and always like to walk on the Main. I walk with a cane and there is nowhere to sit where we can rest ... except your shiny red chairs.”
Vieille Europe’s not alone in fighting The Chair Affair. My sausage specialist Angelo, owner of Charcuterie Hongroise, has removed his four green chairs since the city hit him with a big ticket. But he’s not one to surrender easily.
Angelo fought the city for years when they stopped him from hanging his dried chorizo sausages inside the store, where people could see them. For years he built expensive display case cooling contraptions to get around the city’s ever-tightening bylaws — until eventually the inspectors wore him down.
But now he’s planning a new battle campaign.
He’s designing a Rube Goldberg gizmo to hang a bench off his privately owned wall so it doesn’t touch the sidewalk.
“I don’t care what it costs me — I can’t stand these bureaucrats and I want to offer people a free place to sit.”
Angelo’s scheme may sound crazy, but it could be a way around city bureaucrats. Across the street a produce store was ticketed last spring for putting out a few sidewalk fruit boxes.
Instead, they’ve now suspended the boxes from their window, where peaches, plums and bananas hang in mid-air to avoid touching city land — and so far inspectors have backed off.
It’s made me wonder if restaurants could suspend tables and chairs in mid-air, so guests could legally dine outdoors, above the city sidewalks?
There are other guerrilla tactics, like one merchant who keeps track of which days inspectors visit the Main — and puts his chairs out when they don’t. But it’s easy to envision an eventual street seat defeat.
Two years ago I wrote about a young shop owner who carried a small table outside for a woman in a wheelchair — so she and her caregiver could munch on ice cream. But an inspector passed by and slapped the shop owner with a huge ticket.
She spent two long days appealing in court — and lost — and her shop has since closed like too many on the street.
But Vieille Europe and Angelo’s aren’t just stores — they’re long-standing neighbourhood institutions, on a street where few veterans have lasted. Vieille Europe is a 58-year-old remnant of The Main’s glory days — every nation in the world wanders in and Paulo seems to chat with them all.
“What’s really frustrating,” he says, “is there’s no sensible reason to ticket us. It’s not about health or safety. The sidewalk’s been widened to around nine feet — there’s lots of room for wheelchairs to pass.
“But when they gave me the ticket they handed me an application form for an outdoor terrasse costing several thousand dollars. It’s just a money grab.”
“I’m not a stubborn man. I’m a law-abiding one — but laws should make sense.”
Montreal is a laissez-faire, often scofflaw city, where cars race though crosswalks, bikes stream the wrong way and everyone jaywalks. Our fire trucks and ambulances are plastered with strike stickers, while our boys in blue wore camouflage pants for years.
Our streets are potholed, our detours badly marked — yet we somehow live with it all and love our city. So why pick on a few hospitable merchants on a famous street that’s struggling to survive?
People like Paulo and Angelo are the heart of the community — the history and soul of the Plateau. They should be encouraged and celebrated — not beaten down.
Three cheers ... er, chairs for them.