Mtl 4eva

While I do another late-month scramble for an apartment in Philly, sometimes my arrow slips onto the Montreal CL pages. Then I see some $100/month apartment – and you can be sure it's not as dangerous as Rittenhouse Square (my 93-year-old told me about a mugging there) – and my heart breaks all over again.

So, why is Montreal the best place in the world? This is a question scientists have been asking for at least 8 years. Their answers will rock you.

1. Smoked meat, bagels, poutine and shockingly good health

2. L'hockey

3. Les filles du roi – the "king's daughters" that were sent to Quebec to make babies in the early settlement days and contribute to a heritage of loose morals

4. The art scenes, which are all interrelated and pretty easy to infiltrate. It's really a kind of small town

4 1/2. Autodistroboto, the cigarette vending machines repurposed to sell pack-sized art items

5. Sweet memories of Miami

6. Montreal summer – the best summer I've ever spent

7. Halloween, 2003

8. King Heroin

9. Montreal really listens when you talk shit

10. The lead sentence of a Berlin music column I read in 2006, "Now that Montreal is more New York than New York..."

Kisses to you, ma chere fleure