I’m sometimes asked if Montreal is really all that much more fashionable than the majority of the US, and after spending much of yesterday in O’Hare observing the latest in Ugg-and-sweatpants fashion, I can answer in the affirmative.

If you’re being particularly observant, you can pick the passengers waiting for the Montreal flight out of the crowd without hearing them speak. The pants are a little tighter. The boots are a little more aggressive. The clothes are, on the whole, blacker. The hair is a little edgier. And the airline employee who checks your passport at the gate in Chicago will refer to you as “Madame.”

What’s more, once you finally land in YUL sometime after midnight, you’ll make your way down the long, long glassed-in corridor that funnels you over to customs (and then the escalator-ramp hybrid that takes you to the baggage claim, then the final gate where you turn in your customs stub, then to the waiting area outside security, and finally the black-and-white checkered line that leads to the taxi stand).  There’s one small, oasis-like set of bathrooms midway down the arrivals corridor with absurdly under-powered hand dryers.  More to the point, there are also, according to Pete, small coin-operated vending machines in the men’s room that sell:

• Miniature bottles of CK1 cologne,
• Breath mints, and
• “For her pleasure” condoms. (“Were they labeled in French?”  “It was all pictoral, really.”)

Welcome to the francophonie!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 7:25 pm and is filed under bits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.