A subtle cultural layer you discover in a new city is the locally-sourced humor, i.e. the local problems that are joked about by the people who live there. Per my post yesterday about the Grand Prix, Dan Ramos Comedy posted the above graphic on Reddit with the headline, “I Fixed the F1 Poster.”
This is funny because traffic bollards and street closures are a major topic of gaily grim humor in Montréal. My only problem with this graphic is that most of the bollards I encounter are columnar ones, not conical…yanno, like the ones outside our apartment building *right now*:
Or the bollard legions that delight in confusing both cars and bikes. This is a typical sight around town:
To a tourist, the poster joke means nothing. To people who live (and drive) in Montréal, it’s hilarious.
Here’s a link to a local’s comedy video about the driving situation here (sorry, couldn’t embed, but worth clicking through). It’s funny because it’s true!
Also, many sacres in this video! Accurate!
Speaking of comedy, and shockingly: in case you haven’t heard, the world-famous Juste Pour Rire/Just For Laughs festival is no more–major corruption and financial mismanagement led to its sudden implosion earlier this year.
Just for Laughs was a multi-million dollar enterprise born in Montreal in 1983, and it had since grown into the world’s largest international comedy festival. It launched many new comedy careers and attracted celebrity stand-ups from several countries, partly because it featured both anglophone and francophone comedians (and some who worked both languages at once, like Sugar Sammy).
JFL’s assets are now being liquidated to pay its massive debts, and ComediHa! Fest-Québec, a smaller regional festival, has acquired some of JFL’s property and IP in an attempt to fill its massive clown shoes. ComediHa also obtained underwriting from the government, presumably with everyone hoping that JFL’s massive revenue and tourist draw can be restored to the province(s).
But guess what? (no, not chicken butt). ComediHa offers no English content–at least, not yet. They’ve vowed to find some for “future festivals,” but for now anglophones can go laugh somewhere else. We’ll see how that plays out.
In related news, the language wars continue here in Québec–or more accurately, the current provincial leadership’s war on English, allophones, and indigenous culture–but that will be discussed in an upcoming post. Stay tuned!