What do we know about when and how Montreal clubs will reopen?

[EZEtoGRU]

New bar rules in Montreal. Last call at midnight and bars must be closed by 1:00am. New rules go into effect tomorrow (Friday).

 

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/covid-19-crackdown-quebec-will-impose-midnight-shutdown-on-bars/wcm/04468119-2dea-4d37-a4ab-bed90136726f/

[SirBillybob]

If 01:00 seems harsh, the clubs that are essentially bars with spa/bathhouse features and commercial sex workers in Brazil are re-opening but the typical hours of 15:00-23:00 have been scaled back to 11:00-17:00, so no business following usual end of workday office hours.

 

Pretty much also obsolete is the evening stage show. I suppose one possible effect will be arranging an offsite evening liaison with a working guy, potentially reducing the risk of a more crowded space. Otherwise, the venues are essentially reduced to weekend afternoon events.

 

So count your blessings, Montreal.

Edited July 10, 2020 by SirBIllybob

[EZEtoGRU]

To adjust to the new bar hours in Montreal, Stock now opens at 5:00pm instead of 8:00pm...which is better as far as I'm concerned. The live feed online begins at 5:30pm. I don't know what the other clubs in Montreal are doing.

[SirBillybob]

The city of Montreal is strongly urging ALL people who frequented a bar this month to get immediately tested. Mobile units are set up. So expensive and unrelenting.

[muscmtl]

Bathhouses have been opened for weeks, we even had a murder

[twinkboylover28]

Le Village on June 28, 2020:

[+ newatthis]

Le Village on June 28, 2020:

Why were there cars on the street? Different rules this year?

[SirBillybob]

All the cross streets are mainly residential (not commercial) and need to accommodate vehicle traffic and parking, and vehicles can and need to cross thru St-C at all intersection points. Service vehicles and delivery people with permits can enter the main drag. How would an ambulance or fire truck access an emergency otherwise? The street is not barricaded. All the vertical pylons are flexible and can give way to a vehicle if necessary.

[+ Hoover42]

Le Village on June 28, 2020:

And almost nobody in a mask.

 

It was nice to see Stockbar again (5:20), even if only on video

Edited July 16, 2020 by Hoover42

[SirBillybob]

 

I note that Qatar is in the top 2 nations trending the worst in new cases adjusted for population, along with Chile, yet a flight arrives in Montreal from Doha on Monday. Perhaps it is a rare repatriation situation.

 

Surprise, surprise. Flights from Doha to Montreal on July 3rd and July 6th are among a list just provided to passengers, alerting them of exposure risk and the recommendation to be tested.

[SirBillybob]

The recent long lineups, several hours wait-time, for testing of Montreal bar-goers out drinking at least once since July 1st is already yielding a 3% rate of new infection. So far, 14 bars are implicated but few are named and it is not known or published whether any are situated in The Village. The push is to get tested irrespective of where one was socializing in such a venue. Imagine ... going out for a few drinks and having a 1/30 chance of contracting SARS-CoV-2 and often not aware of subsequently shedding it. Yet the official daily new case count the last week of June was less than 1/100,000 !!

Edited July 16, 2020 by SirBIllybob

[+ newatthis]

All the cross streets are mainly residential (not commercial) and need to accommodate vehicle traffic and parking, and vehicles can and need to cross thru St-C at all intersection points. Service vehicles and delivery people with permits can enter the main drag. How would an ambulance or fire truck access an emergency otherwise? The street is not barricaded. All the vertical pylons are flexible and can give way to a vehicle if necessary.

Thanks. I actually knew that. Somehow I mistakenly assumed the photos were taken during the hours that the street is supposed to be completely pedestrian and was wondering if the rules had changed this year.

[SirBillybob]

Ah, OK. Actually the hours are 24/7, without a period allowed for general traffic, as always. The one vehicle on the video is a police cruiser; getting up closer you can see the label and navy side strip, in front of A&W near Stock.

 

There are actually 3 points of apparently un-breachable boxes. I assume they can be shifted or at least that emergency vehicles have a workaround solution by parallel laneways that do not require a diversion to the main streets parallel to and bookending Ste-Catherine north and south of her.

[SirBillybob]

There is already growing pressure to close the bars, due to concern that an increase in infections attributable to drinking establishments along with transmission cascade effect will scupper plans to open schools in 6-7 weeks. Society is more collapsible if parents have to further supervise their kids than if a smaller proportion of people are denied pub life.

Edited July 16, 2020 by SirBIllybob

[SirBillybob]

Quebec just reached a 7-day average, on an upswing, equal to June 22nd when new case rates were decreasing. The July 1st lifting of many bans had been based on that earlier downward trend. Quebec’s latest mortality figure is also a whopping 5% relative to case count, and we know that metric tends to lag anyway.

 

More accurate national data about truer infection rates, based on antibody serology, will be released imminently. It is about 8-fold in British Columbia. I believe Spain about 5-fold, New York State about 12-fold, and Brazil 5-fold but enormous regional variability there. Brazil’s regional variability, multiples of 1 to 8, corroborates the idea that true prevalence is difficult to pin down both globally and nationally, with some of the variability an artefact of surveillance methodology.

Edited July 17, 2020 by SirBIllybob

[mcbg22]

Quebec prime minister said private parties are the biggest problem leading to community transmission. Closing the bars will just lead to more of them.

[SirBillybob]

Bars closure correlated with flattening the curve. Bars closure correlated with unflattening it. That means the virus has won and knows better than mankind the strategy of a rock and a hard place. Someone should just call it.

Edited July 18, 2020 by SirBIllybob

[Danny-Darko]

Bathhouses have been opened for weeks, we even had a murder

 

Was it a murder? I hadn't heard anymore news in the US about it. I had only read that they had found somebody dead at a bathhouse.

[SirBillybob]

We are about 2 weeks out from study results of the more accurate incidence, along with estimates of undetected cases, of Coronavirus that has occurred in Montreal.

[SirBillybob]

Initial antibody prevalence results suggest about 75% of Canadians CoV+ up to the point just following the Spring infection peak were undetected, leading to a 4-fold correction the likely appropriate metric. Some areas in the world are reporting closer to 90% and a 10-fold correction. However, the Quebec results are not yet included, will be soon, and may drive up the figure because it was the hardest hit province.

 

The results so far, excluding Quebec, suggest a mortality rate closer to about 1 in 50 cases ( where 50 includes under-the-radar cases).

Edited July 23, 2020 by SirBIllybob

[RealAvalon]

New bar regulations announced in BC today. Only servers can go to the bar for drinks, everyone else has to be served at their table. No dance floor. Enforcement of physical distancing with line-ups expected. Limits on number of people in bars.

 

A private party in Kelowna that resulted in 30 COIVD cases, led to, through contract tracing, 1,000 people now in 14 day self-quarantine.

Edited July 31, 2020 by RealAvalon

[SirBillybob]

Not mentioning any specific venues in Montreal but I have prowled around The Village zone the past few weekends, about a 25-minute walk from my home, bored out of my skull in semi-confinement but curious about the scene. It seems apparent that the strip clubs might barely be making ends meet. I am comparing 20 years of observation, based on the approximate evening timeframe of 21:00-22:30 ... not hanging around all night for this, but sitting on some of many newly installed street benches, occasionally sticking my head in for a peek where possible.

 

I would estimate the current patronage volume at about 25% the more recent pre-pandemic ‘normal’ and 10-15% the greater busyness that occurred up to the higher 2000s (eg, 2002-2008). I cannot imagine any increase when the street is imminently repurposed for vehicular traffic and there is extremely reduced capacity for informal pedestrian hanging out.

[SirBillybob]

Our government’s employee wage subsidy program for businesses that can verify previous and ongoing substantial loss of revenue is extended to the end of November. This likely assists payment of servers, MCs, DJs, security personnel, etc, for the time being.

 

Campus has deferred its puny weekend entrance cover charge. Stock still charges its modest admission fee.

 

Meanwhile, those out of work due to the pandemic will transition from the emergency wage loss program (distinct from the wage subsidy component) to the regular employment insurance program. The latter has a time limit, followed by the more permanent regular social assistance option that does not nearly provide a living.

[Poppie]

Stock and Campus are OPEN? Strippers on stage and open Lap Dance rooms?

[SirBillybob]

Small gatherings of 2 or more (up to 10) are permitted with the provision of 1.5 metres between members of same household and 2 metres if not cohabiting, with no more than 3 households represented. However, you will see in restaurants and bars full tables of 4-6, etc, and it is impossible for authorities to screen the associations, monitor and enforce, etc.

 

The strip club seating is actually more compliant because there tends not to be the occasional larger groups of friends at one table or huddled side by each at a counter that occurs in normal times. The current paltry patronage more than meets the regulations of reduced capacity by floor space.

 

Lap dance cubicles already have the partition aspect that you will often now see, for example, between pay-per-use gaming stations.

 

Quebec province is on paper restricting intimacy between people that do not reside together, even if they are in a primary attachment relationship. Obviously, while clinically not outrageous, this is an impossible and unenforceable prohibition in either private homes or venues where snuggling and snogging is want to happen. I suppose it is hoped that common sense precautions will prevail, the most seemingly important goal to prevent community spread to the elderly. Technically, outside of commercial sex illegality in Canada, lap dances are no more or less a deviation from the provincial transmission mitigation regulations compared to boyfriends from different households getting it on.

 

It is appropriate for authorities to outline risks and prevention but paradoxically they undermine credibility with ridiculous wording that implies sex is permissible among those residing in the same household. But the trend here is for politicians to screw up applied clinical considerations and spur community reactivity. One or more of the individuals in a common domicile may be more prone to occupational exposure. Within the same walls means little ... bubbles can be otherwise created and maintained using common sense discretion.