Saturday 30 January 2010

A kitsch journey

For Christmas, I got a delightful book called Montréal Kitsch. It is a list if 98 kitsch sites in Montreal like restaurants, stores, bowling alleys, etc. According to the book, an object-person-site is kitsch if it was born cheesy and got forgotten. If the object-person-site comes back it becomes kitsch. Over the past few months, I developed a strange interest for kitsch! After I read the book, I decided that I would visit as many sites as possible. So far we went to 3 sites:

Jardin Tiki
A restaurant that is more about ambiance than food. An homage to the Polynesian craze of the ’50s and ’60s: live turtle pond, creaky rattan seats, marine-themed lamps and a ukelele soundscape...and exotic cocktails (I took a Bolos...you can bring the pineapple back home)!

Montreal metro
Inaugurated in 1966, Montreal metro has more than fifty stations decorated with over one hundred works of public art. A competition among Canadian architects was held to decide the design of each station.

Marché aux puces St-Michel
One of the last real flea market in the city. Full of quirky objects at fairly good price. We didn't get anything but the visit was really worth it. It is almost a little museum of Montreal history!

So, are you into kitsch?

3 comments:

Jessica said...

those look like such fun places! i love that duck photo! i'm a big fan of kitsch too!

anabela / fieldguided said...

I'm not too crazy about certain types of kitsch, but I guess I do like it because I have paint-by-numbers at home and things like that. These places sound so fun! I'd love to visit them!

Unknown said...

very much, especially when it comes to those lamps.. very nice! i think there is a lot of potential for vintage kitsch, none of this new age hello kitty kitsch. but the old stuff, definitely.