Montreal murals and Sherbrooke Street stores

Bob Dylan and guitars murals at corner of Marcil and Sherbrooke.

There's a lot of talk in our neighbourhood about graffiti. Nevertheless there are some great bits of wall art in NDG (Notre-Dame-de-Grace).  A sunny stroll along Sherbrooke Street West began at the corner of Marcil with this Bob Dylan mural on the side of the vets. On the other side of the road is the spacious and design-savvy Bruxe Magasin Genéral and the you-could-spend-all-day-here Encore Books and Records (5670).

Refreshment at Pasta Casareccia.

 We keep walking west to Briimstone Chocolats and Fudge (5879 Sherbrooke Street West) for free tastings (great ginger chocs) and every kind of chocolate on earth (bacon-flavoured anyone?). We stopped for lunch at Pasta Casareccia (5849 Sherbrooke St W) where we sampled their excellent deep fried olives and marvelled at the number of people drinking red wine at lunchtime. Do they go straight to bed from the restaurant? We could have done without the strong-smelling Windex hit as our table was sprayed down while we sat awaiting food. Bit of an appetite killer that one.

Our Lady of Grace

Further up Sherbrooke Street West at 5922 resides one of our favourites, Kavanagh, a vintage store run by local character Beau, who tells my husband not to be shy if he wants him to get a leather one-piece down off the wall to try on. He's stopped doing the free coffees though - that was getting a bit out of hand.   We keep walking west to Sherbrooke and Madison and see the new five-storey mural, a version of Mucha's Our Lady of Grace by the A'Shop artists collective. I love it - especially as you approach it from the east. It was funded by the city as part of an initiative to clean up NDG and as a response to the growth of graffiti.

Mural on Madison and Sherbrooke.

  Just a few yards away on the opposite side of the street there was another reponse.

The answer to graffiti - more graffiti?