Post-nuit blanche, you likely won't accomplish much of what you had planned for the day. I doubt you'll call your family, you'll probably never finish all that laundry, and the crossword you couldn't finish last weekend lives in the dustbin of history. I propose, instead, a walking tour, a short walk February walk that will remind you that you're tough and let you check out some of the best street art in town by following a straight line not far from the Main.



Start out from Bernard and St-Dominique (i.e. one street north of St-Viateur and one street east of St-Laurent), taking St-Dominique alongside the textile factories. The best stuff in this area is slightly tucked away, so it might behoove you to step off of the beaten track to poke around in adjacent fields, tucked away corners, and so on. Take St-Dominique until St-Viateur, where you can turn right (west), then turn left (south) down the alleyway between St-Laurent and St-Urbain. This stretch of alleyway backs out on what used to be the Massive Riot gallery, a short-lived effort by several members of Kops that spawned a tremendous amount of post-party graffiti including some really nice pieces by Other, Labrona, End, Leeney and Giver, among others, in the surrounding area, plus a huge mural by cartoonist Billy Mavreas on the back wall of his store, Monastiraki. Take the alley until it ends at Fairmount, then turn right to take St-Urbain north toward Mont Royal. Slightly before Mont Royal, note two things: one, the giant legal mural on the school's parking lot wall, which you could hardly have missed before. Secondly, there is an alley just after the school, the last ruelle before Mont Royal, which you should follow to St. Laurent for its stencils and chalk characters. At Mont Royal, go south down St-Dominique again. From about Marie-Anne on, the street is lined with images that provide a decent primer on some of the most prolific and appreciated scrawlers our city has witnessed, including most of Kops, Omen, etc, etc. At this point, you're likely tired, I understand that. It's cold. You're probably hung over. But if you're tough, you can take St-Dominique downtown, all the way to St-Catherine. At St-Catherine, turn toward Foufounes Electrique, and head north up any alley that leads to the lot behind. If you missed it this summer, most of the remnants of the annual graffiti festival, Under Pressure, are still intact, giving you a chance to check out hundreds of pieces in a single panorama. The entire lot is lined with three or four stories of pieces, each piece taking up the space of one square of scaffolding, the space that each participating artist was alloted. After that, you can consider yourself slightly more exercised, slightly more robust, slightly better acquainted with Montreal street art, and you can finally get started on at least some of that laundry.