CAT-BURGLARS!

Last week I was walking down St. Viateur in Montreal. A hand written letter stapled to a telephone pole caught my eye. The news was shocking, it was a warning to be on the look out for for a white van traveling the alleys of the mile end by night cat-napping cats. That is too say, stealling cats, not pulling over for a quick nap. (Although that is a safe driving technique I suggest for drowsy drivers.)

I went back the next day to take a picture and to my surprise it was gone! I quickly looked around the curb and gutter of the street for any remnants of torn piece of paper. The street was uncharacteristically litter free. Just then a white van ripped by! I photographed the van and it's license plate. Was the missing poster condemning white vans related to the sudden appearance of the white van? Urg... I may never know.

I found a second posting of the warning near "the mountain" and this time I got a picture. Here, have a read: Now I see white vans every where but none have a conclusive evidence of wrong doing.

That night I left the apartment at about 1:30pm. I made sure my cat was secured inside before jumping the wire fence in to the alley. I slink in and out of the darkness between street lights. The glowing eyes of cats can be seen in almost every yard. If I were these Cat-stealing jerks, I'd be hitting the Jack pot. A motion light comes on and I jump a little, then I move on. I feel self-conscious. What if someone thinks I'm the Cat-Burglar? I feel more relaxed knowing there is know one else around. Except cats! and their creepy eyes! Relax you feline bastards I'm on your side.

I return home about half and hour later. Nothing to report. Mystery Unsolved. Who are these Kitty Thieves? What do the do with those Cats? Who is posting these warning signs?

wait for it... wait for it... help is on the way?

Damn. I would like to believe that this guy has a good reason he's strutting down the back streets of Montreal in the rain with a bike in each hand. I'd like to say I immediately ran after him yelling "hey punk, those aren't your bikes!" But it appeared that my powers of confrontation were momentarily disabled due to a lifetime of pacifism... or something.

So I follow the dude for a couple blocks trying to snap some pictures, maybe see where he was headed... maybe he was going to one of the twelve hundred bike shops in Montreal's Plateau. Eventually he stopped walking and started checking out his bikes... well I'm trailing twenty feet behind him and I don't have much time to think of anything more clever than to keep walking past him and into a dépanneur (or corner store as you may call them) just up the street. I loitered in the store to see if he would keep walking past me and I could keep following. But as the tension rose between me and the confused store clerk I decided to leave with out buying anything. I walked back towards the now bike enthusiast. Catching a glimpse of his regular white guy, light blue/green eyed face with a couple days of dark brown stubble growing on it. But like a coward I kept on trucking.

FRANTIC MODE!! Now what am I supposed to do! I can tell he's gonna be walking up this street for a while! What should I do? Well I pop into a pizza by the slice shop, and use their payphone... Hmm 911? No, as far as I understand that would summon a cop car, and ambulance and a firetruck... right? So I check their phonebook and it has a big blank line saying insert local police number here. What? or Dial "0" and have an operator connect you. Well I do that and because I'm at a BELL payphone I get the bell automated service giving me the option of paying for this call with my calling card or making it collect, but no operator assistance option. I hang up and Dial 911, but then get worried and hang up. Damn.

I walk home, with my digital photographs, hoping to see a cop car on the way. Surprisingly I don't. Most the time Montreal is a pretty heavily patrolled city, bt maybe cause it was rainy and a Sunday they had better things to do. I got home and decided to test that theory. I dial "0" and get my lovely operator to connect me to the police phone line, an automated service that puts directly on hold as my call is not an emergency. It doesn't even have any hold music or messages to re-affirm me that I wasn't just hung up on. Well, I wait ten minutes and give up. Calling 911, explaining that its not really an emergency, but I suspect a guy was walking around with some stolen bikes, can you direct me to the right people to speak to. Sure, no problem.. I get transfered and soon realize... "hey, they transfered me to the same phone number from before." This time I wait it out, but eventually i set down the phone and start making some eggs as this all happened before breakfast. I check in every five minutes, still nothing happens but eventually I hear a phone disconected sound and I get outraged.

So the moral of the story is, walk calm bike thieves with two maybe three or four stolen ikes in your hands, as the people in Canada are far two polite to say anything, and apparently some one who actually goes pretty far out of their way to catch you, will be defeated by lack of telephone channels. Wow... what a cynical day. Citizen Justice. (oh. and I have been looking on craigslist to see either of these bikes have been posted for sale, not yet.)

Winter in Montreal

Woah! Where the heck have you been Justice? I have no good excuses. I have been building brain muscle in Montreal reading comic books, wikipedia and existentialist novels. I've been indulging in Poutine and keeping track of my bad habits. Long winter short it was cold and a neer record snowfall. Which makes people suggest that global warming is just a lot of hot air... and they mean metaphorically, not literally. But i think these are just things people think as they dig there cars out of four foot snow falls. Woot, what a winter. Now... bring on the Heat. Justice.

The case of the endless street party that wouldn't end!

It was June 1st, or second... I should have "blogged" this immediately as I've already forgot some important details... oh yeah it was close to midnight... so it was both... hmmmm... I had made my way over to St. Viateur in the "Mile End" Motreal. There was an street party going on called Viateur fest or somehing. I was running a little lae 10:30ish and it appeared to be ending as I arrived. Which was just in time. Sure there were a few cops around to make sure no drunken fights had broken out, but the were mostly just standing around anyway. So I arrived to see if any body needed help and to make profiles of local gang activity.... And I just happened to find a particularly menacing group of Street Hoods! Who turned out to be swell people after all. Infact one of these cool kids had a pantyhose t-shirt just like me. Which proves, I'm hip with the street stylez! Yes the entire croud seemed like they were having a good time at this community gathering. So upward and onward. Then north to the train tracks. Above is the panoramic picture that delayed this post from posting... its hard to find a free website that will let post a ling image... and thenwhen i made the flash file they suddenly don't like flash files... Anyway, the story continues as the free fun fest is fuzzed up. They asked the djs to get down. I wanted to photograph the scene incase any uncalled for police brutality errupted. As it turns out the dj's and police were able to cut a deal where they wouldn't be fined for noise disturbances if they packed up and went home. Well, that about wraps it up. On the walk home it started to rain. Mx Justice, over and out.

Justice arrives in Montreal

This is the Blog of Mixter Justice, or just Justice cause I'm still a little confused by the prefix.So I'm a vigilante, an activist, an artist, and a "Real-Life-Super-Hero" from Bridge City. With this blog I hope to archive my activities and inspire the public to be radical. I was finally able to patrol the streets in Montreal Quebec, with my superpal Honesty. I'm new to this area so we mostly walked around in circles looking for people to help out. But I found something to do quickly, a sign post was tipped over on a pile of uncleared garbage in an ally of Mont Royal. Tipping it up i realized it was a sign saying this is where to put garbage, or something of that variety. A passing man told me I should email the picture to the city so they would take action... but after further deduction i've decided the man was confused. Later on I found a Hummer parked on St. Lauraunt, and I left him a little note, which i 'spose is a little ironic considering he probably threw it away and there for i created some unnecessary waste, but i think it was worth it. I continued my walkabout making a brief stop to check out a potential new (old) Justice mobile, while humorous in appearance I don't think the broken toddler tractor is an efficient mode of transportation. Next I found some travelers camped out on the side of the road, they were on a road trip from New York to Seatle, taking the Northern Route through Canada. They were looking for a good park and sleazy dive bar for later. I showed them a couple parks on my map, (Park du mont Royal and Parc La Fontaine) and my associate Honesty reminisced about a bar named "Miami". Continuing my walk up St. Laurent, I found an interesting posting. "BOYCOTTONS - KR(swastika)FT - Kraft-Altria, NY, US." and on the reverse of the little note said "PSYCHIATRES + KRAFT = NAZISME". I wasn't really sure what this meant, at first i thought it was an advertisement for a nazi-punk show, featuring a band called "BoyCottons" and "Kraft." Nazi's being one the oldest enemies of comic book super heroes I found this disturbing. So later at home when I googled "Kraft" to find out moe about the band, all I got was links for the Kraft food company. After searching "Kraft Altria" I realised Altria was a mega corporation (previously known as the Phillip Morris Company) that owns 20+ tobacco companies, KoolAid, Jell-O, Kraft Dinner and a bunch of other food brands. And then I realized BoyCottons isn't a "clever" band name, it's just french for Boycott. So long story short, I don't know the direct connection between Nazi's and the mega-corporation Altria, but we cans safely assume they are both bad organizations. Wow, so after that Honesty had to go home and I took a trek to Park du Mont Royal, (aka the MOUNTAIN) to see if anyone needed help. When I got there I was ambushed by drug dealers! and by that I mean, about 8 people asked me if i wanted to by some weed. I thought it was pretty odd, considering I'm dressed like a super-hero... which generally wouldn't be known to smoke pot... but I'm not a fascist so i don't hold it against them. One of my general rules for life is that any body who is educated on the subject should be able to put what ever they want into to their body. After having a sit down in the shade, I decided to retire for the day. So long and Good Day, Mx Justice.