The Village

This guide to the Village in Montreal traces the neighborhood's Sainte-Catherine Street back to July 15, 1990, when police raided a downtown after-hours party called Sex Garage and attacked the crowd for the simple act of dancing. It follows how Montreal's queer community answered first with a street protest, then with a circuit party founded in response to that raid, and how gay bars had already been shaping this stretch of the street since the early 1980s. Listen for how that instinct still shows up in the string of colored balls overhead every summer.