by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

There’s only one place in town with a throbbing heritage of wiseguys and hookers and pimps and know-it-alls and cheap tube steaks and suspicious characters. For generations, the Lower Main has been the film-noir-flavoured destination for deviants. But it looks doomed now.

Since the Société St-Jean-Baptiste built a 14-storey dorm at the foot of the block, mouth-breathing, Kanuk-wearing CEGEP suburban squarejohns have infiltrated the zone from one end, while a gang of business interests have aggressively targeted the peep shows, dive bars and lusty loiterers from the other. They hope to clear all out for the glory of the Quartier des Spectacles, and transform it into the hub of the local festival industry.

On Wednesday, cues were racked up for the last time at the sometimes-rowdy second-storey Metropool on the Lower Main. Their lease was up and they got the boot.

If you’re like me, pool seems like too much work for the inherent payoff of luscious-female-cleavage vistas. But the Metropool held magical promise of mayhem and overheated young Asian warriors duelling with swinging pool cues.

The Societé des arts et technologies (SAT) downstairs takes over the spot. The SAT is a tech-savvy group, and the suits assure me it’s one of the places “la plus branché en ville.” The SAT even plans to add a couple of storeys on the little building.

A few weeks ago, the festival people held a press conference complaining about the lack of progress in their quest to take over the rest of the block. They were quietly rewarded on November 1, as the city took the rare step of freezing the property at the southeast corner of Ste-Catherine and the Main, including the adjacent empty lot.

You know it for the depanneur on the first floor or, perhaps, for the place upstairs offering an erotic service where customers administer a suction device to their privates.

The owner, a Malaysian named Yap, can no longer sell the property or do major repairs. The city and the festival and local business lobby want it bought, demolished and replaced with a building with a shiny, glitzy, Times-Square-type billboard thing, making it a cornerstone of the festival-land.

Yap’s Montreal agent has been dashing back and forth to Asia to discuss this with the owner, and authorities believe they’ll soon wave the white flag.

In February, the city starts redoing the Main, widening sidewalks, renovating street lamps, adding a bicycle parking at Ste-Catherine and reducing car parking. The history of the Main will be noted by sidewalk inscriptions of the year of construction of each building.

The west side of the Lower Main, laden with drama-drenched dive bars and steamy dog joints, is also under attack. Socrates Goulakos, owner of the Panhellinion tavern, has assembled ownership of almost all of the buildings between the Burger King and the Monument National. If he snags the standouts, he assures me he’ll turn it into something new and clean.

It might soon be that time. The Montreal Pool Room, which has long sneered at Goulakos’s lowball bids, has seen biz slowly slump like the divots on the floor at the cash, the testimony of generations of salty boots. The Bulgarian owner might soon be ready to sell.

Goulakos’s most elusive target is Cleopatra’s, a throwback strip joint downstairs and a tranny joint upstairs.

Cleo’s has a cult following. But that won’t necessarily insulate it against the pressure of authority. My dad owned a nightclub a few doors down in the early ’60s. It went belly-up when cops raided it every night to protest his non-payment of bribes.

All the association chiefs and city officials insist that everybody wants the Lower Main redone. The sleaze lobby is less vocal in defending the melancholy bacchanalia and divine dysfunction that has long reigned. I recently watched a young guy casually sneak into a nook on the Lower Main and furtively suck on a crack pipe before hopping the bus up the Main. He might’ve had a thought about all this, but I’ll never know.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca