Best late night bus route

1. 55 (St-Laurent)

2. 80 (du Parc)

3. 356 (Atwater metro to Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue)

4. 24 (Sherbrooke)

5. 211 (Lionel-Groulx metro to Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue)

Honourable witticisms: Greyhound to Toronto, "to Babylon," any bus with Otto at the wheel.

Best places to spot a celebrity

1. Globe

2. Buona Notte

3. DiSalvio's

4. The Main/St-Laurent

5. The Casino

6. Jello Bar

7. Allegra Lounge

8. Shed Café

9. Mediterraneo

10. Bifteck

11. Groove Society

12. The Molson Centre

13. The Ritz-Carlton

14. Prima Donna

15. Milos

The variety of places people suggested for this category just prove one thing: Montreal rules as a town to rub elbows with the elite! And get your Polaroid cameras and autograph books ready, because Montreal is rapidly becoming a favourite among film directors and studios alike. Expect to see Brian De Palma, Nicolas Cage, Dustin Hoffman, Mel Gibson and Barney shooting about town in the next year.

Best place to overhear a conversation

1. Bus/Metro

2. Second Cup

3. Bathroom of bar/club

Other popular eavesdropping havens: Croissant Royale, Globe, Shed Café, Copacabana, l'Androgyne, the waiting room at the Royal Vic (twisted nutters!), FBI surveillance van, in the other half of a confessional, "thru my wall", the Mirror Web Site launch party.

Best neighbourhood

1. Plateau Mont-Royal

2. Westmount

3. NDG

4. Downtown

5. Old Montreal

6. Mile End, St-Laurent/the Main

7. Outremont

8. Beaconsfield, Pte-Claire

9. St-Henri, Côte des Neiges, Côte St-Luc, Lasalle, Verdun

Best place for public sex

1. Mount Royal & other parks

2. Cars

3. Elevators

Whether it's underneath the cross, atop the Lookout, beside Beaver Lake, at the cemetery or in the sun at the Tam Tams, Montrealers love Mount Royal for more than just leisurely walks. And if we can't make it to the mountain, just about "any public park@night" will do: Parcs Lafontaine, Maisonneuve, Cote-des-Neiges, Île Ste-Hélène, Viger, Kent, Westmount and Jeanne-Mance were all mentioned, as was "the little park across from the CCA." For further variation, there's the Big O, The Gap (!), the McGill Ghetto, Roy Street, the Old Port, cinemas, church, peep shows, taxis, the library, Sona, Sessions, Sky, any decent phone booth, on the stage at the Fringe Festival, the glass elevator at the Radisson Hotel, the top-floor bathrooms at Place MTL Trust, behind the RCMP building and "on the hood of a car behind the Bifteck."

Best reason not to move

1. Cheap rent

2. Bagels

3. Women

4. Men

Most passionate responses: Toronto, all my friends have moved so no one can help me, because that's what those separatist bastards want!

Actually cheap rent is only the first element of a widespread conspiracy that actually forces us to stay. You get your first Montreal apartment with a lease beginning in August or September. Then in the hunt for a better apartment you sign a new lease beginning July 1 and go through hell with landlords and subletters. Now your lease is up at the same time as everyone else's and you hoard the phone numbers of landlords with three-storey walkups on de l'Esplanade and Parc Lafontaine for next year's search.

One or two moves later, you're in your ideal pad. It's a bit more than you can afford, but it works. Then Montreal's charms wear off; you've finished school and can't find a job. Time to head for greener pastures. Unfortunately, you've also accumulated a ton of cast-iron art, retro furniture, and other bric-a-brac crap (which you said you would never do, because you wanted to live life free of both emotional and material baggage) and--here's the rub--it's become impossible to rent a moving truck on July 1. You can't leave. Montreal You Are My City, whether I like you or not.

Best kept secret

1. Anglos/the English population

2. Poutine

3. Apple danishes at Maxies

4. Bagel etc. for breakfast

5. Café Sarajevo

6. California Pizza

7. Cosmos

8. Hoffner's sausage with sauerkraut

9. International restos at the Faubourg

10. Tie: St-Viateur Bagels; Nefertiti

Honourable mentions: Jojo's sex change hospital, we're aliens from Mars, more crazy people than New York, McGill is crap.

Voted the 20 top best new trends for 1997

Cigars

49¢ pizza

Anglo power

Better roads than Ontario

Buckle up shoes for men

Drum & bass

Japanimation

Lesbianism

Lounges

Platform shoes

Being a DJ

Anti-biker laws

Partition

Orange

Short hair for women

Short pants

Smoking laws

Visible underwear

Ska

No more rave glasses

Voted the 20 top worst new trends for 1997

Cigars

49¢ pizza

Shortened metro trains

Facial and tongue piercing

Backstreet Boys

Bubblegum ravers

GHB

Baby-blue eye shadow

Lounges

Clunky shoes

DJs

Re-releases of old films

The election

Lime green

Blond hair on guys

Shiny clothes

Smoking laws

The Spice Girls

20-something conservatives

Nude hairdressers

Political gaffe of the year

1. "More trade": Chrétien on cross-border drug trafficking

2. Mayor Bourque firing Sammy Forcillo and Pierre Goyer

3. Banning tobacco sponsorships

4. Galganov in New York

5. "Montreal, You Are My City"

It was a banner year for political idiocy. Howard Galganov transformed the entire province into a single, massive headless chicken--only to have no one show up at his rally in New York. Supporters of dope legalization got their biggest endorsement ever when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien bumblingly said he supported cross-border drug trafficking, because it meant "more trade." And mayor Pierre Bourque's "You are my city" campaign made Montreal seem as sparklingly dull as a toilet in a 2000 Flushes commercial. If we weren't so stressed out over our politics, we'd all be rolling on the floor laughing.

Best English sign

1. Stop

2. The English Language. Daily.

3. Second Cup

4. Toronto 541 kilometres

Westmount's stop signs may be the old standby for making anglophones feel at home, but we all owe Conrad Black's new Gazette a big thanks for giving us a new sign to look at. But is the sign a sign of the times? Is Montreal's anglophone community so distraught, so demoralized, that its daily newspaper has to remind it that it can actually live its life in its language, as if its presence on the doorstep weren't enough of a reminder?

Whatever the case, you have to wonder about a sign that markets a newspaper based not on the quality of its reporting, its excellent coverage of key issues, or the uncanny insight offered by its columnists. It may be of dubious quality, it may be a boring read, but it's English, goddammit!