The Bud stops here

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Pierre wishes he could drink it, and Julie thinks it's "neat." The two young commuters at des Pins and University are talking about the 10-foot plastic Budweiser replica bottle stuck to the side of bus shelters above and below McGill University, the latest grab for the undergrad buck. The giant bottles--located in the heart of frosh heaven--come with authentic-looking condensation droplets and a loop video for students inside the shelter who didn't get the message on the way in.

Two other commuters surveyed at the route 24 stop at Mansfield and Sherbrooke also approved of the gaudy ad. But predictably, not everyone is Bud's bud. "The effort to brand our universities is becoming more and more ferocious," says François Tanguay-Renaud, one of the students who fought Coke out of an exclusive deal with McGill.

Still, there could be more of this to come, as local advertising firm Mediacom owns 1,286 shelters, while the MUCTC owns 969 (the remaining 289 are either privately or municipally owned). And according to Mediacom's general manager Isabelle Gosselin, the company has only received two complaints about Bud, which appears at various locations throughout the city. But, she adds, "If there was too much bad reaction we would remove them."

--Craig Segal