POP Montreal | What you NEED to know
Montreal has yet ANOTHER festival, if you can believe it. This one’s called POP Montreal, and it’s been happening for 14 years, so if you haven’t heard of it… well, then you probably haven’t heard about a lot of things.
While most music festivals exclusively feature the obvious, POP Montreal is a further-reaching experience that, while being an “international music festival,” also includes the majority of the city: its residents, artisans, filmmakers, children, and local business. To elaborate, if everything you adore about Montreal formed into one crazy bubble and EXPLODED into a big pile of cultural detritus, then you would think to yourself, “Wow. I must be partaking in POP Montreal.”
How about we start with POP’s own Shopping Guide, as a part of PUCES POP? Find out why everyone always raves about our food. It’s not a cliché. The buzz is REAL (Yes, Puces en Francais does in fact mean fleas – but fear not, my OCD friends with sanitation paranoia, PUCES is a celebration of local artisans and designers, and I’m sure the PUCES part is some sort of Quebecois departure from the terminology “flea market“.)
Then there’s FILM POP: local music-themed documentaries! Or the POP Symposium, featuring panels, conferences, workshops and whatever else you demand from a symposium?
And let’s not forget that this is the 2nd year that Marche des Possibles has teamed up with POP! What the hell is that, you ask? I can tell you it involves food trucks. Do you need to know more? No. You don’t.
There’s even a place to dump your kids! (Wait, allow me to rephrase that in a more delicate way, one in which my childless status is not so crudely emphasized). POP Montreal has created KIDS-POP, a cool, creative part of their festival for kids of all ages, including my own age bracket, pre-teen.
Alright, and then POP also does some music stuff. Like bands. I heard one time Sheryl Crow came.
If you don’t want to fall prey to the prodigious detonation that is POP Montreal, why not sign up for the POP newsletter? You can even build your custom schedule, perfect for us mentally-deficient types. Or check out the helpful City Guide that the kind people at POP have put together, which includes a breakdown of our illustrious neighbourhoods and the events taking place there.
Still full of doubt and stupidity? Why not check out their website yourself, which is the source from which I’ve been gleaning all the aforementioned information for you.
POP Montreal erupts on Sept. 16th, but prepare now, lest you suffer crippling bouts of FOMO.
