New Insomnia may waken ghosts

Downtown Montreal's newest nightspot will open at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday. Closing time is - how about never? Is never good for you?

It's called Insomnia, and the lights will be on 24/7/365. George Gaerste and John Cardenas think Montreal is ready for something new and radically different.

How different? Insomnia will offer 40 kinds of coffee - and zero varieties of booze.

"That's the most interesting thing about our place - everything is non-alcoholic," Gaerste was telling me yesterday.

"The idea is you don't need drugs or alcohol to have fun," Gaerste said. He and Cardenas believe that Insomnia is in tune with health-conscious times.

A non-alcoholic bar may be an idea whose time has come. But the lack of booze would not please ghosts haunting 2070 Mountain St.

Insomnia is on the west side of Mountain, six doors up from de Maisonneuve Blvd. It used to house the Bistro, Montreal's hippest bar during the 1960s.

You walked down seven steps from street level and entered a narrow, rectangular room that pretended to be a small slice of Paris. Everyone on staff had a moustache, with the exception of the woman at the cash register. The menu included sandwiches on baguettes, Toulouse sausages, camembert and Perrier, which was not then available at every dépanneur in town.

But people didn't go to the Bistro to drink bubbly water. The favoured beverage was Labatt 50 in stubby pint bottles. The bathrooms were redolent of marijuana and hashish.

It was a university hangout, one of the few patronized by students from McGill and the Université de Montréal. Bubbling in the Bistro melting pot were beret-wearing, Gitane-puffing, Pernod-sipping, world weariness-evincing Sartre-misquoters.

Poseurs breathed the same smoke-infused air as genuine hipsters: poets (Leonard Cohen, Gaston Miron), a future prime minister (Pierre Trudeau), a future press baron (Conrad Black) and, of course, Nick Auf der Maur.

The Bistro marked the midway point in the westward migration of the boulevardier's boulevardier. Barred from the Swiss Hut (after a dispute with the manager over the military junta then governing Greece) on Sherbrooke St. near Bleury St., Auf der Maur moved on to Crescent St. during the 1980s.

"I think that doomed the Bistro," says a chronicler of the scene. "Everyone started to go to the Boiler Room and the Sir Winston Churchill Pub because they figured if Nick is there, all the great chicks will follow."

The birds have long flown, and the only Gallic touch left on Mountain is the Hotel Vogue's doorman, who wears a short cape and gendarme's cap. The former Bistro has been vacant for eight years. Gaerste and Cardenas, 30-something entrepreneurs whose friendship began in their native Venezuela, have spent the last three months on major renovations.

The zinc-topped bar is still there, as are the mirrors behind it, which have been cleaned and reframed. The tile floor, an irregular mosaic pattern that probably was called psychedelic back in the day, has been polished and is ready for the pitter-patter of 21st century feet.

As Diana Krall crooned Cry Me a River on the Insomnia sound system, Gaerste, the more extroverted of the co-owners, explained that round-the-clock coffee bars have become popular in the U.S.

Insomnia will sell what Gaerste describes as "the best daquiris in town" - albeit alcohol-free. The beverage menu also will include teas, fruit juices and exotic bottled water. Food will be fresh and simple: paninis, bruschetta, fruit salads.

There will be video screens, but they won't be showing CNN.

"I think people are under sensory assault all the time," Gaerste said. "I don't want to bombard them with the war and politics."

Gaerste admits that "a lot of club owners think I'm crazy." He thinks they're wrong. "Montreal is always open to new ideas." Open round the clock.

Email: Mike Boone at the Gazette.