Nawaz: mourning three of Montreal’s most iconic women

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Though it’s been over a week since they were taken from us too soon, Montréal still mourning three of our city’s most iconic women: the flying ladies from the Club Super Sexe sign on Ste-Catherine St.

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Dressed in black bikinis, high heels and red superhero capes, and gliding down a proud arch of stylized blue sky dotted with white clouds, the nearly naked mascots of the now-defunct strip club succumbed to a nightly fire on October 30 that started in a empty building next door. That building was destroyed and the old Club Super Sexe suffered significant damage. In the photos of the aftermath of the fire, all that remained of our heroines was a single high-heeled foot.

Regardless of how one feels about what used to happen inside the building, the daring facade of the Club Super Sexe stood as a persistent testament to Montreal’s centuries-old history as a sexually permissive destination. When the Super Sexe sign was lit for business at night, with its striking stripes of neon orange and yellow, it looked both a beacon for obscenities and a shining symbol of Montreal’s cultural identity as a city that has always prided itself. Of her self. about your freedoms.

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Although some may have considered it vulgar or just plain tatty, the sign’s blatantly kitschy design was impossible to ignore, giving downtown tourists a chill of something a little different and harder to process, and perhaps a moment’s pause on their way. from Sephora to H&M and the rest of the usual suspects in global mass market retail. In our increasingly sanitized era, the Super Sexe ladies shot out of the norm with a bold nonchalance that refused to be restrained.

I’ve always loved seeing Montreal visitors gaping or squirming at suggestive store windows. The city is not short of eye-catching landmarks, but I bet as many tourists have taken selfies in front of Super Sexe as anywhere else, especially given its prominent location. The ladies of Super Sexe were emblematic of Montreal as a city of gay contradictions, where churches collide with sex shops and where naked dancers can claim pride of place on a major shopping street.

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The loss of the superladies is compounded by the fact that years passed during which the sign could have been saved. When the old strip club closed in 2017, Concerns were raised about the future of the sign. , which was expected to decline with the arrival of a new retail tenant before the year was out. But a new tenant never materialized.

It appears that the facade would have been an excellent candidate for acquisition by Montreal Sign Project , a preservation company at Concordia University founded by Professor Matt Soar in collaboration with Concordia Archivist Emerita Nancy Marelli. With the goal of preserving civic history through material culture, the group has salvaged classic commercial posters such as those for New Navarino Café, Bens Restaurant, Imperial Boots, and the Sheinart clothing store, among many others. The signs are available to view as part of a permanent exhibit in the CJ Building on the Loyola campus.

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According to a post on your Instagram page The project had inquired about the Super Sexe sign, but the owner had apparently requested a payment that exceeded what the project would have been able to afford, especially since removal and preservation can also come at large costs, even for the smallest signs. The large scale of the facade may have also made storage difficult.

Also disappointing is the fact that authorities suspect that there was an arson in the fire that led to the unintentional killing of the signs. There was no electricity in the building where the fire started and where the flames spread with suspicious speed.

Tributes for the signal have abounded on social media, as Montréal residents and city lovers mourned the loss of a familiar place.

While Montreal’s signage issues have long been tense when it comes to language, this was an inadvertent removal of signs that many may agree is a real shame.