Month: May 2007

Categories
Concert Reviews

Review: Arcade Fire – Montreal + Day in Montreal

Waking up to a head full of cobwebs is not the best way to start your Saturday in Montreal! We were all feeling a little rough (except for Philipp who probably had the help of the two schwarmas before heading to bed) so we took our sweet time getting ready to hit the road.

We ended up at Schwartz’s for a smoked meat sandwich which amazed me as there was no lineup and there was a table available for us! I was ecstatic! It was a good sandwich and I love the pickle I had to order on the side. Philipp was not impressed with his frankfurter as it was a weiner.

Carrie, Mike and I walked around downtown for awhile, hitting up Simons along the way where I got two pairs of jeans. Can’t go wrong. I dig Simons. It’s a trendy store and I always find good deals there. We then headed for Old Montreal where at the point in the day after three hours of walking we all decided it was time to get to a pub and have a beer. We ended up in my favourite watering hole down in Old Montreal called Les Deux Pirouettes and had some soup and beer. We were also next to the water which was nice. I would like to go at night one day as I have been told that there are a few live bands during the night.

After heading home and having a glorious pasta dish by Philipp, Carrie showed me FaceBook which is a pretty neat piece of web-ware. Mike and I then headed out to the Arcade Fire concert at the Maurice Richard Arena.

After hopping off the subway we entered this massive lineup which I quickly found out was the lineup for people who had to pick up their tix. Lucky for us, I got them mailed to us and we skipped the line. My excitement was building as I had only seen the band open for U2 in 2005 so I was interested in seeing their entire show.

Unfortunately we hit a snag. Mike showed the ticket person our tickets and she told us they weren’t floor tickets! I was dumbfounded as we walked up the stairs to the arena sitting section as we were holding general admission tickets. How is this possible? How could general admission not be the floor section?

Our answer appeared before us as the entire arena was a free-for-all. That’s right…finding two seats together was like finding a needle in a haystack. It was awful. I was really discouraged. We finally found a couple of seats near the back of the arena. On the positive side, it wasn’t a huge arena like the ScotiaBank Place or the Bell Centre…it was a local hockey rink so in the grand scheme of things, we weren’t too far away from the stage. But it was a pain when one of us had to stay with our seats at all times. Plus, they hard seats. I had to manage carrying four beer back to our seat which wasn’t accomplished without spilling a few drops on myself.

St-Vincent opened the show…it is fronted by Annie Clark who is also a member of The Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Steven‘s touring band (info taken from their myspace site). While I was super impressed with her guitar playing, the arrangements of the songs were erratic and could have flowed better. All in all, I give her and then band a thumb up performance.

After checking out the merchandise booth and scoffing at the $30 tour poster which listed all the Canadian dates (I would only buy a $30 poster if it would just list the Montreal dates I think) I returned to the seats and waited for the lights to fall.  (Edit: In the year 2021 when I re-read this post I had a good laugh because I just bought this poster from Ebay for $100 thinking “I wonder why I never bought that poster in the first place?  Now I know!  I was frugal.)

The concert started with five small round video screens showing us a woman going on a biblical tirade which fit into the whole Neon Bible theme of the album. The band (with ten members!) appeared on stage and got into Black Mirror which is a decent tune off of the new album. The crowd on the floor was pretty intense whereas the stands were pretty lackluster. No standing up whatsoever. Seeing that my state of mind was “I NEED SLEEP!!!” I didn’t bother standing up at all either.

The sound was pretty muddy throughout the arena and Mike commented that it wasn’t loud enough. This got me wondering if this is always the case when sitting so far away from the stage as it was the same when seeing The Who in Ottawa.

I was super impressed with the set list as they pretty well played most of both the Funeral and Neon Bible albums. This is a rarity on this tour as they tend to focus more on their new album. I also read that a few tunes made their first appearance on the tour at this show so we were in for a treat! I actually got a bootleg of the concert already so I am excited to take a listen to it.

While the two percussionists weren’t as wild as the first time around in Ottawa (with ski-doo helmets and drumsticks) the entire band was full of energy – always moving around the stage and rocking out hard.

We ended up standing up near the end once Power Out and Rebellion started playing. At this point, the night took the most amazing turn. The concert had ended and the crowd just cried for more as well as singing the last refrain of Rebellion until they came back out. I was amazed that it kept up but the Arcade Fire know how to create some memorable chants in their music catalogue. They ended with My Body Is A Cage and Keep the Car Running. They then left the stage again but were called back once more because the crowd demanded it (at this point I congratulate the Montreal crowd in giving them a warm welcome home. You could feel the magic in the air at this moment in the night!) and they ended with their anthematic tune Wake Up.

All in all, I give the show two thumbs up and would probably add a third thumb if we were on the floor and if they played Black Wave. 😉 But really, these are minor points and I’m glad that we experienced this grand event.

After the concert we hopped onto the subway which was hell as I messed up and when transferring we went the wrong direction! We then had to wait awhile in the muggy, humid, stinky subway station until we finally caught one back to Philipp’s place. After having a few drinks, Carrie managed to get us in the party spirit (it was 2 in the morning!) and we headed down the street to this amazing bar where the band was unfortunately done playing but they had these great tunes from the 50s-60s playing so Carrie and I danced the rest of the night away. I also spoke to the drummer of the band who thought B.B. King had passed away last year and was in awe that I was seeing him the next night in Ottawa. We also had a good laugh looking at the drunkest man alive – you know the guy – the one who at the end of the night is struggling to finish his last beer but can’t just put it down as he had paid good money for it. But then he stumbles out of there.

We also had another Quebec treat on the way home – a nice poutine from Rapido. Mmm boy it was great!

Setlist:

  • Black Mirror
  • No Cars Go
  • Haiti
  • Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
  • In The Backseat
  • Une Année Sans Lumière
  • The Well and The Lighthouse
  • Intervention
  • Ocean of Noise
  • Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)
  • (Antichrist Television Blues)
  • Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out) ->Rebellion (Lies)

Encore: My Body Is A Cage, Keep The Car Running, Wake Up

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Spoonful of Sugar in Montreal City…

After traipsing around Ottawa on Friday afternoon running some errands, we finally hit the road to Montreal after picking Carrie up at the bus stop.

I love driving to Montreal down the 174. It’s a more relaxing and scenic drive. I would recommend it to anyone. My only beef is that I wish you could see the river at all times during the trek. That would be amazing.

We arrive at the soccer field with time to spare and eventually see Sven the Flagman doing his flag thing on the turf. Seeing that it’s getting cold out and the game is still on, we head into the sports bar and order a pitcher of beer. Philipp and Sven join us later to have some good laughs with Carrie’s remote controlled fart machine and we have a few more beer before heading out.

Let’s keep in mind that Mike has never really experience the city of Montreal yet so we’re doing our best to be tour guides during the drive home. I had to point out all the good spots for a smoked meat sandwich.

As soon as we find a parking space for the weekend (very hard to do sometimes), we unload the car, crack a beer and head to the roof where the party is already started. I meet Philipp’s roommate Jean who I assumed was French (due to his name) but it turns out he is from PEI! We have a great talk about music and I realize that his passion in life is also music. I love it when you meet someone who shares the passion with you and you talk about the little things like ‘What song do you really want to hear at the concert? Or “What’s your favourite track off of this album?”. That’s what music lovers are all about…talking about the little things.

It was good to see Morad again and he brought along a few workmates – Shane and Wayne. After hanging out for awhile we realize it’s midnight and decide its time to head out to the party.
I have no idea whose party this was or where it was in Montreal but somehow Morad knew them. We walk in there and I think I’m getting strange looks as Sven had painted the German flag on my face at the soccer field. This also brings up a good story of how he did this to the famous Schwarma Nazi back in Ottawa and he cried out “I’ve been Germanized!!!”.

There were a good number of people at the party so we just found a spot in the hall to call our own and begun the mingling with the crowd and meeting people. I wasn’t around for this event but supposedly someone came up and asked the group if they were Anglophone and then walked away! Perhaps someone reading this can give me more specifics on this event as I wasn’t around for it.

Highlights of the night:

  • There was a CREEPY car out in the backyard. Looked like something that was lost in the woods and there is a dead body in it. Jean, Philipp and I were in fear mode walking near it. There was just something about it…no air in the tires, parked at this angle to the house which you feel could never get back out of. *shudder*.
  • Jean came up to me at one time in the night and says “I think some guy is trying to make a move on some girl who is passed out.” After he points this out to me, I suppose the guy did look strange hugging this girl who is passed out on a bed. But it’s a loud party, I can’t tell what’s really happening. To prevent anything from happening, I haul the guy off of her and tuck her into bed. Let’s point out that this isn’t an empty bedroom. There are at least a dozen other people partying in this bedroom so I doubt anything was going to happen. But you know how you get when you have a few beer in you. You don’t really think.

So then this girl grabs my arm and says she needs to go to the bathroom so we haul her to the bathroom and I leave Jean with her to look after her while I get another beer. When I come back, the original guy is there with her and Jean! “Jean!”, I cry. “I thought you were supposed to be looking after her!” He says “I was! But he just showed up!”

So we keep an eye on this individual and then when she saunters back to bed this guy is getting close to her and talking and whatnot so we have to intervene again but then the girl laughs and realizes what we are doing. She tells me the guy is her friend and it’s alright. While we all laughed at the situation and Jean and I pat each other on the back for a job well done. Hey, we didn’t know they were friends; this guy could have been a creep. In the end it all turned out alright. I can see Dad reading this entry right now and thinking “You are asking for a fight if you haul a guy off of a woman.” No worries, he was smaller and I had Jean as backup in case things turned rough!

  • There was this guy playing some great guitar and there were some good Francophone tunes being sung in the living room. It was a good way to end the night.
  • Let’s not forget how someone found this mask of either George Bush or Richard Nixon (someone said it was Trudeau!) and I put it on and walked around the kitchen. I was getting the craziest looks and I don’t think the women really appreciated the absurdity of the moment. Clearly these people were not up for a good time with random people they didn’t know!

After we left we went for this amazing schwarma at a place called ‘Sara’. It was so good that Philipp ended up eating two of them as I had picked one up for Mike (who was in a different cab) but he had grabbed some other food on the way home.

All in all, we had a great night and we would like to thank Morad for bringing us to this shindig, as well as Philipp and Jean for being excellent hosts that night!

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My FaceBook Weekend

Friday Night – Met Wayne at the party…

Wayne: Are you on FaceBook?
Me: No.
Wayne: Me neither! But everyone is asking me if I am…like I’m their friend or something! Once I say ‘no’ they just leave me in the dust.
Me: It’s like we are oppressed.

Saturday Night – Carrie on the computer
Carrie: So it just keeps track of all your contacts and friend’s contacts and whatnot…
Me: It is actually a pretty neat system.

Sunday Afternoon – Matt contacts me on MSN.
Matt: Are you on FaceBook yet?
Me: No.
Matt: What’s your birth date?
Me: (insert my birth date here.) You should know this Matt.
(insert random other chats for the next few minutes until this appears)
Matt: What would you say is your primary email address.
Me: Primary email address? What the heck…Matt, are you signing me up for FaceBook?!
Matt: Yeah, you see if I tag my pictures with your name, then I can click on it and it goes to your profile.
Me: But I don’t want a profile. This is identity theft!
Matt: Technically it’s not until I actually use your profile. Look, I’m sending it to your email. Just accept the profile and never look at it again but then I get to have cool tagged profiles on my pictures.
Me: I have the upper hand. I have just deleted the email.
Matt: What? No! Argh. Now I will have to actually go make a profile for you and use it.
Me: Hence, the identity theft.

(this exchange is heavily paraphrased from memory)

Anyhow, there you have it. A piece of social networking software has infiltrated my life during each day of the weekend. And I don’t even use it.

I especially love how we were oppressed at the Friday night party. If you want to really network socially, be prepared to do it in person people. It was honestly the lamest thing I have ever seen when someone wouldn’t bother talking to us because we didn’t have a FaceBook profile.

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Thoughts on First Motorbike Ride

Now that my voice recorder has been found, all is good in the world and I’ll start integrating various clips into this site.

Here are my thoughts on my first motorbike ride today with Mike.

Click here.
MP3 file – 350KB.

Categories
Concert Reviews

Review: Canola Oil, Cabs and My Chemical Romance

Last night was starting off well. Got home from work and cooked a little supper before heading out for the concert. Mike and I were getting pumped up for the weekend.

We then separated ways as he went to pick up Krista and I dropped my car off at the Mazda service depot for some servicing. I perused the used cars while waiting for Mike and Krista. My car is being sold for $15K. Not too shabby right about now. Actually, that is pretty slick considering I only have under $10K to pay off mine. Does that mean I could sell mine for $15K and pocket an extra $5K? Mike pointed out the money I’ve spent over the years may be up to the $5K difference. It would be interesting to calculate it out.

While driving down to the concert, Mike cuts through a yellow light which he should or should not have done, but no worries. But then a cop throws his cherries on behind us and Mike is freaking out.

Then when he pulls over, the cop blows by him. Success! He wasn’t after us! At this point I recall my story on how I thought I got pulled over in Quebec in a speed trap but it wasn’t the case so I spent a whole pile of cash in Montreal considering it was now considered bonus money. You know the sort…you don’t have to use it to pay a ticket, so it’s yours to splurge!

Later on in the trip…

Me: “Do you guys smell something?
Mike & Krista: “No, what?”
Me: “I don’t know…something burning?”

When we come to an intersection I notice wisps of smoke coming from the passenger side of the truck.

We start moving again…

Me: “Mike, I don’t know but I think your truck is smoking.”
Mike: “What? Really? What’s going on?”

So I manage to hang myself out the window to peruse but no smoke is to be found. Mind you, we are traveling at this point. As soon as we pull up to another intersection a cloud of smoke envelops the truck as we realize it is definitely coming from our vehicle. At this point, let’s point out that a fire truck was passing by and kind of looked at us and we wondered if they would have to hose the vehicle down.

I get out to quickly check it (as we are in traffic) and realize it’s the brake that is smoking. We pull over in a safe spot and sure enough, the brake is seized. As if! So we’re standing there and a random jogger drops by and asks if she can help. Considering I didn’t see a cellular phone on her, I really don’t know what she could have done to help, but it was nice of her to stop.

So we analyzed the situation and realized that we have no tools in the truck and even if we did, there’s not much we could do. There was fear of the tire exploding as the rim was super-hot from the friction being caused. We then hightailed it to Canadian Tire and they said they would take a look at it that night and give us a call in the morning.

With that, we looked at our options and realized that we would call a cab and enjoy the rest of the night! We had a great cabbie on our trip out to the concert. Not too talkative. Just the way I like ’em. We arrive and we can hear the final notes of ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’. No worries…we’ve missed about half of ‘The Black Parade’ album as the concert started at 8PM instead of the usual 9PM. Remind me to write a letter to the venue…

We head down to the floor with a beer amidst a sea of teenagers. This is a decent thing as they are all short. We had a great view of the stage. The stage was amazing. I had heard rave reviews about The Black Parade tour as it was more of a theatrical spectacle than anything. Very much in the vein of The Wall or Ziggy Stardust. Dressed in marching band uniforms they performed in character while playing the entire album. The lighting, the visuals, the sound…all was amazing! I would definitely recommend anyone to go see the show if they have a chance. It’s a grand spectacle.

Highlights of the Concert:

  • The flames shooting out for a solid minute during the song Mama where they sing about going to Hell.
  • The thousands of screaming teenagers. I do enjoy that they are an enthusiastic crowd!
  • I enjoyed how the ended The Black Parade set but then came back out of performance outfits and ripped into their older hits. Very nice segueway. Although I was disappointed at how they are covering AC/DC’s For Those About To Rock but they ended it when it was getting good!
  • There was an amazing, amazing dancer in front of us at one point. I could not believe my eyes. She was doing a cross between the two-step and the hokey pokey. It was a beautiful. It was definitely worth the price of admission alone. She was flailing around so much that she got Mike right in the stomach! She was also wearing a fanny pack. Beautiful.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed The Black Parade set, but I must admit that the other half of the concert reminded me of the last time we saw them and I wasn’t overly impressed. The singer has a very hard time of hitting the vocal high notes as on the album. Perhaps it was due to it being at the end of the concert, but still. Kind of disappointing. But the first half was stellar.

After the concert we hightail it outside to discover there are no buses! We assumed they were coming later as the concerts are usually done at 11PM but this one finished at 9:30PM. We then scoured the area for a cab and lo and behold, our same cabbie was there! Excellent! We reveled in this occurrence and got dropped off at the closest bus station so we wouldn’t be paying $60 to get a cab into downtown.

We then headed to Krista’s to watch some Grey’s Anatomy. We also picked up an amazing panzerotti from the Pavorazzi Pizza joint. I’ve never been there before but the panzo was pretty darn good.

Krista gets extra kudos as she not only helped me get some work done at work so we could leave at a decent hour, but she also drove Mike and I home as we were vehicle-less.

Wait, where does the canola oil come into the story?! Well, it turns out that a few weeks back Mike did some repairs on his brakes himself and didn’t have any grease in the house so he used canola oil (aka cooking oil) to grease the parts. I had a good laugh when hearing this and I tormented him with this fact all night as I believed the canola oil to be the culprint the brakes seizing.

This was not the case as we found out this morning after calling Canadian Tire. Alas, they just seized and messed up the other front brake and the ordeal will cost $700. Ouch. But will that destroy Mike’s wild weekend in Montreal?

Mike: “No man, let’s give’r.”

That’s my man!

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Weekend Shaping Up

Mike just made me realize the amazing weekend which is shaping up.

Tonight – We just scored ourselves some tickets to see My Chemical Romance. While I thought their last tour was ‘so-so’, I wasn’t planning to go to this tour in support of their album The Black Parade, until I started reading the rave reviews of the show. I felt like I would be missing out on an event. Plus, I REALLY love their new album. Definitely in my Top 5 of last year. So after some hassle, we managed to get some General Admission tickets for tonight. I really hate sitting down at a concert so I’m glad we snagged these. Mike, Krista and I shall be enjoying the show. Rise Against and Muse are opening for them.

Friday – If I can manage it, I will ask for the day off to relax before the big weekend in Montreal! Friday night, Mike and I (along with Carrie possibly) will head out to Montreal to enjoy some time with Philipp. Who knows what the night will provide! We’ll pick him up from his soccer game and then all will be good in the world.

Saturday – When Saturday night hits, Mike and I will be heading out to see The Arcade Fire! I am pretty excited to see them in their own proper concert setting. I’ve only seen them open up for U2 a few years ago and their performance was high-octane.

Sunday – Sunday night brings ANOTHER legend into our midst as we’ll head out to see B.B. King at the National Arts Centre! Holy Mackerel! We are getting bombarded with great music this weekend! Spring is in the air my friends! I am excited to see B.B. King as it may very well be one of the last times to do so!

I hope that everyone’s weekend will be stellar!

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The Craving

I’m starting to get the craving which occurs when a new Pumpkins album is upon us. I start to pull out the old bootlegs and start listening to every nuance. I yank out old B-sides and just hit the RANDOM button. I scour the Internet for any little piece of information.

The time is close…May 22 will be their first tour date in Paris. I predict a bootleg of the show the next day. I’m also predicting a ‘greatest hits’ heavy set list with a few new tracks from their upcoming album Zeitgeist. It only makes sense – the band has been away for seven years…think about Metallica when they came back for their St. Anger tour. 90% of the show was old stuff. However, those were festival dates – which the Pumpkins are doing all summer long.

I think playing your hits at a Festival when you’re on your reunion tour is the way to win over the people who pay big money to see you. If you just went out and played all-new material, there would be disappointment from the masses who don’t know much about you. However, if you’re a fanatic like myself, no worries. We crave new material.

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Reviews

Review: Stompin’ Tom and the Connors Tone

note: it’s actually pretty hard to find a full shot of the novel.

A few weeks ago I finished the second Stompin’ Tom autobiography entitled Stompin’ Tom and the Connors Tone.

It was a decent read…seemed longer than the first one. I enjoyed how it really got into the aspects of his tours and when he started to get famous. He seems to harp on his views of how the music industry in Canada is for the birds and is in need of serious revamp. I totally agree and I found his points interesting. I was speaking to Dad about this novel and he enjoyed the first one better as he didn’t really care much for the music industry talk; which takes up a LOT of the book. It seems like every second chapter he comes up with another way of stating his views on the music industry.

I found it interesting to hear that he left the music business altogether during the 80s because of his distaste with the industry. Imagine! Then his comeback tour in the 90s occurred and as far as I know he has been touring around now and then.

I can’t say that I know much of his music but I will pick up an album one of these days and if I ever have the chance to see him live, I will jump on it. I admire what he has done for Canada (heck, he even received the Order of Canada for his work!).

I enjoy his writing style and it feels like he is talking to you in conversation rather than stating facts about his life at a certain point in time. His novel inspired me to want to get out on the open road and just drive. I remember this occurred right before Easter and the Spring was in the air and I told Mike that we were heading home for the weekend because I just wanted to get on the road again. However, when the Blizzard of 2007 hit up North I thought that my open road would not be as exciting. So now I am anxious to head out on the open road again and perhaps travel around Canada a little more than I have done in the past. Usually it’s more of a ‘let’s just get home as fast as we can!!!’ trip.

Two thumbs up for the autobiography. If you’re interested in Stompin’ Tom, or Canadiana, pick it up today!

iplaying: The Lost Brigade – Ted Leo & The Pharmacists (Living With The Living)

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Want To Pay Less Insurance?

Our good friend Mike is our guest blogger today as I felt he had some interesting things to say about the insurance company he is with for his truck.

From the Autograph Website:

Have you ever felt that your insurance company lumps you in with every other driver on the road, regardless of how you drive? Wouldn’t it be nice if more responsible driving habits could be reflected in the cost of your auto insurance?

Autograph will enable eligible program participants to accurately track their driving behaviours using a data-gathering device that plugs into the diagnostic port typically found under the steering column of most cars made since 1996. Then, they simply drive the car. The device records data on factors statistically proven to impact risk, including how much, how fast and when a car is driven.

You policy is renewed every 6 months at which time you can optionally upload your driving data to claim your discount. The insurance company (Aviva) will e-mail you a few weeks before you are due to renew your insurance to let you know to upload your driving data. You can choose not to share your information and get no discount but even if you see that you have bad driving habits you still get a minimum 5% discount just for sharing your data.

I just uploaded my information a few weeks ago and earned myself a 28% discount on my insurance for the next 6 months. Score!

Mike
—-
Editor’s Note – I must admit this seems like a win-win scenario. Now instead of paying $79.33/month, Mike is paying $65.80/month for the next 6 months (until they recalculate what he should be paying). Note that there is a clause that the fees will never go above the $79.33/month. So if you are a speed demon, they can’t screw you over.

Now, Mike and I were talking about it last night and thought the only downfall would be if they are using this information to screw you over in the long run – like if you had to actually file a claim under your insurance and they say “Hmm…looks like you speed all the time! No dice my friend.” This could very well be the case as the driver is willingly providing them information.

Let’s also note that Mike doesn’t necessarily follow the posted speed limit, so it’s not like he got the discount by driving the posted speed limit all the time. Also, this isn’t all about speed limits, they take a look at what hours you are driving (are you driving to and from work every day, or just using the vehicle for leisure?).

All in all, I think the system is pretty cool if you know you aren’t a speed demon all the time. But I would be wary if you are as I would put some good money on the fact that they would use this information against if you had to file a claim. Otherwise, it’s pretty swell.

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Subway Woes

I sauntered over to Subway for lunch today and perused the selection. Hey, looks like the wraps are the same price as the 6″ subs! Nice! So I promptly order my wrap and all is good in the world.

Until I get to the cash.

Cashiers: Alright, that’s $5.92.
Me: Doesn’t it say $4.29 on the sign?
Cashiers (yes there are two of them in Quebec): No, that’s only for the six inch sub.
Me (while pointing at the sign): But the sign says “Six Inch or Wrap” for $4.29
Cashiers (looking dead ahead at me all the time and not even bothering to look at the sign): No, it’s more expensive.
Me (then realizing this may be a language barrier issue): (in French)No, but look at the sign. It says “Six Inch OR Wrap”. Listen, I don’t really care if I have to pay an extra dollar but the sign says otherwise.
Cashiers (never acknowledging the sign): The wrap is more expensive.

This leads me to believe that the people who work at the Subway in Hull are actually robots who cannot process anything past taking our cash and giving us back change! They couldn’t even tilt their heads to look at the sign. It was quite unbelievable. At one point I wanted to ask the woman next to me if I’m reading the sign wrong but I decided to pay the extra buck and hightail it outside into the beautiful, beautiful weather.