The General Star

Now here’s something you don’t see every day. Doesn’t look like much, does it? But this baby is a real depanneur bike. I shot it on St. Catherine Street the other night. I suppose it belongs to a non-dep worker, someone who’s got some great reverse-snob wheels going. By the way, in case you didn’t know (and you didn’t, did you?), a depanneur — or “dep” as we blokes call it — is basically a corner store. Beer is their mainstay. In the old days, most of them delivered, and they had some career underachiever on the payroll (if you can call it that). Notice the basket on this bike — it was basically designed to carry a case of two-four. Itsy-bitsy plastic bags would just fall out of this baby.
Well, nowadays the family depanneur is pretty much a thing of the past. Gas-station emporia and chain stores (like Provi Soir) — not to mention the ubiquitous big box stores — have closed a lot of them down. Sure there are still corner stores, and they’re often run by hard working folks. But the depanneur culture of days gone buy has gone the way of the horse and buggy. It’s not everyday you see one of these babies, that’s for sure.

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