Local Indie Boutique celebrates year 1 with an Air Show

Yay! A Birthday party for old pals and allies, awesome local indie boutique in our neighborhood, General 54!

Talk about supporting a local arts scene; the crew from General and sister store Local 23 are known throughout the Mile End Plateau district here in Montreal for their smart collections of only local indie designers. Up at Local 23 on Bernard you can find local Indie publications and music, alongside cool recycled styles, and both stores boast good secondhand selects, and General rounds out the bright fashionable indie goodness with art shows and cool crafted homewares.

I enjoyed shopping in these spots for a while before approaching them about trying to sell the few embroidered, silk screened, reconstructed T’s I’d made with Dayna Gedney, and before talking to them about helping us get Indyish off the ground. To my joy and astonishment, the shirts sold!! (all the really nice ones anyway - the others I cut up and framed bits of and gave away.) And the nice General/Local ringleaders helped us connect with loads of news artists, and we’ve proudly displayed their ads front page of Indyish.com ever since.

And now it’s their birthday! See you there?

“Air Show” Vernissage/General 54 Birthday Party:
Thursday April 19th 7pm onwards
Great cake, food and plenty of liquids
music by Dj Slutsky and Roxy Moron

“The Air Show”: a collection of airplane-themed works
at General 54 - 54 St. Viateur Ouest - April 18th-May 30th 2007

General 54 is a year old! We are celebrating our boutique’s first year
anniversary with an art exhibit to make your heart soar.

A little bit of history: We opened General 54 as a sister boutique to
our original store Local 23 in April 2006. The reason? We needed more
space! With a rapidly expanding roster of designers and creators, we
were running out of places to put things! Local 23 has continued on
with mostly vintage and recycled creations, while General 54 mixes
vintage finds with a large selection of vibrant new clothing and
accessories from Montreal and beyond.

From the store’s inception, aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart has been
General 54’s muse. Her portrait adorns our front entrance as keeper of
the boutique. In honour of her, we chose aviation as the theme for our
celebratory exhibit. “The Air Show” brings together a group of
fantastic Montreal artists such as painters Corri Lynn Tetz and Luc
Paradis, street artist Dan Buller, as well as Alexis Walker who will be
making ‘stewardess dolls’ for the occasion. Other contributors include
514 Productions and their aeronautically themed silkscreens as well as
Jeremy Gordaneer who will be exhibiting a new sculpture depicting a
crashing airplane.

Please join us as we celebrate a fantastic first year with the help of
some of Montreals most inspiring artists.

For more information on us, the artists, and designers please visit our
web site at www.local23.ca or www.general54.com