(Photos posted here: Includes me x infinity, sketches of a flaming Michael Jordan and a homeless Robert DeNiro, and plenty of unartistic shots of the festival and other parts of Montreal.)

Among the ways one could measure a city's fun potential is to calculate how far you'd be willing to drive just to spend two nights there. Montreal is a 750-mile round trip from NYC — about 14 hours of driving, including food breaks and border-crossing grillings — but it was well worth it for our party of seven.

We went primarily for the Montreal Beer Festival, which I attended last year (report | photos), an indoor/outdoor event for which visitors purchase tasting coupons and turn them in at individual booths.

Also for sale: souvenir mugs branded with everything from Stella Artois and Hoegaarden to, yes, Budweiser (and I saw some guy buy one; hard not to laugh) and snacks from frites with various mayo-based dips to deer jerky.

Knowing that my memory would be challenged by the boozefest, I carried around a pocket notebook. Here are some things I jotted down:

• At a New York rest stop, I saw a guy sporting a Steve Smith No. 8 Atltana Hawks jersey tucked into his pants. That brings the total number of Hawks jerseys I've ever seen to 1.

• Local bars pour liquor through those measuring devices that prevent bartenders from overpouring. Can we find the guy who invented that policy and fit him for cement shoes?

• Late Friday night, feelin' all Merle Haggard at the Downtown strip club, I wrote: "I wanna go home. My eyeballs hurt."

• This guy could have used Clark Griswold's French-to-English translator:

Man No. 1: "[French mumbo jumbo]"
Man No. 2: "Did he just say we could fuck her for $35."

• A booth at the beer festival sold these enormous hot-dog-looking sandwiches, easily challenging 12 inches. I thought they should have been called John Holmes Dogs. I also lost my appetite right after thinking that. They were so phallic that when I caught the eye of a young blonde woman about to wrap her lips around one, she just laughed, embarrassed.

• Best T-shirt seen: "Porn Star Instructor - First Lesson Free."

• A menu in both French and English included these delectable treats: "smocked turkey," "peperonni" and "pepperomi."

• Not that we asked for anything more than a strip club recommendation, but Freddie the cab driver offered his phone number and this offer: He would drive us somewhere outside of the city for $120 so we could have "the time of our lives." "You can fuck. You can get sucked," he said, for $130 and $100, respectively. I asked Freddie if the ugly ones were cheaper and he said they were. We didn't call.

• Not that we asked for anything more than a strip club recommendation (again), but our waiter at dinner Sunday night also suggested hookers, saying, "They come to your door, and if you're not happy, just ask for another one." Our waiter. Welcome to Montreal.

• Instead we went to L'axe, which, now that I'm looking for it, some people have posted about elsewhere online: This review site includes "Great leasbian [sic] scenes and I got laid with one of the strippers!!!" I can attest to the first. Another forum post mentions Lola from Brazil, who made a bit of coin from at least one of our party.

• More on L'Axe. You know you're not in an NYC strip club when: a) The waitress isn't bothering you, and you're actually getting thirsty, so you get up to go to the bar to buy a drink; b) there's no cover on Saturday night, but you have to tip the doorman a minimum of $2 Canadian ($1.60 American); c) Dances are so cheap ($10 Canadian; $8 American) that the better half of the girls are so busy that you almost have to stalk them to try to get a dance; d) Once in the private booth, the stripper reminds you it's OK to touch; e) One guy got his hands sprayed with disinfectant before a dance.

• L'Axe had two TVs. One showed hardcore porn, the other pro wrestling. These are the kinds of things that keep me up at night. Shouldn't every single decision in a place of business be made based on its effect on the bottom line? And if so, who determined that a mix of porn and pro wrestling was the absolute best combination? If, say, both TVs showed porn, would any of the customers be less horny and less apt to spend money? Would the wresting fans just bolt and hurt the bar's bottom line? Now you know why I'm the guy the stripper had to remind it's OK to touch, because I'm sitting in a strip club watching pro wrestling and writing in a pocket notebook about why this interests me so.

• You know one of your friends is a loud yapper when he's chastised by another in the party for not shutting up in an adjacent booth in the private-dance area.

• Of course, there's more to the city. Old Montreal is a great place to chill, shop and nurse a hangover. But did you want to read about that or strippers? Thought so.