Don't look now, but summer is here!

The minute the temperature hits a consistent 28C, the sun is shining, the humidity rises to uncomfortable "your car seat sticks to your skin" levels, St. Laurent closes to traffic for its annual "Main Madness" fair, it's summer in my books, no matter what the calendar might say.

There's something comforting and insanely frustrating about the knowledge that, no matter how cold and damp it may have been up to the Fringe Fest, the minute you get your tickets and cram yourself into one of the myriad of makeshift basement venues around Rachel and St. Laurent, the mercury will skyrocket to painfully hot levels.

It's an annual rite of passage to find myself sweating bullets, awkwardly stuck next to some other hapless soul who is also braving 40C weather and no semblance of AC (not even a simple fan), in order to catch a performer from Edmonton or New Zealand bare his soul and share intimate feelings about his love life, childhood memories and his perplexed, yet valiant, attempt to understand life, such as it is.

Nothing I saw this year at the Fringe blew me away, but that doesn't mean there weren't gems to be found among the hundreds of offerings. It just means that I didn't find them – or ran out of time, which is so often the case when you're busy taking it all in on the Main.

A microcosms of what makes Montreal so endearing to me, the Main is its lifeline, its meeting point, its beating heart. The proverbial paradox, the Montreal melting pot, the Main is the land of hobos and hippies, artists and anarchists, the glamorous and the glib. When the street is closed to traffic, the vibrations of people, not cars, take over.

As the smell of mouth-watering grilled Portuguese chicken wafted through the air, Montreal women, wearing as little as possible, cemented their reputation as North America's most beautiful females, while Montreal's metrosexuals rivaled them in style and attitude. Jewelry stands peddled their wares, while children walked around trying to tackle mango on a stick, as it dripped down their hands; such a sticky affair.

University students with mischievous smiles, sat on their window sills above the crowds, water gun in hand, dispensing indiscriminate squirts, which, given the heat, perhaps weren't all that unwanted… or unwarranted.

I people-watched for hours, marvelling at the transformation that takes place in this city, the minute we throw off our jackets and let the sun kiss our skin. Sipping ice-cold sweet Sangria outside La Cabane, my friends and I took in the sounds, smells and sensations that is summer in this city.

At 1 a.m. outside of The Main Steakhouse, I caught Montreal wild child, Rufus Wainwright, fresh off his sold-out show at Place des Arts that very night, smoking a cigarette and texting a friend, while waiting for his mother and aunt, the McGarrigle Sisters, to join him. Montrealers are so blasé about these chance encounters. Everyone kept on drinking. Summer is here; we're just getting started.