Great story.

Imagine these people outside an sf convention!

Lest you think I'm completely sheltered, though, I do know what the "doses, doses" folks mean. Maybe it's a regional thing.

I was a total rube and I figured it out.

Linkmeister @9, the guys approaching me were a pretty diverse collection. Always guys, though.

I'm trying to remember if there's a canal near our Canal street. A branch of the river, maybe.

How odd that your Canal street also runs through your Chinatown, same as Chicago's.

When I first came to Chicago in the company of science fiction fans, over thirty years ago, we were making our way through the streets when we came across a bus stop with a sign indicating the name of the route.

CANAL-WACKER, it read.

We decided this was a reference to an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, Canal Wackers of Mars. The rest of the weekend was filled with references to the wacking of canals.

Oh, you've been through that Shadow too?

My boss was looking for a 'coach' bag for his wife (I had never heard of them; maybe a reflection on the fact that I'm originally from Idaho and now live in Nebraska). So when a lady came up and whispered 'dvds, cds, whatever you want', he told her no thanks, but that we wanted a coach bag. She glanced around, took us to a shop a couple doors down, walked us to the back (all these shops are about 8 feet wide and 50 feet deep), past an old guy that gave us the once over, and through a door into a tiny hallway. At the other end of the hallway was what looked like a stockroom, and I assumed we were going in there. But instead, another lady came in, closed both doors, and OPENED THE WALL! Serious, straight-out-of-Scooby-Doo stuff. I think I clapped.

The secret door opened into a tiny (maybe 5x8) room lined with coach bags, prada, and other name-brands. He got three different bags for something like $60. I picked up a little leather prada-knockoff for $25. But even if I hadn't bought anything, it would still have been a fun time. Secret doors! Pirates! Arrrrr....

The names of these pirates, the Doctor thought, were not dissimilar to those of pigeons; a panoply of blacks and shades of gray, colourful in adjectives rather than hues.

As to the pirates as agents of political transformation, he had made some notes upon the subject, which indicated that their primary purpose was taking things from ships and trading them for rum and intimate favours, in places ranging from Tortuga to Whitehall. Some did affect views on individual freedom, though these would have rattled the brains of a Paine or a Wollstonecraft, and the notion that they were a seething mass of nautical Robespierres would not stand the light.

It was good to have an enemy, he reflected, and it was good to have an enemy who believed odd things that were incompatible with one’s own views. He had encountered sailors from English towns that were fiercely proud of having been sacked by ships scattered from the Armada. While the only evidence of such pillage was here a stack of cannonballs and there a public house named “Ye Dead Spaniardo,” every man from those villages stood ready, centuries later, to take the battle back to Philip II, with his dreadful religion and his incomprehensible consonants.

By John M. Ford

9:24am: for September 19

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Hey!

You like Chan? Jacky Chan? You like Rush Hour? Rush Hour 3? You haven't seen yet?

How about DVD? Brand new DVD, fresh off boat. Real color label. Region 1, subtitles in Cantonese -- don't worry, you just ignore those. Good price on DVD, Rush Hour 3. Ten dollar! Five dollar?

There. You have nice day!
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You like Chuck Norris?