Monday

Talking Cabs & Contraband with Dave Sim

A few months back while visiting the folks in my hometown of North Bay, I blasted 350kms down the 400 to check out the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. It was well worth the trip - along with meeting some cool SLG and other comic artists, after (more than) a few pints I managed to get babbling about my old uni town, my part time cabbie job and this funny/cheesy/giant bar called Lulu's with Dave Sim. It was very cool to meet Dave but the truth is I vaguely remember our chat. Thankfully, Dave's decided to recap this rather blurry conversation on his blog (www.davesim.blogspot.com.). Kinda' happy I wasn't that much of a mess!...T


"T.J. Behe who had had a few by that point came up and struck up a conversation and gave me his business card. He's doing a title with Phil Elliott (there's a blast from the U.K. past) called Contraband which will be coming out from Slave Labor "in early `08".

Turned out he used to drive a cab here in town and we started reminiscing about Lulu's. Used to be a K Mart and they gutted the place and turned it into a bar. That's right, a K Mart-sized bar so you know it was the 80s. It was in the Guiness Book of World Records for The World's Longest Bar. I saw Jerry Lee Lewis there, James Brown…a very unhappy Bay City Rollers revival (missed that one did you?), Elvis, Elvis, Elvis (three impersonators). It was absolute heaven for cab drivers since it was way out on the highway so, as he said, wherever the customer was going it was going to cost at least $20 to get there. It wasn't unusual to have 50 cabs lined up at closing time.

The thing that really bothered me was that the place was so huge (how huge was it, Dave?) it was SO huge that if you downed a drink and just walked from one side to the other, you had sobered up by the time you got there. The thing I liked about it was it was mostly civilians who didn't get out much so you could usually get pretty close to the stage without having to step on anyone. I was about ten feet away for Jerry Lee Lewis and James Brown.

Anyway, T.J. is probably hoping that I've completely forgotten him (as you always do when you meet someone when you've had a few) and lost his business card, but no such luck, mate. Check out the work in progress at www.contrabandcomic.com."