A Conversation for 30 Hours in Hooverville: Dramatis Personae 2019
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Started conversation Oct 27, 2019
If you're interested in joining the Hooverville cast, feel free to let us know.
If you don't think you have time to write every single day, don't worry - we're not pedantic about it.
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant Posted Oct 29, 2019
Dmitry, am I understanding you correctly when you said the story would start between midnight and 1:00 a.m. on November first? As proud purveyor of quality china, Arsenio Philpott probably isn't going to have many customers at that late hour, except for the pesky aliens who come down to feed the bloodthirsty Audrey II, who sits ion her pot near the entrance. (That's one way to handle shopliofters! )
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Oct 29, 2019
See? Creativity already abounds. Yes, the first task is to figure out what everyone is doing at midnight.
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Oct 29, 2019
Of course, in the real town on which this layout is modeled, the night owls are: college students, people who have the munchies and are headed for McDonald's, and...er, actual owls. (And night-prowling .)
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
FWR Posted Oct 29, 2019
The hidden underbelly of Hooverville shall be revealed ....(owls optional)
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant Posted Oct 29, 2019
"Interesting to see who the night owls are!" [FWR}
Arsenio Philpott would be the owliest of night owls. That's not the problem, though. Unless you mean for him to live in his shop, or in apartment directly above it, what logical reason would there be for him to in the shop at that hour?
Let's say that he has only just arrived in town. If he wants to get to know his neighbors better, wouldn't that be better done during daylight hours. He does not, of course, want to be thought of as having prurient interests, does he? This is the Victorian Age, after all.
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Oct 29, 2019
Victorians with motorcycles...this could get interesting...
Just don't do anything Sasha has to arrest you for. Or do, if you like...
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
minorvogonpoet Posted Oct 29, 2019
Given that I know nothing about local government in the US, I'm tempted to make my Mayor a confused English expat.
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Oct 29, 2019
Go for it!
I've met one of the mayoral candidates for the upcoming election, and asked him what the mayor actually does.
He's a booster who helps come up with new ideas, initiatives and projects. The day-to-day running of things is done by a town manager. The borough council meets twice a month. The mayor who's just left was also the executive director of the town library.
So you can make up whatever you like - and sure, the mayor can be English. I know of some city council members in large cities who came from all over the world: Somalia, India...
Also: local government in the US takes so many varied forms, almost anything you choose will be done somewhere.
Since Hooverville is made up, you could be planning an imaginary festival, or meeting with people from a 'sister city' in some exotic place, or talking to the schoolkids about environmentalism, or whatever your heart desires. You could fend off importunate citizens with gripes about zoning...it boggles the mind.
Or be trying to win the 'most beautiful Main Street' competition...just thinking aloud... or uncovering a potentially explosive scandal about one of the town's founders from 200 years ago...or wanting to prove that George Washington actually slept here...
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Oct 29, 2019
PS Potential scandal is not impossible: there was a cross-dressing Royal Governor of New Jersey...they're still talking about that.
http://weirdnj.com/stories/mystery-history/a-governor-in-queens-clothing/
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant Posted Oct 29, 2019
I guess Arsenio Philpotts could be up late putting away the Halloween china and taking out some really exotic Thanksgiving stuff.
By the way, are we really going to be held to the year 1906? Or can this be contemporary? Since you've said that there can be different realities in he town, can we have time warps in which some of us are in one tie, and others are in others?
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Oct 30, 2019
Actually, I assumed we were in the present day. I realise the map is old, but that's just when it was made. Oddly, the buildings in that 1896 town plan are still there in 2019.
I left out the part past the church - there's a McDonald's that wasn't there in the horse-and-buggy days. And the Catholic church now looks like a miniature Sydney Opera House, for reasons known only to a demented architect.
The place could be like that street in Liverpool - you know, where people eating their lunch in the park suddenly experience time slips...
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant Posted Oct 30, 2019
I misunderstood. It's better to be in the present, or the recent present, if that's a term .
But I do love time travel stories (I wrote a science fiction novel once about a dyslexic time machine ).
So, *mostly*in the present, but with minor excursions to the past in search of dinnerware patterns that were presumed lost in the mists of time.
Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant Posted Oct 30, 2019
Twenty or twenty-five years from now, *I* will be an antique.
I became interested in china patterns because (1.) many of them are adapted from first-rate art, (2.) the production standards of the high-end producers are exemplary, (3.) you can buy the smallest, most inexpensive piece in a pattern (such as a bread plate) and still have something lovely, and (4.) if you take good care of your china between uses, who knows how long they will stay in good condition? Some of the less expensive ironstone pieces I bought 18 or 19 years ago are still in very good condition despite having been used more than 100 times.
(Here I am, rattling along, and the Hooverville saga hasn't even begun yet. )
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Hooverville Cast List: Anybody Else Interested?
- 1: Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor (Oct 27, 2019)
- 2: paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant (Oct 29, 2019)
- 3: Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor (Oct 29, 2019)
- 4: FWR (Oct 29, 2019)
- 5: Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor (Oct 29, 2019)
- 6: FWR (Oct 29, 2019)
- 7: paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant (Oct 29, 2019)
- 8: Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor (Oct 29, 2019)
- 9: minorvogonpoet (Oct 29, 2019)
- 10: Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor (Oct 29, 2019)
- 11: Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor (Oct 29, 2019)
- 12: paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant (Oct 29, 2019)
- 13: Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor (Oct 30, 2019)
- 14: paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant (Oct 30, 2019)
- 15: Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor (Oct 30, 2019)
- 16: paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant (Oct 30, 2019)
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