Calm Before The Geekstorm

You cannot find a Dunkin’ Donuts in San Diego. This is more dire than it first might sound.

We take our Dunkin’ Donuts coffee seriously in New England. There isn’t a highway offramp between Providence and Bar Harbor where you can’t find a D & D within half a mile, and it is the morning beverage of choice for everyone other than the hipster douchebags who live near Boston University or in Cambridge or maybe Brookline, and no one gives much of a fuck what those commies think anyway.

As an example: while waiting in line for the TSA security screening at Logan Airport yesterday, there was a teenaged girl, who looked as exhausted as Amanda and I felt, slurping on a large Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee when the security drone told her she couldn’t bring any liquids through the checkpoint. She asked the guy if there was a “Dunkies” after the checkpoint, and when he told her no, she left the fucking line and went to the back so she could finish her dollar-fifty coffee.

So when I woke up at 5 a.m. local time here in San Diego, jetlagged and hung over, I asked my magical new smartphone if southern California had heard the word of God between last year and this year, it turns our that had… but not in any way that would help me.

Sure, there’s a Starbucks in the lobby of our hotel, but as a Bostonian, I believe that Starbucks hot coffee tastes as if it were heated with napalm while being filtered through crushed Galouise cigarettes. So I trudged off toward downtown to see what other options the good people of San Diego might have for a visitor who is wishing for either coffee or a quiet death.

And, as with every year, I was struck by the feeling of calm. The calm before the Geekstorm.

People can still drive on the roads going past the San Diego Convention Center, but that won’t last for long. There are still workmen putting the finishing touches on the hype billboards and simulated high-tech science fiction environments (underneath low-tech tents, as if it ever rains here in San Diego), and if you peek in the windows, you can see people trucking things around in preparation of Preview Night, which starts around 6 p.m. this evening.

Long-time Comic-Con attendees will be pleased to know that Twilight is clearly well and truly over; there was no line queueing up under the tents to guarantee entrance to the earliest Thursday panels. There was, however, a single blanket and travel chair at the front of the line, both unmanned, indicating that at least two people are bigger-than-average fans of the 14th Animation Show of Shows, and that those people clearly needed coffee just as much as I did.

The cops were already starting to mill around, usually around workmen putting up generator-powered streetlight arrays. I imagine general public safety is on the minds of local government (except for the mayor, who according to extensive local news coverage, is apparently busy trying to avoid resigning for demanding blowjobs from constituents or some Goddamned thing), given the pedestrian that was killed last year and what happened at the Boston Marathon in April. I, however, feel completely safe; considering what they’re saying about the mayor, I anticipate that the cops will be on high alert to keep him safe, since there is probably a decent chance he will be at the convention, wearing a mask and shadowing the more attractive cosplayers to store up mental jack material.

But even at 6:30 a.m., there were lines beginning to form up. There was the usual line of ten or fifteen people hoping to get a gig volunteering for the con in exchange for passes, which is something I can only vaguely understand. Just attending SDCC is an exhausting proposition; I can’t really see how someone could really think they could enjoy walking the floor after an exhausting set of hours directing foot traffic and shouting, “Dammit, for the last time, that’s not the men’s room! Use the door to your left, Mr. Mayor!”

But an even larger line had started to form up at the main entrance. These are the people who will spend all day waiting in line for the door to open for people to exchange their barcode printouts for laminates at around 3 p.m…. and they will then spend another three hours waiting in another line for the doors to the main floor to open, so they can bolt as fast as they can to wait in yet another line at one booth or another to get their hands on one exclusive SDCC giveaway or another. Last year, the big take was the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier playset; I really don’t know what it’s gonna be for this year, because I didn’t ask. I had a much more important question to ask them.

“Hey buddy… is there a Dunkin’ Donuts anywhere around here?”

So it turns out: Starbucks coffee still sucks. So once we choke this shit down, we’re off to find the last pre-Comic-Con priced breakfast we’ll have until Monday, and see some sights until the doors open for Preview Night. Upon which we shall return with pictures and news from the main floor.

And in the meantime: don’t forget to follow us on Twitter; we will be live-tweeting panels and events as we attend them, including some pictures that you won’t necessarily see here on the main site. For example, that will be the place to see the evidence if, say, the mayor of San Diego exposes himself to Amanda or myself.