Dockside Dolls in Collinsport...

[AndreDuPres]

To use the vernacular, what's up with all the hookers in Collinsport?  How could such a tiny little fishing village support all these ladies of the evening?  I mean, there are about 4 of them in the 1795 storyline, all within 40 episodes of each other!  Lucky Barnabas--the prostitution industry is booming in the 'port.

[Raineypark]

WAS Collinsport a tiny little fishing village?  I was under the impression it was larger than that, and that it had a thriving fishing/cannery industry going.

It's not unusual for prostitutes to work on docks.  Men who have been at sea for a prolonged period of time are likely customers. 

[Midnite]

WAS Collinsport a tiny little fishing village?  I was under the impression it was larger than that, and that it had a thriving fishing/cannery industry going.

If you go by Art Wallace's outline, it had a thriving tourist trade as well.  In Shadows on the Wall  he wrote that Collinsport had a population of 3000 that increased by nearly half in the summer.

[Raineypark]

..... he wrote that Collinsport had a population of 3000 that increased by nearly half in the summer.

A thriving tourist trade!
Kind of like  "Barnabas does the Hamptons"!
(He'd be an amateur blood sucker in THAT crowd..... )

[Misa]

There were also probably lots of foreign sailors off the ships that have docked there. So the prostittutes would have lots of customers.

Misa

[PennyDreadful]

This thread is too funny.  That's true, there are an abundance of ladies of the night in Collinsport.  Prostitutes are like the DS equivalent of Star Trek's "red shirts".  Any time you see a doxy on DS, you just know she's going to be pushing up the daisies before the episode is over. 

[MagnusTrask]

Well, I guess learned the meaning of "doxy" today.    Derived from "dock"?    3000 is small.    Maine only has two or three real cities.    Another factor would be, at least in 1795, that morals of the time meant that if you're only after one thing, or want it anytime soon, like before you go out again for more tuna (I swear no joke whatsoever was intended there, just noticed it myself.   What joke?   Why none at all.   I just imagined it.   Moving on...), then "doxies" are your only hope.   So maybe they travel up and down the coast, going to the different ports.    If they're enterprising young go-getters, that is.

I'm aware of only one cannery in Collinsport, the Collins's.  If they had competition, I never heard about it.

Penny:  You just forced me to imagine the cello music swelling, the camera panning over to reveal BC's newest victim on the Collinsport docks... and it's... a red tucked-in-shirt Star Trek crewman, screaming in agony as BC's fangs sink in...   making the most of his one and only appearance ever on network television....

[stefan]

When you really think about the vampire angle of DS I think it's interesting that most of Barnie's victims either get killed from a bite or from other forms of violence. It's not really like, say, King's "Salem's Lot" where the whole town becomes one big vampire community. Barnabas rarely turns anyone into a vampire and that's what I thought vampire's did. But, then again, I read Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and you only have a few female vampire victims either living in his castle or roaming around the countryside. I think that the "vampire" repercussions of Barnabas might have been interesting in itself and they wouldn't have needed to bring in the warewolfes and mad scientists, but they never really went there. Carolyn was sort-of a live vampire victim but she never really suffered much because of it.

[Raineypark]

That's an interesting observation.  Frankly, I never understood the idea of Vampires creating new vampires out of their victims.  That's just creating competition, no?  Why create another supernatural creature with the same blood-lust need as yourself?  Humans, you can control or kill.  Other vampires, not so easy.  Why make trouble for yourself?

[Josette]

I'm aware of only one cannery in Collinsport, the Collins's.  If they had competition, I never heard about it.

It might have been the only one in Collinsport, but apparently there were others in very nearby towns.  When Burke first came back and was trying to ruin the Collins, he bought up the rival canneries and was trying to convince the Collins' workers to switch to him.

[D_Friedlander]

That's an interesting observation.  Frankly, I never understood the idea of Vampires creating new vampires out of their victims.  That's just creating competition, no?  Why create another supernatural creature with the same blood-lust need as yourself?  Humans, you can control or kill.  Other vampires, not so easy.  Why make trouble for yourself?

Somebody with whom a lonely undead individual would defintely have the most important defining traits in common and with a sympathetic ear to whom he or she could co-miserate?  Like the "family" Anne Rice later created with Lestat, Louis, and Claudia in Interview With A Vampire, but I agree that a small town would NOT have been a practical headquarters for this kind of arrangement.  To make a vampire commune work and not arouse (much) suspicion, Barnabas would have had to take his act on the road, maybe to Boston if he didn't want to go SO far away.

[AndreDuPres]

Hmmm, I like the direction this topic is going:  there weren't many vampiric "rvials" to Barnabas on the show, and when they appeared, he got rid of them fairly quickly...all except a certain one in the Summer of 1970 storyline, and I think their relationship had a lot of potential before Barnabas I-Ching-ed and the good Doctor went down that staircase through time.  I realise not many people care much for this other vampire, but I think she could have brought more depth to the vampire thing which had basically become just a plot device at this point.  I mean, Barnabas sees a hooker, bites her, feels remorse, moans to Julia or Ben about how wretched he is and how someone should end his misery, bites another one, and so on and so forth--it was wonderfully done initially, when we see him become one of the Undead in 1795, but he did it over and over again ad nauseum.  Anyway...did all the prostitutes have names?  I remember Ruby Tate and Maude Browning, but what about the Leviathan one played by Marsha Mason?

[michael c]

i just started watching the 1897 storyline when barnabas finds himself once again...well,you know.
so you can bet that one of the first things he does is hightail it to those docks.here he meets a lady called "sophie baker".needless to say she suffers the same fate as her 1795 counterparts(though there's a funny bit with a compact).

but think about this.when barnabas is first released in 1967 he doesn't hit the docks but the diner and claims the very un-hookerish maggie evans as his first victim.there is some talk of other local girls being attacked at this time but the word prostitute is never mentioned.i wonder why?was it o.k. to talk about prostitutes in a historical context but not in the present?

i suppose being chained in a coffin for 200 years would piss anyone off but the barnabas that is first released in 1967 is very different than the one who was so filled with self loathing in 1795 when he was chained there in the first place.he's as mean as a hornet and doesn't have any qualms about it.

[PennyDreadful]

 Actually, in '67 Barnabas hits the local barnyard first, because they start finding cattle drained of blood!  If it wasn't Barnabas, then maybe it was the Chupacabra.

[michael c]

true penny,

he does first hit the barnyards(yuck)and of course willie loomis.
but unlike the guilt ridden vampire we see in the past time periods who preys on ladies of the night(whom i suppose the writers found contemptuous enough to be disposable victims)the early 1967 barnabas seems to have no qualms about choosing "decent" people like maggie or even a relative like carolyn.