Caner Tricks and Tips: 1. The Smart Shoe Schnickle

Mr. Houston introduced the "Smart Shoe Schnickle" to me. However, I feel that such is it's utility, it deserves to be brought to the attention of a wider bar-going audience. Here is my story:

"Impromptu piss-up" I thought to myself - excellent! I'd just got in touch with a few of the boys and girls at Agora by email for the first time since coming back from travelling. So I sent them an email, basically saying, you know, I'm back in England it would be great to meet up. So anyway, they all just then wrote back to me immediately, saying "Oh, come out in London tonight, we're all out round there." They were going to this bar called On Anon, and sent me a link to a review of it in some kind of online time out.

It was some kind of super-bar apparently, with 8 floors, and it said if you like tiger tiger or the loop then you'll love this. I'm not exactly sure how anyone is supposed to like tiger tiger, so I wasn't holding out much hope, and I wasn't really holding out that much hope of getting in, because I was just in casual clothes.

So I pitched up there with Matt from Wide and his friend Rani, who were clearly a lot better dressed than I was and you could tell I was in instant trouble just from the skiing jacket. So the bouncers look me up and down and go:

So that was it, and we had to retire to Barcode to evaluate our options. Now, clearly there were going to be loads of Agora people at the bar, and so I phoned a bunch of them. Gavin goes "Come back to the bar anyway, and I'll have an argument with them and try and get you in." That didn't seem particularly like working, so I said "Don't worry, Gav, we'll give the old Smart Shoe Schnickle a go."

The Smart Shoe Schnickle

Although I've attributed this to Houstie - and let's face it the night would've been worse off without this imparted knowledge - I don't expect he can lay claim to a patent or anything. It's worth paying attention to this one if you like going to the kind of wanky bars where they decide for you if you've dressed well that evening, however.

So, here goes. Matt and Rani head back into the bar and start ordering champagne, whilst Matt gives Rani his shoes, and then Rani eventually heads back out of the bar again with them secreted about his person. I stick them on, and then try to head back into the bar on my own, to avoid rousing suspicion in the Neanderthals on the door.

"Sorry mate, I turned you away earlier for inappropriate dress, and you're not coming in with those trousers on." It's not hard to see why he recognised me. I'm wearing a luminous skiing jacket and have bleached blond hair, so it's not really surprising he's spotted me again.

"Oh come on, lad," I remonstrate. "I've just been all the way back to the office to change these shoes, because you told me you didn't like them and now you tell me you don't like the trousers either. You could've mentioned them when you told me about the shoes."

Just to digress for a moment: door staff. Surely, they must rank only slightly below estate agents on the list of all-time most annoying f*ckers on the planet. Now, don't get me wrong, I think a lot of the people who take up door work start off as really nice people, and let's face it, the profession itself is nice little earner if you want to be a full-time bodybuilder. But there's just something about the job that means that after a couple of months of it, it turns you into a total tosser with muscles. In many ways, it's a bit like being a bus-driver*, in which a cheeky 25 year old spends the first two years of his bus-driving career chatting up the schoolgirls and making sexual innuendo with old women. But then, slowly over time, he turns into a miserable old 30+ year old curmudgeon who wont let people get on after they've run 200 meters to get to the bus-stop. Incidentally, this I attribute largely to the merging of the jobs "bus driver" and "bus conductor". The bus driver must, after some point start thinking "for f*cks sake, are they paying me to drive the bloody bus, or to make change for some twat going three stops with a twenty-note?". Anyway, I digress.

Clearly, it's early days for these doormen and they haven't yet got the hang of really ruining people's evenings for fun. Besides which, my last argument is a winner, the only possible thing that could go wrong is that they recognise Rani's shoes on me, which is really unlikely. "Look mate" says Bouncer 1, "it's for your own benefit. We just want you to have a good time, and how can you do that if you're not dressed for the occasion?" Sensing now that I'm on to a winner, I begin to think up possible answers, but then a large group of girls arrives at the door and the bouncers lose interest in me completely.

Hey presto, I'm home free.

Footnote:

One of the hazards of this operation is that you can easily get paint on your shoes. Obviously, someone has to get your old shoes into the place as well, so that you can change back. However, if no bag is to hand, make sure you find a clean bag somewhere. We borrowed one off a builder, which unfortunately had paint in the bottom of it. This meant that, once inside the club and back in my old shoes, I was actually even more scruffy-looking than I was when I started. Luckily for the bouncers, I didn't track paint all round the bar too.

- bob

*Bus-Driver/Conductor Curmudgeon Theory, R. Moffat, V. Singer 2000.

(Note: We hasten to point out that Bob's personal views on bouncers, are not necessarily those of bunchofcaners. We would like to point out that bouncers let us in places on a weekly basis and should be treated with respect as they are a vital element of nightclubs. Bus Drivers, however, are another matter altogether. - Ed)