Sherlock Holmes's Regulars

 As someone given to pondering the structure of our Sherlock Holmes fandom and the levels of participation we see from fans of the great detective, I've been watching the Midwest BSI Canonical Conclave with great interest. What is the "Midwest BSI Canonical Conclave," you ask?

That's been a puzzle many of us have been pondering, even as we signed up to attend it. A recent FAQ sent out about the event gave a little more explanation gave a bit more info, parsing it out from local scion meetings, regional conferences, and the big kahuna weekend in New York City every January. The best brief description of the Conclave is "a super-sized multi-group scion society meeting." One almost pictures something like that congress of gangs in the old movie "The Warriors," so well reproduced in an episode of "What We Do In The Shadows" last year.

That would be the dream, I think, seeing a decent and fairly equal representation from all of the Sherlockian clubs of the midwest. But in practice, I'm wondering if our local scions will see any more of our members attending than make the effort to go to the regional conferences. As the Conclave FAQ explains, scion societies are the feeder clubs to both regional conferences and the birthday weekend in New York. Most local clubs only have a few members who make the leap to subscribing to The Baker Street Journal, much less hit Dayton, Minneapolis, or New York.

One interesting tell is the folks outside of the midwest who have expressed interest in the Indianapolis event -- the same folks you see almost everywhere, the Sherlock Holmes "Regulars." They'll be in New York. They'll be in Minneapolis. The best of them will be in Dayton, St. Louis, or any city where you're having a full-on weekend conference. And the most-most dedicated hit multiple scion meetings a month as well. We know we'll see them at the first of these Conclaves, even if they're not in the midwest. And if a similar event occurs in California or Philadelphia, they'll probably be there too.

The Canonical description of a Baker Street irregular is "These youngsters, however, go everywhere and hear everything. The are as sharp as needles, too, all they want is organization."

Which kind of inspires one to wonder -- what if someone did organize those uber-Sherlockians? The annual dinner of the capital "I" Baker Street Irregulars does eventually honor the most die-hard of them, especially if they live close enough to New York to attend regularly. (Yes, that is a mild dig at the slightly regional nature of BSI weekend attendance.) And maybe it does organize them -- I'm not present enough in those ranks to say. One thing you do know about those folks -- if you did organize them, they'd definitely show up.

But as for the rest of us, going everywhere and hearing everything is always the challenge. And whether or not the Midwest BSI Canonical Conclave will be able to draw a different crowd from a regional conference or a special dinner of the Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis, we shall be interested to see.