Somewhere back in the mists of 1995 in the quiet area code of 604, there was a BBS known as Al's House of Meats run by the irrepressible James Joyce. I was pretty new to the BBS world at the time so AHOM's neon colour scheme and anarchist attitude seemed like something fairly revolutionary. But like most good things, it came to an end when it got sucked into the abyss sometime in April of that year. Feeling suitably angsty about its demise, I vowed the the void would be filled and in November 1995 the first incarnation of Dreams of Dark Enchanted Lizards (aka DoDEL) went online. At its core, DoDEL was little more than a colourful PD board running under the Renegade BBS software by a very, very green sysop. It had a few echomail nets like tabnet and kitchnet and a couple art scene affiliations like Mistigris and later Hallucigenia. However it also had a rabidly devoted userbase, ansi menus featuring the board hosts/lizards Zil and Sdra, scrabble, a poetry gallery and other strange surprises. DoDEL ran for about three years and before it, like all BBSs of the day, went the way of the dinosaur thanks in large part to the Internet.