Settings for SR: U/CAS Louisville FTZ, More settings are better Options

[kigmatzomat]

1Louisville Free Trade Zone


Hoi chummers, welcome to the River City 2070's style. Time to dump all the barefoot hillbilly nonsense and face the facts about the Jefferson Sprawl. Y'all heard me right; I said sprawl. The Louisville metro area covers more than five thousand square kilometers sprawls right across the Ohio on both Kentucky and Indiana. There are three airports that are constantly hopping and a population of about 1.5 million people. Sounds like a sprawl to me.

Flashback: 20th Century In the late 1990's the Louisville city limits proper was only a small section of what was considered the Louisville area. See, back in the 1940's and 50's there were a lot of little communities that got in the habit of considering themselves cities of their own. Some had their own police, sanitation departments, mayors and town councils and all the political drek that goes along with putting up a city limits sign.

Around the late 1970's all these little towns had run together so that a number of people weren't even aware that there were towns there. The politicians didn't give a drek, and kept on passing laws that only affected ten or twelve block areas and collected city taxes. This came to an end in the 1990's when the trouble of keeping up all these little townships became too much work. Between the dozen little towns, Louisville proper, and Jefferson County governments, there were too many politicians in the game.

Weird thing is that they realized this and changed it.

Rallying around "mayor for life" Jerry Abrahmson, a unified Louisville-Jefferson County government was formed. Townships got to keep their names and pretty city limits signs but didn't have to deal with maintaining an independent government. This streamlined the hell out of the government and got it to the point where Louisville actually worked.

This was a good thing because Louisville's suburbs had got to the point they weren't always in Jefferson county or even Kentucky. Upper class "Private Communities" scattered across Bullitt and Oldham counties in Kentucky and Jeffersonville and New Albany in Indiana helped house the 1.2 million people in the metro area. For decades the region has been known as "Kentuckiana" and is often referred to as the northernmost city of the South and the southernmost city of the North.

Because of the relative efficiency of the highways and intercity loops, you could be get from any point in Jefferson county to any other point in around twenty minutes; thirty if you were going to or leaving from somewhere just outside the county. Rush hour typically added only 15 minutes to the commute of the average driver. Needless to say, Louisville did not suffer from the freeway shooting problems that plagued California. We also had a piss-poor mass transit system totally reliant on busses because someone had a pathological hatred of light rail.

While you're probably shaking your head wondering what this has to do with now, I do have a point to get to. See, if you don't understand how Louisville worked back then, you won't understand what happened during the Resource Rape, the Crash and the Night of Rage.

Or rather, what didn't happen.

Flashback: 21st Century

When the megacorps were set loose at the turn of the century, they began romping and stomping all over the natural resources of North America. Guess what; Kentucky really didn't have any that weren't already being exploited to the hilt. There were no minerals worth plundering, and everywhere there was coal someone was already mining it. The forests are on rough terrain and not worth the effort of logging. The land isn't suited to cultivating too many things and the cash crop of choice, tobacco, was already using any usable terrain.

The Night of Rage became the Long Weekend of Worry. We had some unjustified lynchings but things were too ... sprawling to really work up a good region-wide riot. The poor in the West End had it the worst, of course. The inevitable fires killed several hundred people and the run-down area just ran down some more.

>>(Anyone who lived in Portland back then would never call that the "Weekend of Worry." Too many people died or lost their homes in the fires to trivialize it.)--Old Pete

>>(And anyone who went through that Night in New York, Chicago, or LA would've called it A Minor Inconvenience.)--Eeestcoast

>>(If I did to your family what happened to mine and we'll see who's Inconvenienced, you little punk!)--Old Pete

>>(Yeah, time to close this thread.

I understand Pete's point of view but remember: this is being written by someone whose mother was two during the Night of Rage.)--Edministrator


So nothing happened. Absolutely nothing changed in Louisville itself. Oh, a few of the larger companies went to megacorp status; like General Electric, Ford, Toyota, and Humana-Providian but aside from their accounting departments no one could detect a change.

Well, almost nothing. In 2032 a misguided attempt to protest the corporate activity in the western states, a small group of ecofreaks tried to blow up a section of the Colgate production plant that was "polluting the Ohio River and making Mother Earth cry out in agony."

>>{The place was a seething cesspool on the face of Gaia.}<<< --
Heather

>>{Not until some misguided fruitloop blew up the chemical recovery system and turned the region into a toxic zone, you drek head.}<<< --SidheSellsSidheShells


The Blast

Had they done their homework the terrorists would have known that the bomb they placed wasn't attached to the production facility but to the chemical reclamation and waste disposal system. See, when Colgate got the permits to put a potential source of toxic waste they were ordered to install a massive waste system to keep the outflow in the safe zone.

In a cost-cutting maneuver, the company had cut a deal to provide waste disposal (read "sewage") facilities for the city of Jeffersonville in return for some hefty tax breaks and a little cash inflow to maintain the disposal facility. This meant the facility was equipped with a wide variety of chemical scrubbing systems and utilized chlorine and ozone in large quantities. When a bomb ruptures all the storage tanks and vaporizes the chlorine you get a series of secondary explosions. And if those explosions have a ready supply of ozone around to act as a catalyst you get large secondary explosions.

>>{Is that right? It’s been a while since I dropped out of high school but still that seems wrong. }<<--RicknRoll

>>{It’s close enough for government work. Basically, they blew up the only explosive things on site and happened to do it the same day as chemical delivery. Freak of bad luck since the bomb shouldn’t have done more than mucked up the plant. Instead it set off a disaster-movie-of-the-week chain reaction. }<<--MOS89D

The blast was right on the river and was audible miles away. It wasn't a particularly "pretty" explosion. The gases don't generate big pyrotechnic displays like a cheap Trid gasoline bomb; this was almost entirely concussive as the facility detonated like a fuel air bomb. A shallow crater twenty feet deep and almost a hundred feet across was created and windows on virtually all buildings facing the river for a quarter mile were transformed into high-velocity shrapnel, eviscerating thousands of wage slaves. Riverfront Park, a recent addition to the area, was first stripped bare then nearly submerged by the thirty foot wave.

>>{What isn't mentioned very often is that there were a handful of survivors at the park. The landscaped berms deflected the blast and debris, but there were fuel tanks for river barges were right next to the park. Imagine a nice, pretty day, a three year old playing in a sandbox when suddenly the ground shakes, your ears bleed, and you can see trees sent flying over head. When the tot digs himself out of the sand a river of fire forty feet high erupts not that far away from where the car was parked. Welcome to my 3rd birthday.}<<< --River Rat

Had that been the only damage from the blast it would have been a disaster. But it got worse. Dozens of vehicles on the Kennedy and 2nd Street Bridges right near the Indiana shores were hurled into the river or flipped over on the bridge, including several fuel trucks. A thousand liters of gas gave that spicy reddish haze of hell that every disaster needs. But why use a dash when you can use the whole bottle? Diesel tanks, used to refuel the barges and riverboats, had been split by the blast but had remained quiescent until given their queue. More than a million liters of fuel stretch all the way across the river and five miles west from the burning I65 Bridge, igniting the banks as it went. A coal barge was caught in the blaze and got hung up against the supports of the Sherman Minton Bridge. The heat from the coal fire melted the road deck and warped the frame before the barge burned through and sank.

Over a thousand people were killed between the blast and the fire. More than twelve thousand were injured. The river burned for 8 hours and the fires it set continued for another 4 days before finally being controlled, forcing twenty thousand people to be evacuated. The river fire damaged the locks, dams, and the supports of both bridges.

Commerce across North Am was significantly disrupted for six days. Louisville houses a major rail line, a major north-south and east-west interstate artery and the United Box Service (UBS) primary air shipping hub (Hub 2k).. Most people forget that the Ohio itself is a high-volume thoroughfare for barges carrying tens of thousands of tons of raw materials. It took 2 months to reconstruct an intermediate bridge and the river was rendered unusable for six months while the locks and dams were repaired. The concept of "disaster area" could have had Louisville's photo next to it. Several companies went out of business and the annual "Thunder over Louisville" fireworks show was cancelled for the first time since its inception.

>>{I'm still bitter about that. It's not like we didn't need a party to raise our spirits. Too many molly coddlers thinking the explosions over the river would have been "traumatic."}<<< --Secretaryit

>>{Damn straight. I flinched every time I heard thunder for years. I joined the Army when I turned 18 because I figured that it would either kill me or cure me cheaper than the decades of therapy I'd already been through.}<<< --River Rat

The bombers were never found; according to anonymous tips left by their so-called friends the fools had planned on watching the explosion from the river walk. The explosion should have turned them to paste and the wave would have washed their fluid remains back into the river in an act of cosmic justice. Poorly written eco-manifestos were found in their homes, along with prototype detonators and timers.

Despite the extent of the devastation, it wasn't as bad as the Tower falling onto the Loop in Chicago. That didn't stop astral devastation particular to the Ohio Valley. See, the bed of the Ohio in this area is a giant fossil bed. The long-gone local Indians referred to this as a land of the dead. Add one massive simultaneous death knell and a lot of environmental mayhem and you manage to charge an astral battery of some kind.

Downtown has a permanent background count and an unnatural occurrence of spontaneous spirit appearances. Fortunately the effect is fairly localized and fades roughly a mile from the river. The majority are water spirits but the incidence of spirits of all ilks is about 400% the norm. The spirits are generally harmless, or at least cause no harm, but they are disturbing.

>>{I’ve never heard of spontaneously manifesting spirits. Is 400% anything to worry about? }<<--AmericanTourista

>>{Do you really think that all the spirits and noncorporeal critters out there were summoned by someone? Spontaneous manifestion happens. Rarely, on the whole, but it happens. Still, it’s so rare that it means in Louisville someone who works downtown, right near the river where the odds are greatest, will probably only a see a spirit once every couple of years. }<<--Hunter4Hire

>>{Most of the reported manifestations are creepy but not harmful. Mobs of little glowing trilobites, a cross between a crab and a cockroach, swimming through the air. }<<--LilJohn

>>{They aren’t always harmless chummer. Those things go nuts around foci. Saw a mage once get cornered by a swarm. She wasn’t thrilled when they were kinda sniffin’ at her. She completely lost it, though, when they glommed onto her power focus. She was screamin’, cussin’, and started letting loose seven kinds a’ hell on these things. I dunno if it was the bugs or the strain of the spells but she was bleeding out her nose when she stopped. }<<--Lillard

Since then several Indian groups have wandered in to investigate and lay claims. So far they've been stymied.

>>{It's understandable that the local powers that be wouldn't want outsider injuns coming in and laying claim to some territory, but this is just plain odd. The fossil beds, previously a park, are now cordoned off and inaccessible by the general public. Armed guards wearing indistinct badges patrol the area constantly.}<<<--Feather Not Dot




Creation of the FTZ

Anyway, this came at a critical junction during the big hoo-hah of the day. The CAS was splitting off and money was tight everywhere. Louisville found itself an orphan as neither the CAS nor the UCAS wanted to deal with the cost of reconstruction. So in a fit of political wangling that would have made Mayor for Life Jerry proud, the Kentuckiana region pulled a few pages from the Denver playbook and got itself declared a free trade zone.

This had some significant corporate backers; Ford has two manufacturing plants in Louisville, the UBS hub was there, several companies had relocated to be close to UBS since you can cut 1-2 days off any shipping times, and there were numerous company headquarters there. The Louisville FTZ would rely on corporate sponsorship and certain transit fees to rebuild itself but would be an extra-territorial region affiliated with both the CAS and UCAS.

>>{Freaking traitors to their country is what they are.}<<--Patriot165

>>{Which country, yank?}<<--Re-re-R.E.Lee

>>{It's been two centuries, give it a rest or I'll close the thread. }<<--Edministrator

>>{Anyone care to explain how a city completely ensconced in the UCAS became a CAS/UCAS FTZ? }<<--AmericanTourista

>>{It was the chaos of the day. Kentucky waffled quite a bit about whether to join the CAS or the UCAS. We've got our share of Appalachia and tend to say "y'all" so the CAS seems like a good choice. On the other hand, the UCAS is wealthier and has a better infrastructure. Louisville established itself as an FTZ while the fight was still raging in the statehouse. Both Washington and Atlanta figured it was better to ensure they had some kind of grip on the city. Indiana had always felt that Jeffersonville and New Albany were foreign territory and didn’t really want to foot the bill for repairs so they willingly let the area go. }<<--HistoriCal


Louisville wound up with the entire Kentuckiana region; Jefferson, Bullitt, Oldham & Spencer counties in Kentucky and Floyd and Clark Counties in Indiana. The total land mass is right around 5,300 km2. There’s a few chunks of land on either side of the previous borders that got shifted but nothing to get huffy about. The only main break with the old county boundaries was Fort Knox in Hardin & Meade Counties. Fort Knox was almost a deal breaker for the whole FTZ as neither side wanted to cede Louisville that much firepower. Louisvillians argued that Denver’s security situation was obvious unworkable so a single, unified defense force was required. The CAS and UCAS delegations both agreed in theory. Things were at a deadlock until documented proof of spontaneous spirit manifestations was provided. This was at the time when most people heard “magic� and thought “Ghost Dance.� Fort Knox was considered a valid first-responder to an uncontrolled magical threat.

>>{Like a bunch of tanks would do anything to spirits. }<<--HeinousJohn

>>{Spirits are pretty resilient to mundane weapons at the human-portable level but a tank round will disrupt anything I’ve ever seen conjured.}<<--Flak

>>{Don’t forget elemental rounds. Water spirits hate fire and tanks have had various flammable rounds for quite some time. }<<--Tracker


Extradition between Louisville and the U/CAS is on a case-by-case basis, there's no federal/national tax (made up for by a high sales tax) and anything that is legal either in the CAS or UCAS is guaranteed to be legal in Louisville.

>>{That "or" is pretty important. Certain medicines, bits of technology, magic, and "services" can be had in Louisville that can't be had either to the North or to the South. Since Louisville is a FTZ, SINers from the CAS and UCAS can legally come here to get their jollies, pop some pills, or gather semi-illicit cargo, all without officially leaving the country.}<<--TheDickster

>>{Kentuckiana's got a history of this kind of thing. Selling weapons to Indians, running slaves/supplies back and forth during the Civil War, providing booze along the river during Prohibition, even selling fireworks that were illegal to use at the point of sale! This is just a bigger scale.}<<--HistoriCal

Note that Louisville doesn't necessarily outlaw everything that both the CAS and UCAS do. We've adopted some of the more tourist-friendly policies from across North Am. The drinking age is 18, prostitution is legal but unionized, gambling is legit as is marijuana and a few other light recreational drugs with license.

>>{Drug license?!? Think of the children!}<<--SallyDruthers

>>{Get off your moral high horse lady. Consumer Drug License holders must be child-free and on birth control implants, vehicles will only operate in AI-driven mode, and they cannot hold any job that is expected to negatively impact the public good i.e. no doctors, nurses, engineers, lawyers, cops, equipment operators, mechanics, etc. The licenses are public record and companies are allowed to restrict which positions are allowed to be filled by anyone with a CDL. }<<--OldPete

>>{If it's available to tourists it sounds like it could be fun. }<<--AmericanTourista

>>{Yeah, tourists and the do-nothings that would be on it anyway. With the high tax rate on drugs it amounts to a stupid-tax. }<<--SimpleMan

>>{Because a lot of corps have rules about drug use regardless of jurisdiction the city is laden with high end "spas" that can flush all traces of the drug out of your system. It's not cheap but beats getting canned once you get home. }<<--Quicklime

>>{Dude! Is BTL on that list? }<<--FourTwenty

>>{I'm amazed anyone on BTL would live long enough or be motivated enough to look up that reference. No, BTL is not allowed. }<<--OldPete

>>{Not entirely true. The legislation limits simsense feeds to certain signal parameters but the limits are well past "cold sim" even if they don't go all the way to "hot sim." Call it "warm sim" if you want or "Somewhat Better than Life."
>>{It isn't advertised as such, but several of those "spas" QuickLime mentioned have "mental stimulation" products that are BTL. If their accounting records are to believed, "mental stimulation" accounts for some 45% of most spas revenue stream. I suspect that there are off-the-books products that are being bought in scrip or in certified cred paid directly to the spa employees.}<<--Zodiax

>>{Well sonuva.... Just when you think you couldn't get any more bitter you learn something like this. }<<--OldPete


Louisville Borders & Paperwork

Identity in Louisville is pretty murky. "Natives" were given dual CAS/UCAS citizenship as well as the new Louisvillian status. Those born in Louisville are given a Louisvillian ID as well as inheriting the citizenship of their parents. Immigrants retain their original citizenship and acquire a Louisvillian ID once they are declared residents. Most folks who can trace their families back a couple of generations in town have triple citizenry (CAS/UCAS/Lville), recent immigrants are dual (Lville/CAS or Lville/UCAS) while tourists or those who haven't been granted residency only have single citizenship (CAS or UCAS).

>>{Post-Crash2.0 Louisville became a goldmine for IDs. Anyone who could find an apartment could manage to get a LouisvilleID in those early days, so a lot of tourists did so. The tangle of entry and exit information plus the historical web of citizenship resulted in some hardcore abuses of the system. Shadow runners in the area found themselves in the perfect situation, as they leveraged every safe house and squat to gather fistfuls of IDs valid across North Am.}<<--NameGiver

Entry into the FTZ is pretty simple for UCAS citizens: make sure your Comm is in Active mode and drive in. I64, I65, and I71 are all equipped with some pretty serious sensor gear that scan vehicles and as long as the identities provided by the Comms match the sensor scans you'll probably get in no problem. If the sensors don't match, or the computer decides to "randomly" target you, your vehicle will be flagged to go through the checkpoint. Unlike days past, the checkpoint is 90% automated, with a huge array of sensors looking for drugs, explosives, undocumented people or animals, weapons, etc, etc. The staff are really there to see how stressed you are and, sometimes, to perform an astral scan.

>>{Yeah, "random" my dermally armored tuckus. My ID is legit, totally pre-Crash, and I get searched every freakin' time I enter the city. Doesn't matter what vehicle I'm in, it's even happened when I was on a bus. }<<--Bigger'nyou

>>{While I know for a fact that there are biases in the programming, they shouldn't go off every time you enter the city. Most likely someone forged your ID at some point and the security system has it flagged. If you can avoid crossing the border for 103 days it will drop off the priority list. }<<--Zodiax

>>{103 days, huh. That's handy to know. Can I ask how you know that? }<<--CoreDump

>>{You can ask but do not expect me to answer. }<<--Zodiax

If you try to dodge the checkpoint you will draw the wrath of Zone Security, which is not fun. The initial response is a police interceptor. This isn't your standard police cruiser but a performance vehicle like a Westwind only modified. The interceptor will be accompanied by a trio of combat drones; two ground, one air. Gridlink will clear traffic and they will open fire if you don't pull over.

>>{For some reason no one is really quite clear on, there was a t-bird run on Louisville about three years ago under the guise of a cargo hovercraft. It happened late at night and there was a lot of politicking to keep it off the Net so not many people know about it. It caused a heck of a lot of damage and resulted in some serious upgrades. About two miles from the checkpoint there is a scout-class LAV on all the entryways and some heavy combat drones. }<<--ManinBlue

>>{Anti-tank drones to be exact, equipped with a mixture of armor defeating missiles. They use a military-grade remote targeting system to establish an active lock based on the sensors on the pursuit vehicles, the LAV, the AT drones and the extensive fixed border sensor net. Avoiding a sensor lock under those conditions would require an EMP. }<<--UDP

>>{Drek! How does a city afford that kind of gear? }<<--TwoCanSam

>>{I think it's covered later but FYI there are several military R&D facilities in the FTZ that use Fort Knox as their proving ground and Zone Security gets experimental milspec below cost in return for being beta testers. Not everything works as well as advertised so sometimes you cut a break when the new Mega Zap-O-tron 688k the Zoners are fielding explodes. Hopefully you aren't in the blast radius when it does.}<<--RiverRat

Besides the interstates, there are a number of secondary roads that cross the zone border but those are more of a hassle. The checkpoints aren't quite as automated and if there are any problems with the equipment, staff, or an involved inspection it can cause backups that take hours to resolve. Locals who aren't Louisvillians that routinely visit the city using surface roads other than the interstates can get special access licenses on their vehicles that let them bypass the checkpoint inspection about 75% of the time.

>>{Reduced automation means lower grade sensors and no LAV or AT drones. They still have a pursuit vehicle and the standard combat drones but the drivers tend to be lower on the seniority scale. }<<--UDP

>>{Sneakin’ in isn’t as bad as you might think, assuming you are smart enough to use a clean vehicle and avoid carting in ammo or guns. Chemsniffers are something the city did splurge on at every access so ammo smuggling requires some very careful procedures or hidden routes. Best bet is to hire a legit local or two to be decoys and send them on a few miles ahead. It may take you a day or two to make it in, but eventually the Zoners will snag your decoy, letting you breeze by. }<<--SlickRick

>>{So what do you do about weapons? }<<--CptLock

>>{You arrange something with a local. There are numerous ways that hardware makes its way into the streets. A lot of it is the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who works at a corp facility and can make some stuff vanish. Plus there is so much cargo run through here that sometimes things fall off the back of the truck, if you know what I mean. }<<--SlickRick


CAS and UCAS citizens can simply board a plane or suborbital and be inside the zone in just a couple hours with no more hassle than visiting any other city within their respective borders.

>>{Air travel's gotten a lot better thanks to the automated security checkpoint, at least as long as your ID is solid. I suspect that the original flight at Kitty Hawk was delayed and the industry has yet to catch up though. }<<--AmericanTourista

>>{Louisville airports aren’t bad but they’re nothing special. Standiford (aka Louisville International) is getting long in the tooth but it’s in a good location. KIA is pretty spiffy but out a ways. Convenient to the casinos, though. Book a private charter to Bowman if you can pull it off. Security’s lower on the whole.}<<--TowerPower



Louisville Areas

A true river city, the city grew organically around from the Ohio River. Way back when, the falls of the Ohio (no Niagara, think 3' rock ledges) blocked river transit and forced people to portage around. Add a mile-wide river to cross, and you have an excellent location for a city.

Think of the city as a pistol crosshair. You have I65 going north/south and I64 going east-west. I264 makes a half loop around the southern portion of the city and the whole shebang, Kentucky to Indiana is circled by I265. A wide, irregular buffer surrounds I265 but its good enough for government work.

Downtown
Downtown is at the crossing of I65 & I64 on the southern side of the river. Depending on where you live, Downtown is either just the business district or everything inside the Watterson (I264).

Downtown: Business District
It's no New York by any means but has a decent skyline on the Louisville side. Some decent 75-story skyscrapers are near the river, having been rebuilt post-Blast. Farther from the river you have smaller buildings, including some 19th century historic structures that are less than six stories tall. Louisville's always had some eclectic architecture and the post-Blast stuff continued the vein.

>>{Eclectic is being polite. The Humana building looked like a milk carton with a fat lip. LGE's green and purple roof lights made it look like it was the Joker Signal. Providian had a domed top that resembled roll-on deodorant (or something pornographic). The cubist Artisan building was sufficiently avante garde to actually be ho hum. The new stuff....I think cthulu was involved in some of the design stage. }<<---Snorklepuss

There are several points of interest downtown. On Main Street you can find the Kentucky Center for the Arts (KCA), the Museum of Natural Sciences, the Frasier Arms Museum, and the Louisville Slugger Museum.

Louisville Slugger Museum is easy to find; look for the building with a 40' bat leaning against it on Main Street. It has some of the original slugger manufacturing equipment and does turn out a limited number of bats each year for special events but mainly it turns out mini-Sluggers (Punches?) that are about 12" long. Hillerich & Bradsby, the owners of the Louisville Slugger brand, have a primary manufacturing facility in southern Indiana.


>>{IIRC their bread and butter has become golf equipment more than baseball. A guy I went to college with worked there last I heard, trying to engineer the next generation of Calloway clubs. }<<--Kigmatzomat

>>{Speaking of golf, Louisville has a half-dozen high-end golf courses, now more than a century old. There are two public courses part of the parks system, which is pretty rare. The Masters tournament is sometimes at the Fuzzy Zeller course. }<<--ProFromDover


Runners should really consider stopping in the Frasier. The founder, Owsley Brown Frazier, was a gun collector that at some point realized he owned a totally insane amount of historical weapons and should open a museum. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of historical firearms and weapons present, ranging from a rifle owned by George Washington to one of Geronimo’s bows, Custer’s pistols and Teddy Roosevelt’s “big stick.� The Frazier also has ties to the UK and has a significant collection of medieval weapons and armor.

>>{Some of the items are counterfeit, unfortunately. }<<--HistoriCal

>>{That’s a serious accusation to make based on a viewing through a case. }<<--ManInBlue

>>{Astral signatures don’t lie. Many of those items have auras commensurate with forgeries. Geronimo’s bow is legit and should be viewed by any mage. }<<--HistoriCal

>>{There have been repeated requests from the NAN to give back some of the artifacts. The former director, Todd Haines, rebuffed them all as the bow was part of Geronimo’s terms of surrender. }<<<--Feather Not Dot

>>{I just went to the museum and wow, is that bow impressive! }<<--LilJohn

>>{All I see is an old wooden bow; what do you see? }<<--SteveOh

>>{Echoes of the past. Sometimes it looks like Geronimo is there holding it, others you can see the battlefields or hunting trips the bow was used on watch the arrows fly. Speeches and councils of war. }<<--LilJohn

>>{That explains the sizeable budget for magical defenses. }<<--QuickLime

The Frazier has historical demonstrations that show period approaches and techniques. I’m told that there are a couple of adepts among the re-enactors who swear the old martial combat manuals include certain mystical attributes. I’m not sure about that but I can say that two adepts squaring off against each other in a friendly competition is a treat to watch.

>>{Hey, it can be fun even if it isn’t friendly. }<<--Rains

There’s a decent little bar district along Main street near the 2nd Street Bridge in some old (~150 yro) warehouses and office buildings. If you squint you can actually see some of the old French influences, ala New Orleans. The bars wander the gamut and tend to be something other than the generic mass-market pabulum. They also have a distressing tendency to go out of business every 10 years or so.

Right now you can find Jake’s (blues), E-Main (cyber café), Mercury Lounge (neo-metal), Crushed Velvet (cordial bar), and one of the longest running gender-bending clubs in North Am, The Connection.

>>{I live under a rock. What’s a “cordial bar�? }<<--Swamper

>>{Oh, yummy drinks! They’re like desert; some of them are even served in “glasses� made of chocolate or candy! Mmmm! }<<--Heather

>>{Yech! A diabetic nightmare. }<<--OldPete

>>{Should I even ask about “The Connection�? }<<--Swamper

>>{Don’t sweat The Connection. It’s a century-old gay bar and drag show. I’m guessing part of it used to be a theatre because the drag shows aren’t done on a cheesy runway; they have a 300-seat cabaret. It’s pretty well established in the community, some of the racier plays on the Actor’s Theater or KCA calendar are hosted there. }<<--OldPete

>>{You have been to the Connection? }<<--Heather

>>{Girly, The Connection was a tradition when I was InfantPete. }<<--OldPete


Downtown: Old Louisville
Immediately south of the business district is Old Louisville. These are 19th century homes on quaint little streets housing college kids, drug dealers, artisans, thieves, engineers, lawyers and hackers. Wait, I already said thieves. It's a place grannies visit in the day to talk about the "good old days" and then scurry back to the CountryKitchenBuffet before the locals wake up/get off work and come home.
The fortune of the area changes from block to block and decade to decade. Last year's slum is this year's renovation darling and vice versa. All's fine during daylight but watch your back at night.

>>{The gangs in Old Louisville are pretty lame, more like a half dozen bored punks. }<<--Caller54

>>{Punks or not, a PredII will still cause a bad day. }<<--Skipjack


The Saint James Art Fair is a regional hoo-haw that happens every summer. U of L art students sell last year’s art projects to pretentious pricks for far more than anyone who has to work for money would ever spend. Screws up traffic for days but means that the artsy types get to eat another semester. Lots of fake talismongery done there as the elists try to buy real dreamcatchers. I suppose they hang them in their employees’ cubes so as to steal even that bit of joy.

>>{Somebody’s having a bad day. }<<--Heather

Downtown: Old Louisville: University of Louisville
Old Louisville’s big landmark is the Belknap Campus of U of L. It’s a tree-lined facility of about 2.5 km^2. There’s almost always a building being torn down or being rebuilt somewhere to make life difficult. The university’s nominal boundaries are 4th Street on the west, Arthur Street/I65 on the east, Cardinal Boulevard on the north and Eastern Parkway on the south. U of L is a messy little campus since it has two train tracks running through it and it sprawls across 4th, Eastern, and Cardinal.

The east side of campus along I65 is composed of a sports complex with multiple tennis courts, running track, multipurpose fields, and a swimming facility. Speed School is on the south, with its own little mini-campus on the other side of Eastern. The main library, several dorms, and frat row are on the west. North is the business school, school of music, and Grawmeyer Computing Center.

>>{It’s a fraternity, not a frat. You wouldn’t call your country a ^%$$$$#! {CONNECTION DROPPED}}<<--ThetaEtaMoo

>>{Thanks }<<--Heather

>>{My pleasure. }<<--Quicklime

>>{The School of Thaumaturgy’s located on the south-western portion of campus, pretty much isolated by the train lines. }<<--PilingHigherandDeeper

>>{Sucks for you spookies but I’m real happy you aren’t in the middle of campus. Seems like every other year some Merlin wannabe would summon up something they couldn’t handle and it would freak everyone out. }<<--Gradof58

>>{All the buildings on campus are warded now so it’s down to every third year and most of those are illusions by somebody trying to be funny. }<<--PilingHigherandDeeper

>>{Anyone want to comment on the Computing Center? }<<--GdP

>>{Sure. It’s the programming and comp.sci department. Yet another bastard stepchild handed from one department to another when the literally old-school types had no idea what to do with it. Comp.sci was under Speed and the Business school at different times. It finally managed to acquire its own Dean and break free. Like most UL programs, it’s alright but nothing too cutting edge. Security’s actually pretty good, though still not impregnable, but the main defense is the round-the-clock presence of junior code monkeys all peaking and prying at the system, some of them with authorization. Not a bad place to visit if you’ve got some hardware that needs upgrading. Don’t expect anything nova hot but it’s better than you can get over the counter. }<<--Quicklime

>>{I’ll vouch for that. Anybody with wireless cyber and not a lot of cash should stop in there and get some basic firewall and encryption software. You can also get low-grade agents on the cheap. Nothin’ a hacker’d want but good enough for doing some web-crawlin’ without your attention. }<<--Yeesusrist

>>{Some of the agents are old thesis projects and can be spotty in their performance. Deja-2, for instance, is generally an R:2 agent but it was optimized for visual pattern matching and operates as an R:4 program when trying to ID something or someone from a photo. Your best bet is to get with the student employees in the data center and get them to point you in the right direction. }<<--Zodiax


Downtown: Old Louisville: U of L : Speed School of Thaumaturgy

Way back when, in 2012, the lid on magic was pretty much blown open when Dunkelzhan did his infamous trid interview. Crystal wavers, neowiccans, and kooks across the planet did the happy dance. Most of the science community stuck their head in the sand for a couple of years until the Great Ghost Dance scared the crap out of everyone. Once the United States considered magic to be a weapon that existed, the scientists started digging their way out to gain their share of the research grants.

But not academia. Oh, no. It was chock full of either the wackiest nut job who could just manage some minor spell or pompous, self-important windbags drunk on power.

>>{And those descriptions hold to this very day. }<<-- PilingHigherandDeeper

When U of L finally conceded to host a chair of magic, which they insisted on calling paraphysics, it was attached to the school of Arts and Sciences. The first incarnation was the kooks and windbags mentioned above and it was a horrible failure. Most of the instructors had little to no experience in experimental methods and they tended to have lax or non-existent controls in place. Campus was evacuated any number of times due to magic gone awry.

Then the department was put under the physicists. There were none of the campus-wide investigations but there was also very little in the way of progress. Staff churn was high and the entire physics program nearly collapsed at one point. Finally it was transferred to the engineering school where it has remained ever since.

>>{I can’t believe they gave it to physicists. }<<-- PilingHigherandDeeper

>>{Why not? They are scientists. }<<--Sol2042

>>{Yeah, that’s the problem. Magic was like a horrible, horrible blow to scientists. First off, it can only be performed by a living person so no automation. No machine can perceive the events leading up to the result and they surely can’t deal with astral space. Secondly, it either defies the laws of thermodynamics or requires multidimensional theories of inverse entropy, which leads to either mental breakdowns or fist fights in the faculty lounge.
>>{Lastly, it was the first completely new field of science in a full generation and it required starting from scratch. Scientists do well at safely making progress but they hate to move forward if they don’t understand the data they have.
>>{Engineers, in contrast, are used to using empirical data to derive functional approaches. Concrete, for instance, was used for nearly 2,000 years to great effect with no real comprehension of the mechanisms that controlled it. To an engineer if it’s repeatable, reliable, and predictable even if it isn’t comprehensible, then it is applicable.
>>{And that’s really what the engineers did; they translated empirical data into usable applications. Scientists, or theoretical thaumaturgists to be proper, have since come through and explained why things worked and derived better systems for spell theory and summonings that likely would not have happened without a “lucky accident� by an engineer. }<<-- PilingHigherandDeeper

>>{So are you a thaumaturgist or an engineer? }<<--ElJefe

>>{Well, as an Applied Thaumaturgy PhD candidate, a little from column A and a little from column B. I’m the engineer working at the fringes of the field, taking the latest theories and trying to make them do something useful. }<<--PilingHigherandDeeper

Today the SSoT is a middle of the road facility. Both the CAS and UCAS are a little leery of the FTZ’s independence so the collegiate organizations are more standoffish than they normally would be. In this case the FTZ works against us as both sides see us as being in the pocket of the other.

>>{Sad but true. }<<--BookWyrm

SSoT’s one advantage is that it is essentially independent; no serious governmental or corporate ties. Yeah, the FTZ foots part of the bill but to date the political value in keeping the appearance of an autonomous SSoT outweighs the advantage of having a private pool of mages.

>>{Which doesn’t stop a lot of SSoT graduates from finding jobs in the government. FTZS hires quite a few mages every year just to provide astral perception at the borders. Licensed practitioners with no criminal record can get hired during Thunder and Derby. They tend to team up the contractors with an FTZS mage, a spirit bodyguard, and a couple of tattletale watchers. }<<--UDP

There are close ties between the University Medical program and the SSoT due to crossover with the bio-tech students. U of L has eschewed the belief that biotech is a field unto itself and treats it as an engineering undergrad program with most of the normal elective slots being filled with pre-med courses. Graduates receive a degree in Medical Engineering (BS.MdE) and immediately go into med school.

>>{Now that has to suck. }<<--DocAndCover

>>{Yes and no. The program is close to a double major when you look at the number of required high level biology and engineering courses but it means you don’t have to take as many fluffy-bunny A&S courses. }<<--EngineerMD

>>{But why bother? There are some perfectly good biotech programs out there that don’t have such a serious course load.}<<--DocAndCover

>>{True enough but it depends on what kind of biotech you want to practice. For your generalists and typical hospital residents, those programs are perfect. If you want to work with the bleeding edge hardware, aka beta-tester, it helps to have that full engineering + medical background to not only figure out if a problem is caused by hardware or biology but be able to design a solution. Especially if the problem is potentially life threatening. }<<--EngineerMD


SSoT & biotech students are in the same first-year courses as the other engineers. The coursework begins diverging significantly during the sophomore year but that’s pretty much a drop in the bucket compared to the students who drop their freshman year.

>>{In any SS building you’re likely to hear someone state that the freshman class halves in size at the drop date, end of the first semester, second semester drop date, and end of the second semester. After all the chaff has been winnowed out, engineering students have a slightly higher retention rate than other programs. Of course at that point, the classes are a tiny fraction of their original size. I can’t say it’s based on statistics but it feels right. }<<--EngineerMD

>>{Is it really that bad? }<<--LilJohn

>>{It’s a big shock to most freshmen, who generally didn’t have a whole lot of trouble with general education. SSoT believes in a serious workload the first two semesters. The work actually gets easier as the courses get more advanced. ‘Course that could be because the only people left are the ones who understand it. Med school is a real brain buster, though. }<<--EngineerMD

There are more multidisciplinary projects at U of L than normal thanks to mixing between SSoT, MdEMD, and classic engineering. University Hospital didn’t pioneer medical magic but a joint University program did assemble the first codified magical regimen from admission to release. The basic approach remains unchanged even as though it has been revised multiple times.

>>{This is a good thing for the shadowfolk. There are plenty of MdEMD and SSoT dropouts who at least have a positive view of combined biotech/magic healing regimens. }<<--DocRobbers

>>{I’d rather have a real doc than a dropout myself }<<--Rains

>>{Fine, just take your bullet-riddled body to the big hospitals and see how long the questioning takes. }<<--DocRobbers

>>{Touche. }<<--Rains

>>{Mages will be particularly happy since most shadowdocs have a mage on tap who can at least provide assensing. }<<--LilJohn


Downtown: Highlands
Some would say the Highlands are the spiritual center of Louisville. Located east/southeast of downtown, it is a vibrant community, chock full of old book stores, coffee shops, mom'n pop restaurants, 2nd hand stores, and bars. And, according to the photographs and local lore, it's been that way for more than a century, well before the advent of Starbucks. Local places have changed family hands but didn't go corporate. Don't believe me? A restaurant that claims to have invented the cheeseburger (Kaelin's) has survived against the BurgerGods for quite a long time. Like I said above, Louisvillians are traditionalist sheep.

>>{One of the best parts of Louisville is the Highlands. I guess it's kinda like SoHo or the Haigt in SanFran, only less freaky and more enduring. Louisville kind of lucked out in that it has copious housing from the different growth periods, so the property values haven’t soared as outrageously as they did in bigger markets. }<<--HeineBrother1

>>{Huh. Lucky in the sense that Vitas wiped out about 45% of the populace and the city is only slightly larger than it was in 2000. }<<--OldPete

>>{Harsh. Bitter much? }<<--Heather

>>{I'm old girlie, it comes with the territory. }<<--OldPete

>>{I really hadn't thought about it that way when I said it. }<<--HeineBrother1

>>{Eh, she was right, I was being harsh but I'm also old enough not to care. Anyone's feelings I hurt will out live me. By the way, when are you going to have some more of the Jamaican Blue coffee? }<<--OldPete

>>{Thursday, if it doesn't vanish in customs. Again. Let me know it’s you and the first quarter kilo's on the house.}<<--HeineBrother1

>>{My friends and I have a significant thirst for the Blue. If it does not show up on Thursday let me know and I will do what I can, where I can. }<<--Zodiax

The north end of the Highlands is anchored by numerous bars, though they decrease in frequency as you go south. An old tradition is the Bambi Walk, which starts at the Bambi Bar and involves walking north, having a drink at every bar you encounter. Depending on what’s opened or closed, you can expect to have about 2-3 dozen drinks. We’ve got at least 2 microbreweries in the Highlands and numerous “tap rooms� that are full of vanity beer and a few real microbrews.

>>{You people are depraved. }<<--MamaWama

>>{And you’re deprived. }<<--SimpleMan



Downtown:West End
What can we say, it's our Barrens. It was burned during the Night of Rage. It was flooded when the Ghost Dance made the Ohio overreach the floodwalls. It burned again during the Blast. The people were forgotten or ignored during Crash 1.0 and 2.0.

The places are small, one-story shotgun homes and camelbacks. They've been rebuild haphazardly as renovation attempts were made and surrendered to the local looting and vandalism.

>>{Shotgun home and camelback?}<<--AmericanTourista

>>{Old, 19th Century old, construction for narrow lots. No hallway, one room leads to another. The origin of the term is sketchy but the common joke is that one good shotgun blast will kill everyone there.
>>{A variant of a shotgun is a camelback which has a second floor over half the house giving it a hump back appearance hence camelback. There's also an "Irish" cottage, which looks like a shotgun but isn't. It has 2 front doors; one on the main house and the other on a front room that was often rented out to students or transient workers.
>>{You'd see shotguns in sections of Baltimore and Maryland if they hadn't been burned during the Night of Rage or demolished by the Megas. }<<--OldPete

The area isn’t completely dead; there are too many people who refuse to leave. Every scut job in Downtown, New Albany, and Jeff are filled by people who live here. Gridlink is non existent, utilities are spotty, devil rats infest the sewers, crime is rampant and police coverage is a joke.

>>{Ahh, home. }<<--Grinder

The only good thing about the West End is it is green, lots of trees. Probably does a lot of good for Louisville’s air quality. Otherwise, it’s a dump. There are a number of minimum wage manufacturing jobs, mainly box shuffling, metal work, or tending soy-vats.

Two good things: you can get your illicit hookup in the West End. One of the rail bridges and the locks and dams are right along the river in the West End and numerous things tend to fall off the train cars or barges. Sometimes big things, sometimes small things. But lots of things. Many of the old warehouses and offices that burned had basements or underground parking that survives and no one has a clue how much black market cargo is lurking beneath the ashes.

>>{The West end is a bigger area than most Louisvillians realize. Most people treat it as 22nd street to 44th street and north of Broadway, which is only about 16 square kilometers. It really runs southwest to Algonquin Parkway, tripling the area. It stays pretty shabby south and east of there but it’s kind of Dixie or Old Louisville there. This fringe is where the prosperous criminals live while the whack jobs and desperados stay in the bombed out sections. }<<--Swamper

>>{Housing’s not as sparse as you might think. There were a couple of housing programs that created quite a few tenement districts. That’s the best place to get your ill gotten goods. If you’re after something more private, find a bombed out place and do some ground soundings ‘til you find a basement. Excavate a bit and you’ve got a spider hole. }<<--Luke’sFather

>>{I thought coffin hotels were bad but spider holes?!? }<<--Donvon

>>{They aren't the norm by any means. Doesn't mean any place deep enough to shield you from Zoner sensors and too rough for dogs is a handy place. }<<--Grinder

The West End is, unsurprisingly, filthy with gangs. Channel Cats smuggle pretty much anything along the Ohio from Dixie to the East End with their base near the old Marine hospital. Panzermensch hire out themselves and their armored jalopies as wheelmen, when they don't smash them racing down Broadway or North Dixie.

>>{Don't underrate the Panzers. The rusted bodypanels may have come from a '32 Americar you can be sure there are solid armor plates and a honkin' big motor under the hood. }<<--Gremlin

>>{Yeah, but the armor may be 6mm sheet steel and the motor from a delivery truck. I've seen one of those tear loose from the motor mounts and destroy the vehicle. Not pretty at 100kph. }<<--Zentradi



Floyd County
Northwest of Downtown, on the north side of the river, is New Albany. It was a sleepy little town with branch of IU and some other light industry but now it's our Las Vegas. River boats were installed at the turn of the millennium and in the FTZ they thrive like cockroaches at a frat house. The place was a semi-farming community but has been turned into a kind of manicured, sterilized, landscaped, botanical garden/park/wildlife preserve that makes people feel relaxed as they gamble the house away.

Originally it was just Caesar’s Palace but since then it went gonzo. We have Wynn, Gold Dust, Hoosier Daddy, Lucky Duck, the Red King, and Halcyon & On. They used to be limited to the rivers, being technically river boats, but that was thrown out long ago. The Red King is, in fact, a casino boat and it makes cruises up and down the Ohio.

>>{Yeah, they were “river boats� the same way a bridge is a river boat; they both extend over water. The boats were “permanently moored� on docks and possibly, maybe floated a bit but their “anchors� were all but support columns. }<<--PotCommitted

>>{True enough. The only thing that ever made Indiana think twice about the FTZ was the loss of Caesar’s but by the Blast there were nine other casinos. Plus, Caesar’s was going to be producing no significant revenue until Louisville got back on its feet and there was no budget for the work needed to be done on the Ohio. }<<--HistoriCal


The casinos are something of a fixture now, though they still cause some strife among the morality police. The revenue they generate is appreciated by the community in the form of relatively low taxes even if it is sin money.

At the top of the heap is the Halcyon & On. It is designed to be reminiscent of the hanging gardens of Babylon and has done more to park-ify the area than anything else. It sprawls over about 150 acres, 75 of which is a golf course. The place is chock full of hydroponic and aeroponic gardens with decorative and exotic plants. At least a few are dual-natured to help provide some mystic security. At least one rumor has it that the latest dual-natured plant life originated at the Halcyon & On.

>>{It’s a fact, not rumor. Hederacea, or common ground ivy, has mutated in the Louisville area into Glechoma bimondus. The small flowers, typically purple, are nearly translucent on the physical plane but shine with an orange light on the astral. Hederacae is horribly invasive but Bimondus, like many dual natured life forms, is fairly sensitive to environmental factors. }<<--Hortus_Rex

>>{I heard it was english ivy that was hybridized. }<<--Deb.b.i.e

>>{Not a surprising rumor since Halcyon is draped in Glechoma helixa however it is false. Hederacae had managed to invade the gardens and spontaneously expressed. It took a sasquatch visitor commenting on the "pretty citrus fruit flower vine" for anyone to notice. }<<--Hortus_Rex

>>{This explains some things. We SSoTs are used to the balancing act between secrecy and publication but the Halcyon people were far too vague and evasive. If this was a natural, or at least unintended, development they would be totally in the dark.
}<<--PilingHigherandDeeper

The Wynn, Caesar’s, and Gold Dust are typical casino fare. The Wynn has lots and lots of waterfalls (apparently Jason Wynn the first loved waterfalls) and the Wynn name or stylized “W� everywhere they can fit it. Caesar’s looks like Rome had a yard sale with busts, columns, and faux marble everywhere. The Gold Dust is a throwback to its Vegas roots, with intentionally gaudy fixtures and gold sparkles.

Hoosier Daddy is more local, at least in theme, and like most casinos it goes overboard. It is full of Indiana memorabilia, especially basketball. The place is full of old 2D flatpics, jerseys, balls, nets, and other detritus of history. They spent a fortune to recreate several of the most famous games for full simsense.

>>{And remember, this is Louisville, so this is just a step below BTL. }<<-- Zodiax

>>{While people having some NCAA BTL in a fantasy suite may not sound bad, the real problem is in the VR games. Most people feel disappointment when they lose money but with “warm sim� signal levels, you don’t feel nearly as bad. And when you win, the jolt of pleasure is enough to require spending those winnings on new pants. }<<-- Aces&8s

Lucky Duck is a revamped Circus Maximus, which used to be Festival before that and Cirque, Masquerade and Level 7. What I'm saying is the Duck is <i>ooooooold[\i] and biding time til it gets demolished. It's tacky, worn, smoky, tattered, used up, at best a dive and more realistically a dump.

Security in the Duck is lax at best and only concerned with preventing property damage. Sensor coverage is sparse with numerous known gaps. The Zoners have issued more than a dozen citations to the Duck for lack of security response to crimes on their grounds.

>>{Which makes it a fantastic place for a meet. The security has more holes than swiss cheese and the place tends to have enough of a crowd that groups don't stand out }<<--Grinder

>>{No lie. With a little practice it isn't too hard to find the noobs & wannabes hangin’ around in the hopes of scoring some nuyen. }<<--Gremlin


Last up is the river boat, the Red King. To the uninitiated it appears to be a steam paddle wheeler but the smokestacks, calliope and stern wheel are for show. A gas turbine and water jets really drives the 'King and that sums up the place: a veneer of Old South concealing cutting edge tech. It has some of the best VR, open-air holos, and security tech. Security is discrete but thorough so don't make trouble or try to bring in any unlicensed hardware.

>>{Too many sensors to really discuss a job but with the isolation of being on the river this place is a decent place to pick up a payoff or make a first contact. }<<--Horace9



Clark County
Everything North-by-Northeast of Downtown is Jeffersonville. They have a boatyard, malls, residential stuff, but truth be told it's really still just a suburb of the Business district. There's a decent nightlife right down near the River with numerous bars, clubs, and pool halls. After that it gets kinda sleepy.


East End
East of downtown, beyond the Watterson across from the Highlands is the affluent East End. It consists of several sub-cities that have stubbornly clung to their little petty bits of power (St. Matthews cops are the devil, Jeffersontown has its own Mayor, Middletown is better paved, Lagrange has higher taxes) but it's generally lumped into one sprawling mass. Lots of gated communities dating back more than a century, numerous corp enclaves, and more than a few kingpins live out there.

South End
This is something of a catch-all, grabbing everything south of the Watterson between the East End and Dixie. It’s a hodgepodge of manufacturing, residential, and commercial in the area between Preston Highway and Bardstown Road. Thriving, but messy.

Runners should get used to visiting the South End for stuff. There are numerous small machine shops, garages and scrap yards churning out rebuilt cars, custom drones, and one-off weapons.

>>{What moron uses a one-off, redneck gun? }<<--Slade

>>{Not from around here, are ya? Zoners are good at detecting guns and ammo at the borders. A tabletop CNC lathe & laser cutter can turn out an AK knock-off in under an hour and they're probably to tighter tolerances than any east asian budget models since the Tongs and Yak take the good ones early.
Laser sights can be fabbed with no trouble by anyone with soldering iron skills. Smartlink adapters require a chip fabber but the mounts can be replaced pretty easily.
The most common service is providing barrels. The tolerances are good but the materials are cheaper which is fine since most are only used for one night before being destroyed or bored out for use in a larger gun. }<<--Jesse

>>{Newbies should take care when buying a weapon. There’s a trend to partially re-rifle a barrel to change the ballistic properties. Trouble is, the first or second time it is done the barrel becomes less effective and ups the chances of a jam. By the 3rd or 4th time you’ve really got a smooth bore, which is crap for accuracy. }<<--KalZone



The South End has most of the ethnic regions. Northwest, between Dixie and the West End, is Little Saigon on Old 3rd Street Road. Louivakia is along Preston Highway just south of the Watersone Expressway full of Soviet Union refugees from Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Chekeslovakia. Further south on Preston is Little Mexico.

Gangs in the South End tend to be local. Integration didn't get very far before the chaos of the 4th World hit. Louisville isn't particularly biased on the whole but self segregation is human nature. As a result the various ethnicities stick out. Only those of caucasian and african descent cross regional lines out of sheer numbers.