Blough City

Blough City
Other names	Blue City
Demonym	out-of-towners (by Bluff City residents)
Season	Bluff City

Blough City (/blu sɪti/) is a location within the Bluff City universe. Although it is still a casino town, it is in many ways set in opposition to Bluff City. For example, it's closer to the West Coast and LA than to Atlantic City. As it is even more dreamlike than Bluff, some of its physical characteristics are impossible. It is constantly in the time period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, but it rarely snows due to its warm climate.

The atmosphere of Blough City is described as hierarchical, oppressive, repressive, and “capital B bad”. People living in Blough City rarely refer to it by name, instead calling it “the city”, "the city by the sea", "the metropolis”, or “around here”. Its name is sometimes written as it is pronounced: Blue City.

Initial State

The style of the city is close to 1940s-1950s post-war Americana. It is described as "wide in space but stuck in time". The beach is to the west, with a boardwalk that goes on "forever", with suburbs that change into urban sprawl and back again over and over into the horizon. To the north are the highways and cliffs.

All the buildings of Blough City are "cut from the same cloth" due to the Cultural Trust's restrictions on what kinds of buildings are allowed. The names of businesses are also restricted, with generic names being used for different locations (Pizzeria, Piano Store, etc). All of the interiors of these building "types" are the same. Blough City is less corporate than Bluff City, with gambling halls instead of casinos, fewer chain places, and more amusement piers along its infinite boardwalk.

Similar to the "There Is No Greater Love" era of Bluff City, which was influenced by Blough City culture, most communication is done via text rather than vocally. There is no real “out of town” for Blough City the way there is for Bluff City — out of town is always non-specific.

After the holiday parade, things in Blough City began to get tougher — there were new nightly curfews, new prohibition laws, more cops on the streets, with “deviancy [...] more illegal than ever”; the streets of Blough City became narrower, songs were missing a beat, and people’s memories (especially of the parade) were hazy.

Effect of the Tunnel Project

Due to the Tunnel Project, Blough City became “increasingly unmoored” in time. This also began to change the city's "normal" effects — for example, Grouse and The Champ can both read and write the language while in Blough City.

Time has also become hazy in Blough City, as though the people there are “in the same moment over and over again”, with the except of little escapes that are valued by the people who live there. Every escape is framed as an excess, with people not discussing them openly. Criminal enterprise is mostly done by or with the aid of superpowered individuals. A subdivision of the police known as the Mysterious Phenomenon Department (or ‘Myst’) is developed to hunt down those with superpowers who break the law (it also employs those with superpowers themselves to aid this).

Although the areas the were previously seen remain, they have changed in appearance, most notably The Thicket, which shows no signs of the previous construction. The city itself is also less dense, spreading out further towards the hills.

The culture is now based on the American 1920s rather than the 1940s and 50s. The movie industry (as seen in "Messy Business") is also not as advanced, with most of what had previously been happening in film now occurring in the radio space.

After the arrest of Hollis Whitaker, the downtrodden of Blough City felt somewhat empowered, beginning to be more open about their differences and confident in helping one another out.

Relationship to Bluff City

Blough City is connected to Bluff City via shunt points throughout the city, which Concern agents use to travel between the cities.

In "Hard Luck", it is implied that there is a “time difference” between the Bluff and Blough, with Blough City being a day ahead of Bluff City.

Known Shunt Points

• Pizzeria
• The stairwell door at the top floor of 2-22 Countinghouse (to access it, close the door, turn around, open the door again) — this is a temporary shunt point only
• The waterway shunt point to Bluffington (accessible via Exit 7 towards The Thicket, past a bunch of suburban complexes, towards where the desert meets the wetland, in a canal where the water behaves more like the ocean that a canal. It is an underwater tunnel, with chipped white tiles and is described as "scary and dark")

Areas

• Standard Town
• Countinghouse
• The Thicket
• Blough City Boardwalk
• Taffy District
• The Diner
• The Courtyard

Business Locations

• Pizzeria
• Grocery Store
• Ice Cream Parlour
• Bar
• Movie House
• The Sentinel
• Lounge
• The Grand Canary Hotel
• The Park Zoo