Part 36: Fit the Thirty-Second : I'm Achin' For Breakin'

Fit the Thirty-Second : I'm Achin' For Breakin'


Windmills had been in use for thousands of years, but it was only now that they were adapted for generating electricity. As a large-scale option, they were rather impractical - it would take dozens to power a city the size of Funkytown - but they had their uses.


Consider Grenade Island. Engineering difficulties had warranted it a no-go zone for years, but now we could stick a windmill there without running lines over water, that changed.


To wit, a big arch thingy.


People would have to catch a ferry across to check it out up close, but it filled the gap nicely. Plonk a windmill a short distance away, plus a water pump to service the kiosks and whatnot, and Bob's your uncle.


Just across the water and behind Westshore, the houses were marching up Connie's Ridge up to the top of the hill.


1981 swept in without incident.


It was time to put in the last piece of the puzzle of the city's freeway network. One last segment was to be built to provide another link to City Name, also enabling residents of that city to switch around to Achewood should they wish.


Of course, it wasn't simple. To ensure that every exit was accessable from all incoming traffic, a trumpet arrangement needed to be engineered. It was ugly, but it worked.


The entirety of the northern corner would probably given over to more industrial development.


There was just enough room between the interchange and the volcano to also lay down another rail link with City Name.


With that done, it was likely that was the last new freeway to be built in Funkytown.


In the middle of town, the houses were getting very swank indeed, with one property filling up almost the entire city block. Madness. Even I was content with an acre of wood, a tennis court, a driving range, a boat jetty, a swimming pool, a motocross track, a miniature train line, an eight-car garage with fully-serviced workshop including hoist, and a modest cement birdbath. But, noooo, some people always wanted more.


Museums were popping up all over the place too, I think this one was the Museum of Stamps. Apparently philately could get you somewhere, after all...


Obviously, the freeway project was the big project of the previous year, but this upcoming we could concentrate on a lot of little things.


So, the Pompeii flats were painted various shades of green and blue. It encouraged things.


Another bridge was thrown across the river.


Providing yet another connection to the highway just across.


A third nuclear plant was also commission, this time on the northside of the river, since it was probably not a good idea to place it near the first two just in case something happened.


The city hit 300,000 for the first time, but it barely noticed. Maybe people would be impressed when we passed half a million.


We still had a fair amount of room left, though most of that was on the hills which would necessarily be fairly low density.


The Nose was once again mutilated as a result of council works, that part of the world seemed rather unstable, it would be unrecognisable by the time we were done.


This was probably the cruddiest part of town these days. Port Funkytown, which of course was right next to the port was dominated by tall brick edifices. But it gave the relatively poor somewhere to live, close to the city, so perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing.


We found more green paint and smothered some more of Pompeii Flats with it. Not much thought was put into making it look attractive, sprawl was what we were after.


Oh, 1983 already?


Hilda or Helga or whatever the hell her name was had some crazy idea of setting up a community TV station, so that creepy people could demonstrate how to cook bacon and eggs or stage crap productions of Hamlet or something to an audience of minus seven.


Connie seemed to think that this was a good thing.


I just said, whatever, and signed off on it anyway.

The station, WFNK-31, was up within a month, obviously there were a lot of keen people who wanted to great new things with the media, but whenever I tuned in it always seemed be showing breakdancing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaywooQ85Wo


Meltdown wasn't a word we used around Funkytown.


We'd run out of green paint for Pompeii, but with it all looking settled on the foothills of the dormant volcano, it was very picturesque. I'd even gone to the point of building up a big impressive avenue entrance to the area.


But perhaps that wasn't always a good thing. What was becoming a worry was the distances people needed to travel to get to the factories, but in some cases it seemed better to bring the factories to the people, or at least have little pockets here and there. But if they were being approved for areas which already had high land values, well, that caused problems.


Nineteen Eighty-Four. In honour of the date, I had the idea of having city goons follow around a John Winston for the year and just stalk him until his mind broke. Because that would've been hilarious.

Until it was pointed out to me that it was an egregious violation of civil liberties, and I thought, well, yeah, that is a valid point.


Another stonking huge build had materialised in the middle of the city. Nothing new of course, but this was the first one of its type.


Problem was, once the first one arrived, it would soon be joined by many copies. Maybe there was a plan or something. It did lead to a lack of architectural freshness about the city, though it wasn't too bad.


Nevertheless, demand for office space seemed to be growing and growing, and so more residents were shunted out to rezone the downtown areas.


And here we go. Another small industrial estate, this time out at Pismo Beach. Here property values were still low so this should establish itself; enough people from the area ought to take jobs here instead of having to take lengthy drives to Firetop West or the factories in the middle of the city to alleviate some of the traffic problems associated with the area.


On that note, a new subway line was built all the way out from Bunkleyville to Snottingham.


The new subway should serve the area well, as Snottingham was still kind of a lowbrow area, with services yet to catch up with the recent expansion out there.


I was still trying to figure out the best way to connect Snottingham across the ridge to Greenfield, because that would be a great help. A tunnel seemed the best option, but those were quite expensive, plus I also had to think about what to do about the top of the hill - build houses over the top of it, leave it as a reserve and plant lots of trees there, or just level the damn thing.


At the end of 1984, we were heavily dependant on fission power,


But the population kept rising and rising, so we had little option.


Especially since there was still some room to fill, though the city probably took up half of the county.


But as the news ticker said, ordinary days were the only days in Funkytown of late. And well may it continue, all the better for subjugating the landscape.