Alleston Education and Healthcare District
Medical
Hospital: Sunflower Memorial Hospital is a general specialty hospital with an award winning pediatrics wing. They also take on many nursing students from the university and have several strong research programs.
University
Campus: Maple Glade University is a lovely private university with a decent though not exceptional spread of course offerings.
Cafeteria: Glendon Cafeteria, which has a variety of food cooked by a team of 3 highly qualified chefs, which means there’s always something good to eat. In the basement is their fast-casual option, which students just call the
Cave. There’s also the
Holey O’s out the back. It’s hard to say when they’re actually staffed and open, but if you get lucky, you might show up in time to buy the donut of the day. People swear that the reason they’re only open like two hours a day randomly is because they put drugs in the donuts, making them too addictive for their own good.
Pond: Maple Pond is a small artificial pond on campus that is nonetheless full of life, including a flock of aggressive ducks. There are some duck feed dispensers installed at the benches by the pond, and especially around exam season, there is a big problem with students using their quarters for duck feed instead of doing laundry, since it’s said if you get bitten by a duck, you’ll have a good exam season. Getting bitten by the ducks is not hard.
Library: The Snowbranch Research Center and Library is the newest building on campus, beside the freshly sodded soccer fields. It was refurbished two years ago, and they boast both Macs and PCs, two stories of books and books and books, a small cafe and smoothie bar run by students called the
Maple Hive, a basement with isolated study cells, and The Stacks, a verifiable maze of shelves. You could get lost in there for days.
Student Apartments and Parking Garage: The Ashton Apartments are a seven story building with an equally tall parking garage in the back. Though many students choose not to use their cars to get around, locals can also pay to park. The building is (not so) affectionately referred to as the ‘Hellevator’ due to the aging elevators that seem to be eternally deciding whether to kill you or to take you to your dorm.
Oliver lives here!Dorms: The Glades (North, East, South, and West) are a series of interconnected buildings, a mix of single and double rooms with a few suites tossed in. There’s a laundry room for every wing, though trying to find a time when there’s a washer free is harder than you’d expect. North and East offer kitchenettes and study rooms on every floor, but South, the freshman dorm, only has a lounge in the basement, and West, the original building, doesn’t even have that much (leading to some of the students calling it ‘Worst’ dorm instead.) In the middle is a small courtyard with a nice fountain and some trees that are slowly growing out of hand, plus some seating areas where people tend to hang out and smoke at night.
Shopping
Grocery: There’s
Farmhands, branch of the CA Conglomerate, is a budget organic grocery store. They offer fresh produce, typical grocery store offerings, and have a small bakery and food service counter inside. And across the parking lot is
Giant, with more traditional chain grocery fare.
Satqiel works here!Bookstore: Paige's Turners is a local bookstore that's been run by the same family for 3 generations. The current owner is absurdly good with book recommendations and fully willing to special order books for her customers to pick up. Her daughter is much stricter on the rules and has been known to chase people out for loitering.
7-11: Get a slurpie. Cry about the price of gas. Do it all here. Oh thank heaven, I guess.
Residential
Residential Apartments: The Woods is a nearby low-income apartment complex that also accepts student renters with studio to 3 bedroom apartments. Unlike the school housing, they allow pets, and more of the grad students prefer to live a little ways from campus. They boast a small pool and a slightly worse for the wear gym, as well as a small walking trail.
Sebastian and Satqiel live here!Houses: There is a small unnamed neighborhood behind the college, where the houses nearest to campus, mostly belonging to past administrative employees such as the Dean and the President, though they taper off after a few streets into regular, if perhaps a little antiquated, homes. The residents don’t particularly appreciate the students that like to cause trouble.
Aria, Drake, and Ellery live here!
Business
Vet: Barks 'n Rec is the friendly local veterinary clinic. They charge on a sliding scale by the receptionist, who seems to be descended from Sherlock Holmes with her ability to discern your income at a glance.
Animal Shelter: Alleston Animal Rescue and Shelter is the local animal shelter. They are consistently overworked and understaffed, but they all somehow seem to love what they do, and they are always in desperate need of volunteers to foster, adopt, or clean out the kennels on the weekends.
Thrifting Stores: There is a small cluster of thrift stores all settled together, where you can go find the latest 80s fashions or pick up a slightly used bed frame. The farmer’s market sets up in their parking lot on Saturday mornings in the warmer months.
Office Park: A horrible awful no good office park, full of offices. There are many businessmen doing business things here. Traffic gets very unpleasant around rush hour. The 24 Hour Gym,
F & ect. Fitness, is right by the entrance to the office park, and many of the local office workers burn off all their woes there. Or at least shower off 8 hours of sitting at a desk. Their state of the art sauna room, workout machines, and staff of fitness trainers make this a place worth working for. There are also several hotels in this space for putting up even businessier business men and families visiting the hospital.
Malarick works here!
Pet Store: Pup-palooza is the local pet store. While they don’t display animals 24/7 anymore, they host foster events on the weekends and offer dog obedience classes in the evenings. They also offer grooming solutions. Sometimes that solution is to take your animal to the vet for a groom because they’re too much of a gremlin to be brushed while awake. They may be called Pup-palooza, but they also offer solutions for fish, hamsters, birds, cats, and potentially that weird looking racoon that now lives in your kitchen range hood.
Subway/ Bus Station: There's always a faint smell of oil and steel in the air. It gets crowded during the morning and evening commutes but otherwise the crowds aren't too bad. The local bus transit system is called the
Alleston Area Regional Transport System, or the
AARTS for short.
Eateries
McDonalds: It's exactly what you think it is. Kiosk orders have a high chance of disappearing before getting made, so make sure you grab your receipt!
Cafe : Apothecary has a very new age witchy type aesthetic. It's full of good smells, rich coffee and dried herbs. Books are stacked haphazardly at every table. Some tables are tucked into private little alcoves. Nox and Luna are the cafés resident black cats, but the owner will occasionally foster and adopt out stray litters.
Oliver works here!
Bar: Curfew, which has the dubious honour of being the last business open at the late late time of 3am. It serves fried carby snacks and lots and lots of drinks. They boast a traditional barstool arrangement, some booths, but also some long communal tables perfect for a boozy game of DnD or some cards on a slow night. They offer Tequila Tuesdays where margaritas are buy one get one and 50 cent wings on Wednesday for the first basket . Trivia night is Thursday, hosted by the local pop radio DJ. They have open mic on Fridays and local live music on Saturdays. The walls are covered with college memorabilia from past employees and local ne'er do wells.
Sebastian and Aria work here!Boba Shop: Dreamboat focuses on a combination of fresh fruity flavours and elaborate flavours that baristas dream up every month during the "Dream Boba" competition. They also function as a board game cafe, renting out games to their patrons.
Sushi Restaurant: Umibozu is the local sushi restaurant, featuring ship-wreck decorations and the spiciest fire-cracker shrimp roll you can imagine. The owner and chef is a little paranoid, and many of his house specials are a bit off the wall, but for the regular who knows how to pick them, his fish is fresh and his skill is unmatched.
Indian Restaurant: Curry Mantra is a tiny building that you might miss if you’re not paying attention, but their food is so amazing it’s the first recommendation most locals will give you. They don’t like it if you try to dine in, though. Make sure you order ahead and take it home with you. They don’t need any of your BS.
Taco Bell/Pizza Hut: Where else can you say you’re at the Pizza Hut, you’re at the Taco Bell, you’re at the cooombination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell? No but for real, this place is really greasy and looks directly out of the 90s, but somehow it’s still standing, even though every single employee looks like they’d rather be anywhere else.
Retro Diner: Danny’s looks like a normal restaurant. That’s because it is. 10000% not strange at all. They serve burgers and fries and chicken tenders and fried eggs and hashbrowns and pancakes and anything else you can think of. They’ve changed hands so often over the last two decades that eventually the new owners just gave up on remodeling and decided to try and paint over everything instead. You can still see where it was a Dynasty Buffet at one point, and the Mexican Restaurant that came after painted little sombreros over the glass reliefs of pandas. One owner tried to go for the open ceiling look, so 50% of the building has visible air ducts. At least they’re open ‘til midnight and if you want a burger at 6 am, they’ll sure as hell fry that for you. You can tell the current owner really tried to make this place look retro because he bought those fancy retro glasses and painted all the metal decorations a horrible silver colour, and the waitresses all wear shirts that look like they were once pink with rollerskates on them. They don’t wear the rollerskates though. They don’t get paid enough for that. Gotta love the scotty dog on the menu though.
Italian Restaurant: Grandissimo's is trying to be a Michelin Star Restaurant when it is clearly…not That. But the meatballs are really good if you can ignore the chef's any-day-now attitude. Sometimes you can score a free meal by giving off food critic vibes!
Panera: This one still gives you a full sized bun with each soup order!
Nature
River: The
Providence River cuts across the Northern part of town, effectively making the Maple Glade stop the final one in the line. If you want to go farther North, you'll have to go by bus. It's a fairly calm, slow moving river, but you wouldn't want to swim in it due to all the mud. So much mud. There are many maple trees lining the banks, however, that turn a vibrant red in the fall.
Beach and Park: Beach might be a strong word, but there is a sandy little area near the shore where families like to take their kids to go stomping in the mud and fly fishing. There's a few grills set up as well, though they're almost always full of trash and old beer cans. A little farther down is the play set and covered gathering area for birthday parties and reunions alike. There's a field set up for disc golf, but with the treeline just behind it, more than one Frisbee has been lost to the thicket.
Dog Park: The Dog Park, as it's usually known, is a large, fenced in area with some benches, some old agility training equipment, and, at some points in the day, lots and lots of dogs.
