PINK City

First Impressions:

PINK City is famous for its neon pink and teal loglow illumination (Logo-Glow), which provides the vast majority of public lighting. This color motif is already well and oversaturated in the cyberpunk milieu but the difference is that rather than an equitable split between the two colors, the loglow is predominantly pink, with only teal highlights. In some places, teal is replaced with white, lime green or retina convulsing hyper violet.

The street level is relatively dirty, the streets are rarely if ever cleaned. Abandoned vehicles are common, though most have been picked clean. There are likewise ample seedy businesses that seem laser-focused on the lowest common denominator, the basal male. There are nightclubs, topless clubs, burlesques, and brothels. There are likewise beehive-like flops (like a flat but more depressing) that can be leased by the night.

Seems like a pretty scummy place for a guy with a pocketful of cash to have a regret-filled good time.

The Double-Take:

Aside from the physical grime, graffiti, and layers of bills and posters covering most of the non-window flat surfaces, PINK City is clean. There are no readily apparent gangs, no drug dealers mean-mugging in front of various locales, and while there are women plying the ancient sex trade, there is a distinct lack of pimping. On closer inspection, some of the women walking the street, in their flesh-revealing outfits, are most definitely not sex workers, they are augmented. Some are very well-armed, even armored in light power armor suits, though these are very low profile.

Despite their dirty outward appearance, many of the businesses inside are completely different affairs. The clubs are spotless, and tastefully decorated, with sumptuous accommodations and food and drink offerings that are exceptional. The burlesques are the same, reminiscent of the burlesques of French antiquity. The nightclubs are more famous for their musical acts, or the aesthetic of the venue, where the costumes and makeup are more striking and memorable than the exposed underwear, or bared flesh. 

Getting to Know the Place

PINK City started as a cluster of sanctuaries and over time grew. These centers were based around sheltering abused women, helping women get back into society, or recovering from what the locals call the Long Fall. The Long Fall is the polite name for falling out of social credit grace in the arcologies and the process of being demoted to smaller and smaller quarters until the housing authority in the arco apologizes for the lack of housing accommodations and gives the now homeless woman a slip with a list of places in the favelas, or geofront, where she might find a place to stay or a job.

Three things happened and drove the growth of PINK City, the Loglow, the Mega-Farms, and Maverick Ave.

The LoGlow was an innocuous piece of tech, a vapor-based light that used ambient energy in the atmosphere to illuminate itself. Thus, a LoGlow fixture could be hung, nailed up, or glued in place to provide light, and did so by absorbing ambient EM radiation. Many neighborhoods and communities quickly adopted LoGlow, as did almost every business on the planet. The LoGlow became a massive source of light pollution, but few people cared because the pollution was isolated to the arco-cities. Away from those cities, and the arcane reactors that power them, LoGlow doesn't work very well.

The Mega-Farms, represented a change in the handling of industrial agriculture. Megacorps shelled out the money for agriculture mecha, drone harvesters, and even some machinery that were factories on wheels, harvesting crops and instead of filling trucks with raw product, delivered flash dehydrated packaged bricks. The new system didn't even need roads, as the mega-farms preferred to use airships to pick up, deliver, or move goods around. Why would this matter to PINK City? The reason was the growing adoption of this megascale farming meant that raiders, wastelanders, and other people who lived in those areas were being displaced, and had no recourse other than to move deeper into the wastelands, or yield and return to the urban slums. This led to a fair number of former wastelander women moving back, and needing a place to reintegrate.

The last link in the chain was the rise of Maverick Ave. The avenue shared similar conditions to PINK City, with the adoption of loGlow and influxes of people from different social strata. The difference was the distribution of those people demographically. Where women concentrated in PINK, Maverick hosted a high density of 2SLGBTQ+ people. The LoGlow is a riotous mix of rainbow, trans-tri-color, and the cool wash of teal. Like most communities, Maverick developed its own culture and its own commercial ventures. There is an emphasis on art, fashion, theatre, and activism. Within this milieu, the dominant factors are the TQ+, with most L gravitating towards PINK City, G being ostracized from Maverick (Anglo/Asiatic gays are the straights of the community), and most everything is under the hands of Queer activists and activism. This mentality has created a contentious border between Maverick and PINK as by all measures PINK City is TERF turf, and the Maverick Ave activists are furious that their T members are denied access to power structures in PINK.

PINK City is TERF-Town because they discriminate!

You can find Maverick Ave pretty easily, head down Cooper, cross Lillard, and when you reach the toxic misogyny, you've found it.

Author's Note: When discussing PINK City with an associate they were upset by the fact that PINK City excludes trans-women. They wanted me to change it so that trans-women were readily accepted by PINK City because they were also women. That is their opinion on the matter, and that's a main point of PINK City, is that it has been created by women who share a common biological, socio-economic, and emotional background. A man cannot simply put on a dress and claim to be a woman having no experience with the biological realities of the female reproductive cycle, the fears and concerns of being the physically weaker sex, or the roles women are forced towards, or gravitate towards through their lives. The women of PINK City share this common background, and with a large percentage of them coming in from the Wastelands, being former raiders and wastelanders, they understand the importance of creating safe spaces, recognizing power systems, and knowing who is safe to let in and protect, and who needs to be kept out. Are transwomen excluded from PINK City? No, they aren't. The few who do pass the guidelines are not the loud and obnoxious, or those who enter into female spaces with male mentalities and male aggression. The real point of contention between PINK City and Maverick Ave is that the trans and queer power structures on Maverick are denied access to the power structures of PINK City. Were this to change, PINK City would vanish and become an extension of Maverick Ave, and even within their own space, the women would be made into secondary citizens, subservient to the Q factions. 

Getting to Know All About PINK City

Now that we've got the political ideology out of the way, there is more to PINK City than creating a fortress against the patriarchy and border disputes with the Rainbow Alliance.

PINK City also exists in the CogNet, both as a traditional online space and as a series of IsoNodes. This online space is used in the same fashion as any other neighborhood LAN, with basic access to the greater CogNet. The IsoNodes, or Isolated Nodes, represent pocket dimensions of CogSpace, and accessing them typically requires a user to be in the physical vicinity of the node itself. Thus, they are secured, and only available to the women who are physically present in PINK City. This allows them to operate in a large level of cyber security, and cyber privacy, something that is the envy of other organizations, and a point of contention, as the PINKNet is typically under some sort of constant ongoing attack or surveillance in force. Possibly the most infamous location within PINK City is the Electric Chapel, which has multiple online elements and zones.

One of the by-products of the area network, and its emergence as a bulk node is that it operates as a hub for an international communications network used by women. This ranges all the way down to basic social media and data-sharing services up to international affairs being handled by women in positions of political power, and everything in between. Military operations have been handled by PINKNet, dating apps run through it, anti-trafficking organizations use it, and more. This FemmeSpace is possibly the most important resource in all of PINK City.

Goods and Services

Fashion is a major export from PINK City. Many of the residents are used as clothes horses, trading their time and access to their wardrobes for early or exclusive access to local designers. This being the setting that it is, this is not the same as a Parisienne fashion show. The threads and accessories being offered are high fashion versions of encounter suits, stylish SLAB plate body armor, sports wear, stylish armor suits, and the hot hotness, Decolletage, armor reinforced normal and dress clothing specifically for women.

The Van Houten House is known for its coffee and chocolate products, rather than offering cava based substitutes. Women of wealth, prominence, or power, have an interest in being seen at the Van Houten House, sipping designer hot cocoas on the snow-crisped veranda, or silky Italian coffees in the luxuriously appointed sitting room.

Medical Services are overrepresented in PINKCity, though part of this is just a function of centralization.

The Blackwell Center is a private hospital tucked into the heart of the neighborhood. It is much larger than it appears, having expanded down into the geofront. It is specialized in medical treatment and care for women and by extension, children. Unlike other so-called Black Hospitals, the Blackwell Center was a charity endowment, and operates a low-cost or no-cost clinic for women in need, and the Blackwell House is a national-level charity that operates halfway houses and relocation efforts for women across the Atlantic Federation, as well as parts of the Eurasian Alliance, and Pacific Rim Coalition.

Phoenix Labs maintains a clinic in PINKCity that functions as a 'mercenary medical center', catering to the needs of the cybernetic operatives, street samurai, shadowrunners, edgerunners, and otherwise gray operatives who call PINKCity home.

The Elita Agency and other private security companies have outlets in PINK City. Elita, and similar companies like PINK City, and the infrastructure it has. They have safehouses, training centers, and even provide financial support to Blackwell to carry out and maintain cybernetic augmentations and genetic modifications.

The Mosi Boutique is popular among the fetish community, as well as providing high end clothing, accessories, and gear for the discerning dame.

Gorgons, Medusa, and Maenad themed merchandise are hot.

There are a large number of Arinoka arcades where women make online livings through MMORGPs, and other virtual economies. The structure and layout of PINK City and its infrastructure make it safe for women to escape their old lives and live there in peace without many of the previous concerns and worries. Most everything is within walking distance, runners provide security, and the businesses themselves cater to women WITHOUT pandering to them.