Jen has my backpack on her head
Aug. 9th, 2004 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teddogI'm tempted to look into getting volume 2 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Volume 1 was pretty spiffy and I seem to be having a weakness for steampunk as of late, but I heard that the second half isn't as good as the first.
The whole "must find... steampunk" thing is odd. I believe it may have been set off by the upcoming "Sky Captain and World of Tomorrow" movie, since I like the feel of the art design. It's got zeppelins! The art is more retro-science fiction that steampunk, but ZEPPELINS!
And Sonic Battle doesn't help much either, as certian plot aspects are fairly steampunky. I doubt that the series will discuss the fourth great civilization again, though.
Okay random idea, caused by being sick in bed and I want to write it down:
If I was the Canadian government and wanted to hide a base that could be accessed 24/7 with very few people noticing, I'd stuff it under the Toronto Eaton Centre. It's on a major road, the TTC line and the PATH, so access isn't a problem. So many people come and go from the Eaton Centre that nobody is going to notice government employees coming and going as well. I briefly thought that such a base could be accessed using Flight Stop, that sculpture of Canadian geese that's featured in every piece of promo material for some reason. However, this seemed a little silly to say the least. The lower floors of the mall have many tight and small passageways that you could hide an access point in. Maybe down near the lockers/south food court, if those still exist.
Notes on the Toronto Eaton Centre:
- Address: 220 Yonge Street.
- Built in 1979.
- Modelled after the Galleria in Milan, Italy.
- Owned and operated by The Cadillac Fairview Corporation Limited.
- Has/had Highest Sales pre square foot of retail space in North America.
- Subway stations for Dundas and Queen (Younge line) can be accessed from the mall.
- T. Eaton Company ("Eatons"), the original ancor store, no longer exists. The company went under in 1999 and was bought by Sears Canada.
- Just to the south of the mall was a major The Robert Simpson Company store ("Simpsons"). Simpsons was bought by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1979 and "absorbed" during the 1980s (note - what about Towers stores?)
- These two stores have been replaced by Sears and The Bay.
The whole "must find... steampunk" thing is odd. I believe it may have been set off by the upcoming "Sky Captain and World of Tomorrow" movie, since I like the feel of the art design. It's got zeppelins! The art is more retro-science fiction that steampunk, but ZEPPELINS!
And Sonic Battle doesn't help much either, as certian plot aspects are fairly steampunky. I doubt that the series will discuss the fourth great civilization again, though.
Okay random idea, caused by being sick in bed and I want to write it down:
If I was the Canadian government and wanted to hide a base that could be accessed 24/7 with very few people noticing, I'd stuff it under the Toronto Eaton Centre. It's on a major road, the TTC line and the PATH, so access isn't a problem. So many people come and go from the Eaton Centre that nobody is going to notice government employees coming and going as well. I briefly thought that such a base could be accessed using Flight Stop, that sculpture of Canadian geese that's featured in every piece of promo material for some reason. However, this seemed a little silly to say the least. The lower floors of the mall have many tight and small passageways that you could hide an access point in. Maybe down near the lockers/south food court, if those still exist.
Notes on the Toronto Eaton Centre:
- Address: 220 Yonge Street.
- Built in 1979.
- Modelled after the Galleria in Milan, Italy.
- Owned and operated by The Cadillac Fairview Corporation Limited.
- Has/had Highest Sales pre square foot of retail space in North America.
- Subway stations for Dundas and Queen (Younge line) can be accessed from the mall.
- T. Eaton Company ("Eatons"), the original ancor store, no longer exists. The company went under in 1999 and was bought by Sears Canada.
- Just to the south of the mall was a major The Robert Simpson Company store ("Simpsons"). Simpsons was bought by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1979 and "absorbed" during the 1980s (note - what about Towers stores?)
- These two stores have been replaced by Sears and The Bay.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-09 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-09 09:52 pm (UTC)1- The Eaton Centre is quite a distance from Lake Ontario.
2- The area of Lake Ontario to the south of the Eaton Centre includes the Harborfront and Toronto Islands. In this fictional version of Toronto I imagined, the locals on the island are wary of politics and government affecting their way of life (based on events in the real world (http://torontoisland.org/islanders/placeofmydreams.htm#homes)). Even if the locals didn't know about a base under the lake, the large amount of traffic over an unprotected length of water (the only way on and off the islands is by ferry or plane) would be a huge risk.
I'd imagine that a base under the Eaton Centre would be like Deep 13 - buried several stories down. The Younge subway is very close to the surface, even above the surface at some points, and not right under the mall. I can't see the rest of the infrastructure causing much trouble. The mall is partly underground already, so everything was probably rerouted during construction. It should be noted that, in real life, there are underground caverns under the area surrounding the Eaton Centre. Under the Queen subway station there's a tunnel/roughed in streetcar station that's known as "Lower Queen". This was built back in the 1950s. There were hopes that the station could have been put to use up until 1980, a year after the Eaton Centre was built. It doesn't mean anything, but I could use it as story foddler at some point.
That being said, having the base under the lake isn't not that bad of an idea. It just doesn't work well in terms of the story I'm thinking of.