Page 11 - The Gluckman Occasional Number Eleven

The Wiggle Room The casual passerby or daily commuter on busy
Transmeridian Avenue does not suspect that the laundromat at the
corner of Nessel Road in the port of Stampedro was once the site of
a notorious late-1930s night club. A stage covered part of the space
where coin-operated washers and dryers now sit; and the manager’s
office in the back was the venue of invitation-only high-stakes poker
games. The entertainment alone was enough to invite the scrutiny of
the police. The chorus line appeared in court more than once on
charges of moral indecency. Yet the club thrived until the outbreak of
World War II, when the entire city of Stampedro came under martial
law. The building stood in disrepair until its current owners, a group
of Asian investors, took ownership and renovated it.

Mazuma Beach Due east of Helicon Valley, further driving on a
Toast Highway turnoff to a service road to the ocean is blocked by a
chainlink fence and gate. There a buckshot-peppered sign warns
would-be trespassers of radioactive contamination ahead. Without
breaching that barrier, however, one can get a view of the coastline.
There, in the 1950s, the rich and famous established a private beach
and clubhouse called The Admiralty. That same fence and gate once
was manned by a security guard. Many celebrities from Hollywood
and New York frequented the resort, denying locals access to a
desirable stretch of California coastline. Activists mounted several
legal challenges to The Admiralty, none successful. Then, on October
23, 1964, an accident at the nearby Stubfoot Reactor left the area
uninhabitable. Conflict over responsibility for the remediation meant
the beach might never be cleaned up.

Evil Rock In the middle of the bustling college town of Redink,
occupying the northeast corner of Yakarkas Park, children now play
on and around a large flat boulder. No interpretive sign is nearby; nor
do most of their parents, many of whom are migrants from other
parts of the country and the world, know the bloodstained history of
this granite protuberance on the landscape. It was here, during the
Imperious Valley Inquisition of the mid-1830s, that dozens of
accused heretics were taken to be splayed against the rock, tied down
to stakes and flogged. A visit to the Redink Historical Society will
provide the serious tourist with a pamphlet describing this notorious
legacy, and postcards reproducing contemporary paintings of the
punishments are available in their gift shop.