Eh, what the hell.
Sep. 26th, 2006 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosLittle things people who write Office fanfic should know about the Scranton area, part two:
1. There's this company around here called Shorten Homes that makes prefabricated houses. I mention this only because they have quite possibly the most annoying radio commercials on the planet. It's some guy singing like he thinks he's Sinatra, and the same commercials have been running since I was a little girl. They're almost physically painful.
2. The area has three major movie theaters. (Well, four, but the one by the K-Mart doesn't count and it smells like a sewer.) One is right across the street from the Steamtown Mall. It's much nicer now that they've remodeled it, or at least that's what I've heard. There's a Cinemark up in Moosic, and it's really nice. And there's the one that opened up in Wilkes-Barre, which I haven't been able to get to yet.
3. The local Triple-A team just changed from a Phillies farm team to a Yankees farm team. Every baseball fan in Northeastern PA either cheered, booed, or died laughing at everybody else.
4. Everything is either on a hilltop or in a valley. There's barely any truly flat land anywhere around, including in Scranton which is all hills and curves and stuff. You know when Michael's driving someone somewhere, and all you see is the flat street ahead of him? It would be more appropriate if he were going up and down hills and you could see mountaintops on the horizon. (Although not very big ones. Our mountains are wee. Oh, so very wee.)
5. People around here eat a lot of Italian and Polish food. Yes, even if they're not Italian or Polish. Odds are good that you will find a bag of pierogies in any random freezer in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
6. Speaking of Italian food, La Festa Italiana happens on Labor Day Weekend at Courthouse Square in Scranton. All it is is food stands and it's not all Italian food, but it's fabulous food that might as well be slapped directly onto the thighs to cut out the middleman considering the amount of fat and grease in it.
7. St. Patrick's Day in Scranton should be known as Public Drunkenness Day considering how many people get wasted that day and how much of a damn the cops really give about who gets drunk. There are lines wrapped around the block to get into every bar in Scranton when they open at seven in the morning. Anyone who misses the parade is too busy hanging over a toilet puking their guts out or sleeping it off.
8. Weather forecasters usually do a pretty good job of guessing it will snow and a shitty job of figuring out how much snow we'll get. Most of us can tell you how much snow we'll actually get to the inch on our particular street compared to what the forecasters say. For example, if the forecasters say we're getting six inches of snow, I'm getting seven and my parents are getting nine.
9. Most people in the Scranton area go to one of either two malls (the Wilkes-Barre mall doesn't count) -- the Steamtown Mall or the Viewmont Mall. The Steamtown Mall is in downtown Scranton and it's two stories. When you go out the front door, there's the AMC movie theater. The food court is on the second floor, and when you go outside to smoke, the walkway overlooks the train tracks.
The Viewmont Mall is in Dickson City on the other side of I-81. It takes fifteen to twenty minutes to get to from most parts of Scranton. It used to be a small mall with nothing really around it, and then they cleared out the massive amount of land around it and since then they've developed the crap out of it. There's a Borders in the corner of the mall's parking lot. Viewmont Drive runs behind the mall. When you make a right, you head down the hill past Best Buy, Staples, Sam's Club, Raymour and Flanigan Furniture, a Home Depot (I think ... whichever one is the one with the blue), and a Wendy's in that order. When you make a left, you pass a Dick's, Circuit City, Petsmart and a Home Depot (no, the orange one, whichever that is, and my dad would laugh at me for not knowing which home supplies store is which) on the left, and then Don Pablo's (the Mexican place no one likes), Chuck E. Cheese, a party store, Panera Bread, and Johnny Rockets on the right. Wal-Mart, Target, Michael's and Starbucks are to the left up the hill. There's a Wegman's all the way up on the hill and a little further down Route 6 is the Circle Drive-In and an Office Depot.
Yeah, I'm rambling, but hey, you never know who might want to write fic and want to know that. ;)
10. Most people in the Scranton area will pick Gertrude Hawk chocolates over Hershey's. They're yummy.
11. That saying about the two seasons here being winter and road construction? Yeah, that's frighteningly accurate.
1. There's this company around here called Shorten Homes that makes prefabricated houses. I mention this only because they have quite possibly the most annoying radio commercials on the planet. It's some guy singing like he thinks he's Sinatra, and the same commercials have been running since I was a little girl. They're almost physically painful.
2. The area has three major movie theaters. (Well, four, but the one by the K-Mart doesn't count and it smells like a sewer.) One is right across the street from the Steamtown Mall. It's much nicer now that they've remodeled it, or at least that's what I've heard. There's a Cinemark up in Moosic, and it's really nice. And there's the one that opened up in Wilkes-Barre, which I haven't been able to get to yet.
3. The local Triple-A team just changed from a Phillies farm team to a Yankees farm team. Every baseball fan in Northeastern PA either cheered, booed, or died laughing at everybody else.
4. Everything is either on a hilltop or in a valley. There's barely any truly flat land anywhere around, including in Scranton which is all hills and curves and stuff. You know when Michael's driving someone somewhere, and all you see is the flat street ahead of him? It would be more appropriate if he were going up and down hills and you could see mountaintops on the horizon. (Although not very big ones. Our mountains are wee. Oh, so very wee.)
5. People around here eat a lot of Italian and Polish food. Yes, even if they're not Italian or Polish. Odds are good that you will find a bag of pierogies in any random freezer in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
6. Speaking of Italian food, La Festa Italiana happens on Labor Day Weekend at Courthouse Square in Scranton. All it is is food stands and it's not all Italian food, but it's fabulous food that might as well be slapped directly onto the thighs to cut out the middleman considering the amount of fat and grease in it.
7. St. Patrick's Day in Scranton should be known as Public Drunkenness Day considering how many people get wasted that day and how much of a damn the cops really give about who gets drunk. There are lines wrapped around the block to get into every bar in Scranton when they open at seven in the morning. Anyone who misses the parade is too busy hanging over a toilet puking their guts out or sleeping it off.
8. Weather forecasters usually do a pretty good job of guessing it will snow and a shitty job of figuring out how much snow we'll get. Most of us can tell you how much snow we'll actually get to the inch on our particular street compared to what the forecasters say. For example, if the forecasters say we're getting six inches of snow, I'm getting seven and my parents are getting nine.
9. Most people in the Scranton area go to one of either two malls (the Wilkes-Barre mall doesn't count) -- the Steamtown Mall or the Viewmont Mall. The Steamtown Mall is in downtown Scranton and it's two stories. When you go out the front door, there's the AMC movie theater. The food court is on the second floor, and when you go outside to smoke, the walkway overlooks the train tracks.
The Viewmont Mall is in Dickson City on the other side of I-81. It takes fifteen to twenty minutes to get to from most parts of Scranton. It used to be a small mall with nothing really around it, and then they cleared out the massive amount of land around it and since then they've developed the crap out of it. There's a Borders in the corner of the mall's parking lot. Viewmont Drive runs behind the mall. When you make a right, you head down the hill past Best Buy, Staples, Sam's Club, Raymour and Flanigan Furniture, a Home Depot (I think ... whichever one is the one with the blue), and a Wendy's in that order. When you make a left, you pass a Dick's, Circuit City, Petsmart and a Home Depot (no, the orange one, whichever that is, and my dad would laugh at me for not knowing which home supplies store is which) on the left, and then Don Pablo's (the Mexican place no one likes), Chuck E. Cheese, a party store, Panera Bread, and Johnny Rockets on the right. Wal-Mart, Target, Michael's and Starbucks are to the left up the hill. There's a Wegman's all the way up on the hill and a little further down Route 6 is the Circle Drive-In and an Office Depot.
Yeah, I'm rambling, but hey, you never know who might want to write fic and want to know that. ;)
10. Most people in the Scranton area will pick Gertrude Hawk chocolates over Hershey's. They're yummy.
11. That saying about the two seasons here being winter and road construction? Yeah, that's frighteningly accurate.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-09-26 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-26 09:44 pm (UTC)And how sad is it that I know this??
11 would be true of the SF Bay Area as well. Just substitute rain for snow. Wait... road construction is year-round here. Nevermind
no subject
Date: 2006-09-26 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-26 09:55 pm (UTC)I gotta keep them straight since my boss works for Home Despot (no that wasn't a typo) as well as owning her own business.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-26 09:56 pm (UTC)Doesn't it just get yer goat when they pull that sort of thing? *shakes fist* I have no idea why things like that bother me - I suppose because it furthers WRONG impressions of places.
Like, for instance, last night on Heroes they were supposed to be in Odessa, Texas. I grew up there, so I know that there are, in fact, NO MOUNTAINS there. Just the exact opposite, actually. So perhaps we should take the pseudo-Tx mountains and swap them for the flat pseudo-Scranton?
I love to
hearread what it's like in other folks' places. That way I can be thoroughly depressed when I walk outside and there could be mountains, but lo - there is not.no subject
Date: 2006-09-26 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-26 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 01:11 am (UTC)I am planning to bring a rather large cooler back here after fall pause, though. I need to make a shopping trip to Donatelli's and the Strip District when I go home.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 02:30 am (UTC)You just never know when your street's about to become a canyon, in my experience.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 02:32 am (UTC)