Businesses (F.C.)

LOCAL CHAINS

While national business chains are a part of everyday life here, the local Freedom City business community has many different chains and franchises with a more local flavor.

BROMWELL’S DEPARTMENT STORES

Bromwell’s is a chain of department stores native to the Freedom City area. It is popular with the middle and upper class and found downtown and in the more affluent suburbs of the city. Bromwell’s has been steadily shrinking in size over the past decade, and is expected to eventually sell to a larger national competitor.

FREEDOM SOUND

Originally a local chain of music stores, Freedom Sound stocked an extensive selection of CDs, along with related magazines, videos, T-shirts, and accessories. Over the past decade, the emphasis has become more on the latter, with CD selections shrinking and second-hand bins for CDs and DVDs growing, along with more and more collectables.

GO-MART

This chain of convenience stores can be found throughout Freedom City. Most GO-Marts feature, or are located near, gas stations. They offer a variety of overpriced convenience items and foods and are open 24 hours a day—their main draw for most in search of food late at night.

HARVEST SUPERMARKETS

A major chain of supermarkets, there are numerous stores throughout the Freedom metro area. Harvest Supermarkets always include a bakery, pharmacy, and in-store deli.

PROMINENT STORES

Along with the chain stores, Freedom City features several well-known independent shops and businesses.

HAAS BROTHERS JEWELERS

This is one of the oldest and most respected jewelers in the city. After the loss of their store as a result of a superbattle, Nicholas and Raymond Haas rebuilt their business with a newer and even more extensive store. The brothers are well known for appearing in their own television and radio ads, often talking about how their father started in the jewelry business.

MILLENNIUM COMICS

Considered the best comic store in the Freedom metro area, Millennium Comics expanded from a single store to three. Customers called the destruction of the main store’s extensive back-issue collection in a fire a tragedy of epic proportions, but owner Jerry Webster has managed to bring the collection back to where it was before and then some. Customers can find thousands of different back issues, along with a wide selection of comic book memorabilia and collectables.

THE NEVER-ENDING STORY

This small antiquarian bookshop nestles on the bottom floor of a building in Riverside, a carved wooden sign with its name hanging above the door. Owner Andrew Orlando works in the shop and lives upstairs; he’s a portly, bearded gentleman with a deep love of books and a fondness for cats, tweed, and exotic flowers. At least one of Orlando’s several feline friends can be found dozing in the sun or near the radiator of the shop at all times. The store specializes in “well-loved” (used) books, including rare editions. Andrew has an uncanny knack for finding rare volumes and occasionally stumbles onto tomes of interest to those versed in the arcane arts.

ROCKET RECORDS

A small record store tucked away on the second floor of a building in Southside, Rocket Records is considered the best place in the city for second-hand, rare, and underground music. The store’s stock includes imports, bootlegs, recordings by local bands, and a wide selection of vintage vinyl records.

SHOPPING CENTERS

Freedom City features a number of shopping malls and plazas with collections of major chain stores.
Pier Two Shopping Center along The Waterfront is two levels of stores and restaurants and a few major chain stores. The Pier often features outdoor entertainment in good weather, as well as open-air farmer’s- and fisherman’s-markets in season.
Millennium Mall in Midtown is one of the largest of its kind in a metro area: three stories encompassing some nine square blocks. The mall holds more than 150 different shops and an extensive third-floor food court with an open-air balcony and skylights. Parking is often difficult, despite the presence of a four-story parking garage attached to the plaza.
Ashton Mall caters to the shopping needs of the western suburban residents of the city, although there have been some concerns regarding gangs and patrons from the poorer West End areas. This in turn leads to complaints about elitism and racism on the part of the mall association in an ongoing cycle.
Meadow Street in Riverside features numerous small avant-garde shops, mostly specialty bookstores, galleries, jewelers, and boutiques.
Greeley Street in Hanover is known as a place to find unique shops, boutiques, trendy clothing stores, and sidewalk cafés. It’s a popular place to spend a weekend afternoon shopping, eating, and people watching.
Hanover Square, the area near the Hanover Institute of Technology, is known for shops catering to the collegeage and tech-geek crowds.
Bayview Mall in central Bayview is a shopping center best known as the site of a battle between The Next-Gen and one of Doc Otaku’s giant mecha, commemorated by a statue on display in its rotunda. The mall management would be dismayed to discover Bayview has become a regular hangout of students from the Claremont Academy in their secret identities. Rubbing the top of the mecha’s bronze head (some twenty feet off the floor) in front of witnesses without being caught is considered a rite of passage for Claremont freshmen.