Restaurant, Bars & Nightclubs

Freedom City has a profuse number of places to eat, drink, and have fun. For a city on the move, places to go out and blow off steam or enjoy a pleasant meal are important, and Freedom has attracted plenty of entrepreneurs up to the challenge. The city already has a reputation as a place that doesn’t sleep; you can find somewhere to eat or have fun at nearly any hour of the day or night. From dive bars to high-end nightclubs, diners to Michelin-starred fine dining establishments, Freedom City has it all.

NIGHTCLUBS AND BARS

The city has nightspots catering to nearly every kind of taste, although the clubs lean toward the young and hip crowd making up so much of the nighttime scene. A few of the hottest spots are:

ECLIPSE

This club in Southside caters to the Goth and Industrial crowd. The owners like to claim the club was built in an old church, but the original building was actually owned by Freedom College and renovated to look like an old church. The club’s proximity to the college makes it a popular nightspot for students. Occasional rumors that the Eclipse is a hangout for actual vampires has only enhanced the club’s reputation.

FOURTH WORLD

A modern entertainment complex in Kingston, featuring three dance floors, an arcade, a billiards room, and a full bar. The four-story building was bought out and heavily renovated by the current owner, while retaining its redbrick-and-steel industrial look.

HOT LICKS

This Midtown jazz bar features live acts for the connoisseur. It’s in a rebuilt turn of the century house that’s deliberately cozy, though some call it cramped.

INFINITY

A popular downtown nightclub near The Waterfront, Infinity is filled with smoked glass, chrome, and pulsating lighting. Hip-hop, electronic and retro-disco music are popular, and Infinity has live deejays of all types playing on the weekends.

LEGENDS

Located not far from the Liberty Dome, this club has a supers theme. Servers wear revealing spandex costumes, often with short capes, and a raised transparent dance floor lets dancers try out their “flying” moves. Supers memorabilia is on display in glass cases around the club. Not unexpectedly, Todd Campion, the memorabilia collector who owns Champion’s restaurants, also owns Legends.

MACHINE

Freedom City’s foremost gay club is located in Hanover. The building is a renovated warehouse with plenty of exposed pipes and brickwork overlaid with a lot of exposed metal. Pounding dance music fills the entire place. The main dance floor spans the first floor, while tables and bars occupy the two upper balcony areas overlooking the scene.

MIDNIGHT HOUR

The owners of the original Midnight Hour in Los Angeles opened this underground alternative—and alcohol-free—dance club in Riverside. It’s located not far from the waterfront area, and very popular with the 18+ crowd not yet old enough to enter the other clubs legally.

MILLENNIUM

Midtown’s biggest nightclub caters to the young and upwardly mobile. Its emphasis is on futuristic, sleek, and stylish, and deejays mix different styles of music for different nights of the week.

THE SECRET BAR

Not so secret, this bar and restaurant’s name comes from its motif—1960s-style spy movies and television shows. The West End bar maintains an innocuous front as an “import/export business.” Patrons enter through a “secret passage” from the reception area into the bar. Both floors of the Secret Bar are filled with spy memorabilia, and the bartenders serve code-named drinks not for the faint of heart (or liver).

RESTAURANTS

Freedom is home to hundreds of restaurants serving a wide range of food, from the finest four-star nouvelle cuisine to ethnic restaurants to old-fashioned home-style cooking and fast food.

CHAMPION’S

The American cuisine at this restaurant is good, but the real reasons to visit are the restaurant’s extensive collection of super memorabilia and its connection to The Super Museum. The place is nearly always packed, so they recommend customers put their names on a waiting list and spend some time looking around the museum. Museum patrons receive coupons for discounts and specials at Champion’s. The restaurant has a full children’s menu and plenty of attractions and fun for kids as well as adults.

CHEZ HENRI

This four-star French restaurant in Midtown is known for the quality of its food but, more importantly, for the elite and snobbish attitude of its staff. It caters to the wealthy and those who want to feel wealthy for an evening.

THE LEVEES

A New Orleans style jazz bar and restaurant in Hanover, specializing in Cajun and Creole cuisine by chef Lee-Ann Chase, a New Orleans native who relocated to Freedom a few years ago.

LIBERTY PERK

A coffeehouse located near Liberty Park, where patrons can sip lattes, cappuccino, and espresso at the sidewalk tables while enjoying the view of the park across the street.

MADDEN’S

A chain of franchised restaurants, Madden’s serves American-style food in a cozy atmosphere. Madden’s is popular with middle-class families, and they always have a great selection of ice cream and desserts.

THE PLAZA

Located on the second floor of the Plaza Hotel in downtown Freedom, the Plaza restaurant serves high-class cuisine in a refined atmosphere popular with well-to-do business-people.

SHAUGHNESSEY’S

A popular chain of local “brew-pub” restaurants with a Irish-American flair, all are decorated in brass and greenstained wood with liberal amounts of stained glass. The menu is broad and eclectic, including dozens of varieties of beer, most produced by local microbreweries. Shaughnessey’s also owns its own microbrewery, which produces its signature Shaughnessey’s Stout. The most popular beer remains the city’s signature Freedom Ale, however, brewed by the Stars & Stripes Brewing Company out in Greenbank.

STAN’S SUPER HEROES

Stan’s is a local chain of sandwich shops known for reasonable prices and large portions. The various sandwiches are named for different heroes, and the stores have a number of autographed pictures of famous supers. With a day’s notice, Stan’s can produce their 12-foot “Gigantosaur” Sub for parties.

STARBASE COFFEE

Starbase Coffee is the survivor of a series of cyber-cafés that sprang up along the east coast a generation ago. It has become one of the most successful chains of its kind, with locations throughout Freedom City, particularly The North End and Hanover. Its sleek, futurist theme is popular with its patrons—mostly younger people in the high-tech industry and college students. All of its locations offer free Wi-Fi.

THE STARLIGHT ROOM

High atop the Tremont Hotel in downtown Freedom is the Starlight Room, a revolving restaurant offering a spectacular view of the city skyline and serving fine cuisine prepared by its staff of chefs. The Starlight room also features nightly dancing and live music, making it a popular nightspot.

TIA MARTA’S

This West End restaurant has been voted among the city’s best for several years running. Tia Marta’s serves a unique blend of Spanish and Italian cuisine that comes familystyle with enormous portions; people always take home leftovers from a meal here.

TIMOTHY’S BISTRO

A chef-owned bistro in Midtown, it serves a variety of cuisine based on Chef Timothy Kandro’s eclectic tastes. It’s small, upscale, and popular with local people and tourists alike, so make a reservation for one of its few tables. The bistro offers live music on weekends.

TOYS

A Chinese restaurant located in the Theater District, Toys is popular with the late theatre crowd and club-goers, since it’s open until 3:00 a.m. It serves a variety of Chinese-American foods and has an extensive buffet.

WADING WAY BREWERY

A microbrewery and American pub-style restaurant located on Wading Way near Liberty Park, the Wading Way Brewery has been riding high on the craft-beer explosion. It’s popular with young families and local businesspeople.

WINTERGREEN

This upscale cafés on Lantern Hill is the converted bottom floor of an old row house. Far from any competing Starbase Coffee, this cozy setting serves a variety of coffees and teas, pastries, and other delicacies.

FOOD TRUCKS

Freedom City enthusiastically embraced the food truck trend in urban catering and restaurants: mobile vendors who can set up their business for a day—or just a portion of one—almost anywhere in the city, serving the needs of passers-by and attracting customers via social networking and word-of-mouth. Food trucks also often gather near or around major event venues. Some of the more popular local food trucks include:

FALAFEL TOWER

Owned and run by two brothers, Maurice and Yusef Larrache, Falafel Tower offers French-Middle Eastern influenced cuisine, including their eponymous falafels, shawarma, hummus, and kabobs.

THE FATMOBILE

This food truck embraces “all that makes food good” with a rotating menu of items focusing on fat- and salt-laden savories, including more uses for bacon than one can imagine.

FREEDOM FRIES

A truck best known for their delicious french-fried potatoes and sweet potatoes with a variety of sides and toppings. Especially popular are the duck-fat fries poutine (topped with gravy and cheese curds, Canadian-style).

THE SOUL-VAN

A truck offering fried chicken and waffles, collard greens, cornbreads, fried green tomatoes, and other traditional soul-food dishes.

SWEET CHARIOT

A successful food truck business with several trucks in the Freedom City metro area offering a variety of freshly made desserts and baked goods, particularly pies, crumbles, and cookies.

CASINOS

Gambling is legal in The Boardwalk area of Freedom City’s Southside. The Mob has had a stranglehold on the casino business for generations, and a lot of Mob money gets laundered through the casinos. There has been discussion of shutting down organized gambling for decades, but it’s a valuable source of revenue and tourism for the city—to say nothing of the jobs it provides for the population of Southside—and money talks. If there’s to be any hope of improving the Southside economy, the city has to live with the Boardwalk and its casinos for the time being, at least.

ATLANTIS

A hotel and casino built on an aquatic theme, Atlantis features a massive fountain with a statue of King Neptune and his frolicking nymphs outside. It’s heavily decorated in gold leaf, marble, shells, and gauzy fishing nets, and the colors of everything are predominantly sea greens and blues. The below-ground restaurant—specializing in seafood, of course—features a wide window looking out into the South River and glass tabletops resting on tanks of exotically-colored fish. As might be expected, the Atlantis casino is none too popular with actual Atlanteans .

GOLDEN CALF

This casino revels in some of the gaudiest aspects of the gambling business. Its decor is a combination of Art Deco opulence and turn of the century decadence. A statue of a golden calf sits over the door, and gold is used heavily in interior decorations. The casino was fading somewhat, but has bounced back due to its bookings of younger, more popular singers and comedians.

PARADISE

This hotel and casino tries to emulate a tropical resort with only modest success, given the climate in Freedom is only warm for about half of the year. Still, the hotel is luxurious and features enough indoor activities—including an indoor pool—to attract a lot of interest from tourists looking for an inexpensive alternative to actually visiting the tropics.

THE SOUTHSIDE PALACE

The biggest and oldest casino on the Boardwalk is the Southside Palace. The casino features all sorts of card and dice games, as well as rows upon rows of slot machines. It also features nightly entertainment, from singing to dancing to stand-up comedy routines. The police and the local FBI office keep a close eye on the Southside Palace due to its long association with the Driogano family of the Freedom Mob.

LOCAL MUSIC SCENE

Freedom City has a lively music scene; many of the city’s bars and clubs feature live bands and open mike nights. Although there aren’t any major music industry companies in the city, there’s a lot going on in the Freedom music scene.

BANDS AND MUSICIANS

While there are undoubtedly more bands out there waiting to be discovered, these are the notables of the current crop of Freedom City musicians.

ALBION

Pitched as a Celtic-rock fusion band, combining rock stylings with old Celtic folk melodies, the seven-member band uses instruments like the fiddle and the bagpipes and are widely known for their frenetic performances. They perform at clubs and cultural festivals, although they also tour in the local area.

BOY WONDERZ

This “boy band” under contract to the music division of New Horizon Media got back together for a reunion tour after none of the four members were able to sustain solo careers. Despite the name and their spandex-costumed motif, none of the “boys” have paranormal abilities, and are now in their late 20s or early 30s.

CROSSBONES

A “voodoo rap” band combining islands music and modern rap, Crossbones goes for a lurid Hollywood Voodoo style, complete with top hats, dark sunglasses, white greasepaint, and lots of skulls and macabre props. They’ve invited Siren to attend their shows before, but the heroine has always politely declined.

JOY BUNNIES

This hard-rock trio of Japanese girls swept through Freedom City on a world tour. Unfortunately, Doc Otaku turned out to be a big fan and kidnapped the girls to download their brain patterns into androids. The Joy Bunnies were rescued and have returned to touring.

KINGS IN YELLOW

This alternative rock band recently signed with a major record label owned by New Horizon Media. Their style of dark, brooding music is popular with the Goth and alternative crowds, and Eclipse is their venue of choice in Freedom City for small club shows.

MADMAN FINALE

This rock alternative trio can be found playing many of the clubs in Freedom, and it is popular among the local college crowds. They’ve got their own website for private sales of their CDs along with other merchandise and links to purchase their music online.

THE NEW TOWN ORCHESTRA

This swing music vocal group plays some of the city’s clubs and dance palaces with their particular brand of swing music and dancing.

SKALD

A Norwegian-influenced heavy metal band that has played rock clubs in the city and gathered a following amongst local metal-heads.

THE SOUL STAMPEDE

This jazz vocal group has grown popular performing in some of the city’s bars and clubs. They’d be notable for the sweet, mellow voice of their lead singer Patti DuMont alone, but all three singers and four musicians all have incredible skills at improvisation, and one never knows what will happen at a Stampede show.

SHOWS AND CONCERTS

In addition to local talent, Freedom City draws a number of national acts. The city is a regular stop on the tours of major musicians and bands across the country, and the citizens of Freedom regularly crowd into concert halls and stadiums to see them.

FRESH SOUNDS PROMOTIONS

The city’s major concert promoter is Fresh Sounds, owned and operated by Frank Mills, the most influential promoter in the Freedom area. Fresh Sounds books the majority of shows in the city and surrounding area, in venues like the Liberty Dome, the major clubs, and the new Shuster Auditorium on the outskirts of Hanover. More than a few people aren’t fond of Mills or his slick attitude, but few can deny he gets the job done.
The smaller promoters in the area would like to get a bigger piece of the overall pie, but Mills has them shut out for the time being. Rumors say Mills is in with the Mob, or at least has enough connections to ensure nothing goes wrong with his shows and, should a competitor suffer an unfortunate “accident,” well that’s hardly his fault, now, is it?