What's Arkham like nowadays?

>>49547909
Total tourist trap. (Literally, they sacrifice them to Dagon). Good wi-fi at the cafes though. They turned the sanatorium into a student hostel for Miskatonic U, which is under a cloud following a recent rape scandal involving some Deep Ones and the lacrosse team.

It's a college town, mostly. Chain stores on every corner, bars at every chain, sports fields and athletic outfitters next to the bars.

They've altered the curriculum at old MU a tad after a lot of books from the library went missing about a decade ago. It's now "Miskatonic Technical University" and STEM is king. There's a small but devoted literature and liberal arts faculty, but they've been moved off the main campus to what was the old library building. They've got a whanger of a MFA program but the facilities out there are cramped. The main campus is largely devoted to physical sciences and engineering. The Miskatonic Ferals are the worst team in the Northeastern Conference, and most students aren't even aware there's a sports program, not that many of them would ever qualify.

In short, it's basically like any other East Coast technical college. No one stays longer than their undergraduate because there are so many other, better options for post-graduate education around. The teachers are isolated and lonely and the students are goal-oriented and boring - there's very little night life.

It's the perfect place to get an average education. Or to hide.

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>>49547937
That was the 90s.

Now it's part pill slum, part run down industrial zone with contaminated soil, and part third rate university in dire funding straits with no notable sports team.

The town government is inept, bankrupt, and in the pocket of the prison and oil industries.

The Arkham Advertiser has been purchased by a Murdoch subsidiary a decade ago and only maintains a local intern for fluff pieces to sell ads to the few remaining local businesses, everything else comes from corporate, AP, or Reuters.

The cops and courts make a living off of interstate traffic with seizures and fines, keeping them busy. There's a municipal deal with an upstate privately runs prison that requires certain numbers of convicts per month to be viable.

For some reason there still exists a book store in town. It can't be the students from the university keeping it in business, no one enrolled there has money for books. And the store selection of genres curiously overlaps with the occult specialty of the Miskatonic University library, one of the few enclaves of former glory. So how it remains in business to this day is a stunning mystery and must be associated with some sinister purpose that is not for human minds to grasp.

>>49548003
(cont.)
Arkham's bloody history leaked out into the mainstream in the mid-20th century, revealing sordid affairs between officials and mysterious benefactors, disturbing reports of serial killings, and scandalous rape stories that, for a brief time, captivated the American public.

It has taken several decades and enormous sums of money to tamp out the smoldering mysteries of Arkham, and the people responsible are the same ones who changed the Miskatonic curriculum. Arkham's appearance in the modern day, that of a sleepy college town devoid of any real culture or identity, is a carefully crafted illusion, the product of devious, plotting minds whose woeful influences have been forced into more subtle means of manipulation by the digital realities of 21st century America.

No family that lives in Arkham has any history there. The oldest of the "new arrivals" settled there in the late 1960s. Those elder families, the ones who know of Arkham's past and the nature of its secret rulers, have been bribed into silence or have disappeared.

>>49547909
>>49547937

The Asylum is doing great business though, especially after it rebranded after the... troubles... and became a popular celebrity rehab clinic.

Of course >>49548083 has it partially right about Lower Arkham, down by the resevoir. It's all meth labs and weird looking suburbs down there.

>>49548156
They call it 'Little Innsmouth'...

There's a great seafood place on 5th street.

The guy there knows his shit, its like he crawled out the ocean.

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>>49548212
Yummy!

I once had a beer in some garage brewery/bar. They had moonshine, too. Made me feel all funny for a few days. But when my doctor sent me to find out their ingredients in order to check for allergies I couldn't find the place. And I have been looking. Something draws me back. That was good beer, haven't had anything like it since.

>>49548083
>>49548003
Sounds like lowell

>>49547937
>They turned the sanatorium into a student hostel for Miskatonic U, which is under a cloud following a recent rape scandal involving some Deep Ones and the lacrosse team.

Am I the only one that imagined the campus as literally being under a perpetual cloud?

>>49551857
No, I had to reread it several times to get it. Not a native speaker, but ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD!