The first duty of a revolution
is to get away with it.
-- John Dickinson
NYC is divided into 5 regions called boroughs (each has its own governmental structure: there are borough halls in addition to the main city hall). The boroughs are Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx.
Manhattan, the best known borough is an island that basically runs north to south in the Hudson River. North is referred to as "up" or "uptown", "upper", etc. South is called "lower" or "downtown". This is the way it looks on a map and also the way the numbered streets run. Upper Manhattan is Harlem. Lower Manhattan is the Financial District (Ground Zero, Wall Street, etc). City Hall is also there. In the middle of Manhattan is, well, "midtown", which is where you find most of the well known shopping (Macy's, Sacks 5th Avenue), Times Square, the Empire State Building, many of the better hotels, and the theater district (Broadway). Uptown from there is Central Park with most of the major museums bordering it (the Met, the Museum of Natural History, etc).
Some of the other descriptions are fairly obvious too. People refer to the area along the Hudson River as the West Side (Upper West Side or Lower West Side). Across the island along the "East River" is the East Side (again, upper and lower). On the lower west side is the Olympic Stadium, and Guardian Headquarters. That's also where the Port Authority Bus Terminal is. The other major transportation hubs are Penn Station in Midtown (directly below Madison Square Garden) and Grand Central Station (Upper East Side).
The main transportation is by subway. New York's subway system is quite good. It's also all based on Metrocards, which the Guardians use to access people's movements.You need a credit card or debit card to buy one. That's how the metrocard gets attached to your information. Cars have an EZPass box to pay tunnel and bridge tolls which provides the Guardians with the same information. The Guardians actively discourage the use of cash.
More places - Tribeca is toward Lower Manhattan, East Side. North of the Brooklyn Bridge. Used to be basically desolate, has experienced a comeback. Trendy restaurants and galleries.
Chelsea is in Midtown. It includes the Garment District. Lots of retail stores and wholesale distributors. Lots of clothing manufacturers.
SoHo means "South of Houston". Houston Street is pronounced "How-Ston", rather than like the city in TX. SoHo is another trendy artsy area. Lots of little nightclubs and art galleries. Chinatown is near SoHo too and the Village is North of SoHo, between there and Midtown/Chelsea.
For further NYC information and detailed maps, see this
website Locations:
These are some of the locations that may be mentioned in the game.
Whitetail Grove Apartments - an apartment complex in Flushing, Queens, on Auburndale Lane near Kissena Park / Very close by are three large cemetaries - Flushing Cemetary, St. Mary's, and Mt. Hebron. Hans Varner lives here.
Java The Hut - A coffee shop located on Auburndale Lane, directly across the street from the Whitetail Grove Apartments.
Burkowitz Books is in SoHo at Howard and Lafayette. Lafayette is a major thoroughfare, on the edge of SoHo adjacent to Little Italy.
The Mid-Manhattan Public Library is located on 455 Fifth Avenue at 40th Street.
Columbia University - Columbia University is heavily monitored for possible subversive activities, and all students are required to wear plainly visible ident-cards while roaming campus.
The Requiem - An underground goth club in SoHo, owned by the enigmatic figure known as E; a haven for counterculture types and a recognized area of neutrality amongst revolutionaries and Guardian oppressors both. E seems to have quite a few side ventures...
Ace Movers and Cleaners - An unassuming company in the business of moving people's personal possessions, cleaning up damage, and restoring things to their proper order. With the right connections, however, they also do services like removing evidence from a scene, clearing an area of psychometric emanations, enchanting an area with an aura of serenity, or exterminating nasty demon problems.
Petey's Perfect Packagings - A courier business for securing small parcels that can't be shipped through the mail normally. Rates depend on required delivery speed, distance, and parcel contents.
Freedom Tower - A large tower; the tallest building in the world, dwarfing the NYC skyline where the World Trade Center once stood. This is where the Guardian's main headquarters is.
Flushing Medical Associates- A clinic that is located at 1441 170th Street in Flushing. They have a sliding fee scale, from free to twenty dollars for those that can pay. They have a strict code of confidentiality.
St. Mary's/St. Dominic's High School - a Catholic high school in the heart of Little Italy. St Mary's/St Dominic's is a small private school, jointly operated by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and the Sisters, Servents of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (SSIHM). The Jesuits and the SSIHM are both renowned for their excellence in educational programs around the world. The staff is multicultural, with instructors from all over the world. 75% of the school's staff are ordained clergy. The school's primary focus is academics, with lesser focus on physical education and religious instruction.
Mount Sinai Hospital - One of the largest hospitals in New York, and on the bleeding edge in the medical field. Rumor has it that this is also a development zone for various top-secret Guardian projects...
Bucket O'Beer - A somewhat sleazy bar in the Bronx, frequented by toughs.
Essex Mountain Sanatorium -- Actually in Verona, New Jersey, this area has buildings that date back to 1873, and it was officially locked up on December 1st, 1982, and completely abandoned. Scheduled for total demolition in 2002, the building survived due to a combination of apathy and state budgeting concerns, and it is presently mostly forgotten about. In more recent times, the sanatorium has been used as a hideout for various displaced people.