is Bailley THE cultural Hotspot?
Bailley definitely isn’t some tiny backwater town in the middle of nowhere (despite how Hinobi Corporate treats the place) but the town definitely isn’t some huge hotspot of activity. In general I like to say that Bailley definitely isn’t a small town, the place is large enough to have specific districts like a downtown, tenement district (canonically the area where Five lives), proper suburbs and even a chinatown, and it has some larger structures, but it lacks the population and overall size to be considered an actual city. It’s a big town, but falls short of being considered a small city.
Also it IS a bit out of the way in terms of location. You typically don’t pass through Bailley or it’s neighbouring towns while travelling between more populated cities unless you take a detour specifically to do so, and the major highways that lead out of town to other parts of the state skim past the town’s edge instead of going straight through it.
Bailley definitely has some things going for it. It’s a coastal town with a large amount of wilderness near it, and given that I’ve worked in places just like that, I can say with confidence that Bailley definitely has a large amount of people from nearby towns and cities visiting during the summer to camp, hike or spend time on the beach assuming Bailley has a public beach for people to visit and it isn’t an hour long hike through the woods to reach the nearest beach.
Bailey also has a Chinatown as seen in Smashozaurs (and confirmed by a bunch of concept art from that episode that directly calls the area at the beginning of the episode a Chinatown), which is probably of note given that I’ve only ever seen Chinatowns in large cities like New York, Vancouver and Winnipeg. I don’t think people would visit Bailley just to see it, but I do think it’s interesting that Bailley is either large enough or has/had a large enough Chinese population at some point to have one. It’s probably small, but that’s to be expected when comparing a decently-sized town like Bailley to large cities like Vancouver and especially New York.
There IS the fact that Bailley is the place where video games originated from and the very store where they were invented is still standing to this day, but I don’t think that draws much of a crowd for one simple reason. Right now, without looking it up, tell me the exact town and state where Pong was invented. Unless you’re some big video game history nerd, you probably won’t know. Bailley is the same. Maybe sometimes a documentary or video essay will mention the place, and places like Game Kingdom and The Local Hinobi Store itself consider it a point of pride, but it’s simply too niche to draw much attention to the town itself.
There’s also large structures like that big bridge or the power plant located near the edge of town (I wouldn’t be surprised if the place supplied electricity to Bailley and also a few neighbouring towns like Dabney), but those aren’t exactly cultural hotspots.
Also, I think the town itself is either on a bit of a decline or is at least going through some stuff behind the scenes. My proof of this is stuff like the abandoned Amusement Park and the Dam Ridley used as a hideout.
The Amusement Park First, it’s probably located just barely OUTSIDE of Bailley’s town borders, but it’s close enough to be considered Bailley territory by the local techs so it’s close enough for me. As mentioned before, the place is abandoned, and given the fact that maps of the place can still be found inside, some of the rides still have power and the general lack of damage or wear, it probably shut down very recently. Thats a good source of foot traffic for Bailley and probably Dabney and other nearby towns just gone, or maybe it’s the other way around and Bailley’s started to not bring in as many tourists recently, resulting in the Funland Theme Park having to shut its doors.
The place could also be still operational and just shut down temporarily, but I kind of doubt that because it’s the middle of summer when glitch techs takes place. Just going off the amusement park that runs like 20 minutes away from my house, there’s no way in hell they’d shut down for even a day unless something very bad happened. Either the place recently shut down and they’re not opening again, or something very bad happened in there and they’re staying closed for anywhere from a weeks to “until next summer”.
Other thing: Ridley’s dam. Because Ridley’s hideout is located in an abandoned dam. I wouldn’t say it’s “Abandoned” necessarily, you don’t just abandon a whole ass dam, but the fact that a 13 year old is able to set themselves up in there without having to worry about security or being seen by anyone at all implies to me that the place is probably run by a skeleton crew who just show at a specific time to make sure nothing is falling apart.
Just headcanon wise you also have Linn’s Repair Shop. In canon (or at least a season 3 animatic), it’s an old building that looks like it’s in a bit of disrepair and the hacker group known as the Blue Dryads set themselves up in its surprisingly spacious basement area. At least in my headcanons for the place, it used to be an old nightclub before going out of business and shutting down, the building then being converted into Linn’s Repair Shop and the Dryads setting themselves up in what was originally the “nightclub” area in the basement (and then in HTSBD, the place eventually collapses in full).
My point is, Bailley seems to be going through some stuff. The town isn’t dying, but it seems to be entering a bit of a decline or maybe just plateauing in terms of growth and money. The town is stable and isn’t even close to falling apart, but it’s also definitely a bit past it’s heyday. The Amusement Park recently went out of business or shut down for the foreseeable future, the town’s big expensive dam is running on a skeleton crew, at least in HTSBD the local nightclub went out of business several years ago, that sort of thing. The town will survive and it isn’t at risk of dying or anything, but it used to have a lot more going for it in the past.
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