May
31st
2021
Luna and Bon Bon's Day Out Story Notes · 5:32am May 31st, 2021
Overall Story Notes:
- If you haven't read Night Train to New York yet, I'd recommend doing that first - this is a direct sequel, and it gives a lot of explanations as to how the world works within the story.
- This story was originally going to be a much longer story involving Princess Luna stealing some newly-sentient trains in Canada, but I ended up getting so tied up in a side story involving Luna and Canadian politics that the train focused angle of the story stopped being viable, and then the story kind of fell apart. When the May 2021 pairings contest came along, I dusted off the prompt, salvaged what little I could, and made this.
New York
- As of this writing [May 31st, 2021], I don't think there are any stories on FimFic that have Luna and Bon Bon as the only characters - if there are some, please feel free to let me know in the comments!
- If you are part of the rapidly-growing demographic that was born after 9/11, the original World Trade Center complex was a mixed-use office and commercial complex in downtown Manhattan. It consisted of 7 buildings, an underground shopping mall, and four train stations for PATH and the New York City Subway. The entire complex was destroyed during the 9/11 attacks - a massive tragedy that you really should know something about already.
- Luna's camera is a Canon AE-1 Program, then one of the newest cameras on the market. It's still a favorite of entry-level film photographers to this day - even I have one.
- Luna and Bon Bon enter the World Trade Center Mall through Building 5, which was the primary "retail" building, holding the entrance to the mall as well as the large Border's bookstore that we'll talk about later.
- Duane Reade is a New York City-specific drugstore chain.
- Kit Kats are a brand of chocolate wafers made by Nestle. In the United States, the bars are produced under license by the Hershey Company.
- Skor is a chocolate toffee bar also sold by Hershey. Introduced in 1981, it was a relatively new product in 1983.
Tab is the best soda ever made, and I will hear no arguments against that claim. Introduced as one of the first ever diet sodas, Tab waned in popularity following the introduction of other diet drinks, (most notably Diet Coke in 1982) however it still has a small but rabid fanbase to this day. Unfortunately, Tab was taken from us in 2020, when Coca-Cola announced that they would be discontinuing the product as part of a COVID-19 related paring of their brand portfolio.
The bastards.
- Twinkies are snack cakes made by Hostess. They are both loved and... not loved by Americans, but they are an indelible part of our national culture.
- The original World Trade Center Path Station was accessed via the mall, and there was a simply huge bank of escalators taking people down to track level:
- At the time, the fare for PATH trains was 30 cents and required exact change.
There aren't a lot of photos available of the actual station itself, but here's a short clip from a video made by the Port Authority (go to 6:43):
- PATH - or Port Authority Trans-Hudson - is a commuter rail network run by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. It connects metropolitan New Jersey with downtown Manhattan, and the World Trade Center (also owned by the Port Authority) was built upon its original downtown terminus.
- The PATH line from Newark to the World Trade Center is called... Newark–World Trade Center.
- PATH's rolling stock in 1983 was in a state of transition - the old 1950's-era stock was being phased out and replaced with the new PA1, 2 and 3 stock. Car 745 is a PA3 car, built by Hawker Siddeley in 1972. On 9/11, car 745 and its train was left behind as the WTC PATH station was evacuated. The buildings collapsed onto the station, destroying it and the rear 6 cars, but 745 and PA1 143 survived, were hauled out of the rubble, and put on display in local transportation museums. 745 is in the Shoreline Trolley Museum in Connecticut.
After 9/11
745 and 143 being removed from Ground Zero
745 arriving in Connecticut. New York, New York. It’s a hell of a town - where ponies ride in a hole in the ground.
That's a line from from Leonard Bernstein's On the Town.
New Jersey
- Newark Penn Station is a busy transfer station in the New York metro area, being served by NJ Transit, PATH, Amtrak, and numerous bus lines.
- Ektachrome is a type of still and motion picture film made by Kodak.
- Naporano Iron and Metal is kind of famous in the "PRR/Penn Central/Conrail/Northeastern United States" railfan community. In the 1970s and 1980s, they cut up everything, from F-Units to GG1s and everything in between. They got the nickname "Scraporano's", and more than a few railfans broke in to the site to get one last look at some condemned piece of railroad history.
- The yellow trains that Luna arrived at Naporano's to buy are (at this point) the only two surviving UAC Turbotrains. The Turbotrain was a turbine-powered passenger train that had a brief run in Canada and the United States, before lack of maintenance, high fuel consumption, and the high costs of dealing with a low-production vehicle forced them into retirement. These specific trains are VIA's CN 2 and CN 3 - by 1983, the American trainsets had been disposed of thanks to Amtrak's stinginess, leaving these as the only intact examples. (CN 1 had burned to the ground in a fire several years earlier.) No heritage organization was interested in the trains, so both were hauled away to Naporano in early 1983 and were cut up - here, a Pony Princess is there to save them.
Shopping
- The Borders at the World Trade Center took up three floors of WTC 5, with floors two and three completely filled with books. At the time, it was the largest Borders in the world. The store actually survived 9/11 almost completely intact, but the upper floors of WTC 5 were so badly damaged that the entire building had to go.
- Tiffany & Co. is a prestigious jewelry retailer. Their flagship location is on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
- The "yellow diamond" that Luna discards on Bon Bon's advice is the Tiffany Yellow Diamond - possibly the largest Yellow Diamond ever discovered. It has been worn exactly four times, has been offered for sale once, and is three times larger than the Hope Diamond. No wonder the staff had a collective heart attack when Luna passed on it.
- Tanzanite and Tsavorite are colored gemstones discovered in the late 1960s and early 70's. Both of them were named and marketed by Tiffany & Co. in the early 1970s, and are still widely available today.
- The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is one of New York City's grand old institutions. A hub for the rich and famous, Presidents, Kings, Ambassadors, Singers, Models, and Actors have all stayed here. It's said that on any given night, you could have seen Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, or Zsa Zsa Gabor on the property.
- Speaking of Frank Sinatra... Old Blue Eyes was not a calm man at the best of times, and could best be described as a mean drunk. (And he was drunk a lot.) He kept an apartment at The Waldorf until his death, and one notable anecdote about his time there is when he lunged at a fan who came up to him at the hotel bar wanting an autograph. He also had a lot of affairs, and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he'd make a pass at a Princess or two if he was three sheets to the wind.
- The Princess of Monaco - better known as Hollywood actress Grace Kelly - was a frequent guest of The Waldorf-Astoria, along with her husband, Rainier III.
- Red Velvet cake is a reddish-colored chocolate layer cake. While its origins are not decisively known, the cake was popularized at the Waldorf-Astoria, and it is still on the menu there today.
Thank you for writing, and for the additional information!