Mumbai Specific Culture Thread

Balada Loca, aka, 'The Cloud Lounge'
Hotel
Located in near the factory district, Balada Loca makes up for in style and space for what it lacks in proximity to the center of the city. A moderately pricey joint, the white stone building can happily admit to a full 46 stories of shops, rooms, and good eating. Suites can accomdate groups from 2 to 16, making it ideal for splitting a room or for the high ranking agent who needs enough room for their entourage of robots. The Balada Loca boasts being completely inclusive for those who don't want to leave the comforts of their hotel. The facilities include two restaurants (one fancy dress, one casual), three cafes, a luxury shopping arcade, three pools, and a full medical and holistic compliment, including massage, spa facilities, and a small medical treatment area. Concierge services can arrange for almost anything, and proudly maintains a six of seven star rating by the EI subsidiary company Reisender Helfer.

Interior decor ranges from white to dark gray, with occasional highlights in shades of pale yellow, olive green, dusty red. Rooms are cloud themed, unshockingly, and feature cloud-themed fluffy furniture, magnificent views, storm-style showers, and for the very high end rooms, anti-grav equipped Cloud 9 brand beds.

'The Lodge's main pool was actually more of two pools, linked by an underwater tunnel and an area of sandy false-beach above the water level. The two pools were both good sized, with one being shallower for less confident swimmers compared to the depth of the other, which went down three floors worth of depth.

The pools were illuminated with a cloud pattern, which, combined with the light blue colouring of sides, made it feel like swimming in the sky. Nowhere is this more apparent than the underwater tunnel, which hangs over the entrance hall of the hotel...and you can see through the sides, making it a very disconcerting experience for those not used to heights.

Above ground, there is a small pool side cafe, along with a fair amount of space to spread out for those who just want to relax...or just want to check out the other clientele, who are a fairly mixed bunch, since the hotel does allow non-visitors to enter the pool, although there is a maximum number allowed, and guests of the hotel get priority in terms of being kicked out. Lots of equipment is rentable from the hotel, including rebreathers, floating rings etc.'

The second pool is mixed with a classic aquarium style tank, and deep. Only hotel visitors are allowed to visit this exclusive pool, which features tons of cyberfish of all kinds. Guest are encouraged to swim with and touch them, and explore the large coral reef tank with rebreathers. The more casual cafe and bar, The Thunderhead, looks into this pool from the side and below, giving diners of casual Comoros fusion cooking a wonderful view of the swimmers and tank.

The third pool is wide and shallow, and is located on the protected rooftop of the hotel. A small bubble protects the roof from natural rain, and instead allows lovely views of the world's greatest city in a air conditioned and pure room of filtered and fresh air. Natural air cleaning plants decorate the shallow pool.. but by far the most amazing feature of the private high-roller only rooftop pool is are the cloud jellies. The blue water is full of bioengineered sting-less jelly fish, whose white bodies shimmer through the blue water like clouds. The jelly fish are resistant to poking and accidental kicks, and feel squishy and floppy and cool to the touch. They float aimlessly with the guests, prismatically shifting with rainbow light.

Hot tubs, saunas, and a fountain based play area are also available for paying guests.

For those who don't want to stay in the Balada Loca, transport links via monorail, taxi, and walking can be provided.

AgoraPhobia
Virtual Reality Arcade

AgoraPhobia is the height of Mumbai technology, a fifty floor behemoth of dark metal and neon lights that has everything you could ever want in cutting edge VR technology. There are floors dedicated to holotag across huge holocity scapes that glow over actual obstacles that allow cover from massive guns. There are private showings of the adult nature. There are holofields full of cyberpets, and all manner of fictional worlds to explore. There are full body machines, floors of Immersion Suites, mini-booths, whole floors to rent, and pre-planned to free running scenarios. citizens are allowed to play for a few credits to an afternoon for a ten thousand for a rented, 'game mastered' floor, with a tailored story, rented for a weekend.

AgoraPhobia hosted first of many MMVRRPGS (formerly VRARPs), Candyland, a shimmering urban playworld surrounded by vast wastes, forests and dark disturbing secrets. Candyland features a unique "Multi-verse" system, where avatars around the world can interact, but only directly touch the materials in their own 'verse.

AgoraPhobia also hosts the world's premier VR gaming convention, AggroPhobia. These feature contests for budding programmers, promos for the newest games and systems, and competitions in such classic games as GEMSTORM, Sword-Off, and Dragun, and other platinum level immersion specials.

In addition to an entire VR range, AgoraPhobia also features a night club on the top three floors, dedicated to light shows, high fashion, and drug cocktails. There are also small shops and cafes dotted throughout the complex, selling everything from high end equipment to drinks to meals to "I Slayed Tiamat And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" branded shirts.

The Broken Circuit

Hidden deep in the lower levels of Mumbai, the Broken Circuit is a small bar that caters almost exclusively to hackers. It is dark, lit only by the screens that cover every avalibable surface. Every table has at least one x-pin socket for each chair, usually more. Even the barmaid, Bertha, is a replicant, a muse model who was either programmed to be surly, or, as the rumours say, an awakened one who just got fed up. She also doubles as sercurity, something the bar makes a big deal out of in general due to their clientel.

The bar is very popular with a certain type of hacker. The Tough On The Internet type. The ones who boast about how they're gonna beat someone up, despite having close combat skills on par with Tansai. No one is sure why this happened, but it just so happens that a lot of these people come there, and occasionally, one of them realizes that another one threatened them over that blog post last week, or someone gets drunk and forgets she can't actually beat people up, and a fight breaks out. Occasionally here means at least twice a night. When this occurs, the huge bouncers move in to break up the fight. Instead of kicking out the brawlers, they do something far more cruel; they confiscate all PDAs and computers and attach a cybernetic restrainer over any neural jack, and sit the poor hacker back down at the bar to deal with Bertha convincing them to buy more booze. Given that the would be brawler ends up unconscious and out of money most of the time, it is a bit like a mugging, but legal.

TL:DR World's least rough and tough tough guy bar, filled with over-confident nerds.