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Shades of Grey - News Files

Ketchikan The mush is set in Alaska, in the city of Ketchikan. Ketchikan is not the biggest cities in Alaska but it is of a middle size. In real life, it and the surrounding more rural areas have 15,000 inhabitants. With the ferry to Hyder, and adding the fact that we chose to have the stripmine in Hyder to have remained functional until now, when in real life it closed down, we have a bigger population base. The population of both places on Shades of Grey combined (not in real life because of the stripmine staying open) is about 30,000 to 35,000 people. Hyder's income is purely based on the stripmine. Without that, the city would be a lot smaller. Not just the people working at the mine get income from it, but transporters, people who do support and the people who work for the people working in the mine, running services and such. Ketchikan's main income base is tourism. Big cruise ships find their way to the harbour at least every week in summer, and the musea and Creek Street do most of their business then. In winter things are a lot more quiet. Where we have interpreted in Hyder that there was a big division between the native population and the settlers, that only arrived in the twentieth century, in Ketchikan there is a lot more cooperation. This is especially helpful because tourists are interested in the native heritage and the Totem museum and the Salmon Hatchery and Eagle Center are in the hands of local Haida and Tlingit people. The main focus of the tourism is the nature oriented tourist, the fisher, and people focused on culture. Of course tourism is not the only viable economic activity in Ketchikan, there is also shopowners, business owners, and all levels of economic activity found anywhere where people live together in places at least larger than a village. +help map will show you a map of the grid. The grid reflects a part of Ketchika geographically that you can find on mapquest. Unfortunately, not being ourselves very intimately familiar with Ketchikan, we had to choose to interpret the social level and usage of some streets without knowing exactly what they were. Thus, the Ketchikan and Hyder on the mush are just a stage and not meant to reflect real life to the detail. Like Shakespeare, his 'in fair Verona' could not have kept to the exact details of that city, so have we chose to interpret things, color them, and give them a spin to make our stories interesting.