08. Nor Lock

“Hellish desolation” adequately sums up the composition of the Nor Lock neighborhood, and it’s a striated Hell not unlike that of Paradise Lost, with the first circle abutting the Purgatory of the Yards and the ninth circle dragging North Lake into its environs. With a minimum of residential space, most of Nor Lock is industrial from the auto plant that dumps its waste into North Lake to the foundry that dumps its waste into North Lake to the plastics plant that dumps its waste into North Lake. It’s all a stinking metal-andconcrete sprawl, with nothing higher than three stories except a few sterile office parks. In the factories’ lunchtime proximity and in the squalid residential areas, local dives abound, and cheap beer is a more common meal than the perfunctory blue plates.

Background

The era of the untarnished working man is over. Once, men could be proud to say they worked assembly-line jobs at the factories, but crooked union delegates and bottomline management left the factories in the lurch in the late 1970s. Now, a 12-hour day, five days a week is an acceptable schedule on the factory floor, and many of the workers have to resort to cheap meth to keep themselves alert and focused for the last 20 of those hours. Where the meth went, the prostitutes followed, and by the early 1980s, Nor Lock had a reputation as a trough of petty vice. It retains that reputation now, a timeless testament to the fate of the laborer-tradesman.

Alternative Name(s)

Industrial Works

Type

District

Location under

New Castle