Maraschino City

From Candypedia
Maraschino City
First appearanceHot Pursuit, page 7
September 6, 2006
Related charactersSandy, Mike, Lucy

Maraschino City (usually just “Maraschino”) is a large waterfront city at least an hour from Roseville by bus.[1] Paulo lived there until the fifth grade,[2] and Mike and Lucy once spent a very bad day there looking for Sandy.

Description

Maraschino’s skyline is made up of tall, blocky towers, with one big domed building standing out among them.[3] Down at the water, a bare plank dock with no railing juts out into open water, and a single duck floats beside it when Mike and Lucy return.[4] The bus terminal, a roofed building with a few trees around it, sits right beside that dock, a fact Mike would learn much too late.[5]

The streets themselves are ordinary big-city streets, with trash cans, overhead wires, and high-rises crowding in behind them.[6] There is a park with a swan-pedal-boat lake and heavy, vine-hung foliage,[6] along with a fountain plaza that has its own hot dog stand.[7] The city’s enormous department store, the Maraschino mall, has escalators and aisles packed with plush animals, including a giant plush elephant. Among the toys for sale is a $973 ride-on car called the Vroom Vroom 9000.[8]

The city hosts the annual Pan-European Hospitality Workers’ Parade, with a pizza festival the following day.[1] At least one morning show has been filmed there,[9] and since 2003 it has run its own fashion week, which one news article credits with making the city “a burgeoning hub in the world of haute couture”.[10]

History

A domed building and towers rise against the sky as Mike arrives in Maraschino City.[11]

Paulo grew up in Maraschino before transferring to Roseville Elementary School in the fifth grade, a move that earned him some cachet with his new classmates (“You came from the city? That’s so coooool!”).[2] His father brought him to Roseville, while his mother stayed behind and remarried.[12] She has never called or sent so much as a card since.[13]

The city’s only on-panel visit comes in Hot Pursuit. Mike catches a glimpse of Sandy in a live parade broadcast from Maraschino and sprints for the 12:30 bus, with Lucy tagging along.[1] The city does not cooperate. A tourist and a trash-peddling con artist each send the pair to the same empty dock,[4] and a Channel 8 reporter tries to spin Mike’s search into a kidnapping story.[14] Mike, for his part, winds up chasing a black-haired girl through the toy store in a stolen ride-on car.[8] “Everything in Maraschino is so huge,” he admits to himself along the way. “I should have known it wouldn’t be easy..”[8] When he finally corners the girl at the fountain, she’s a complete stranger.[7]

Mike delivers his verdict on the spot: “I hate tourists and I HATE THIS CITY!”[5] He then discovers that the bus terminal has been sitting next to the dock all along, and the two ride home with nothing to show for the day.[5] Back home there is one last twist waiting, since Sandy had been visiting Roseville that very afternoon.[15]

Lucy got the worst of the trip. She nearly drowned as a child, and she spent those hours waiting alone at the end of the dock. On the bus home she whimpers “Dun let me drown..” in her sleep, and Veronica’s commentary confirms the dock still haunts her dreams.[5]

Nobody has set foot in the city on-panel since, though it keeps coming up from a distance. Sandy occasionally travels there for work, once for a morning show,[9] and her modeling career draws press coverage from its fashion scene,[10] but Veronica has confirmed that Sandy herself lives in Rickter, not Maraschino.[16] Years later, Paulo briefly considers making the trip himself to look for his mother: “Maybe I could look for her. Marashino isn’t too far away. But what’s the point?”[17]

Trivia

  • Veronica has said the name came from looking up random words and mashing them together (“I think there’s a real word that’s a few letters off?”).[18] She also describes the place as “the city (that is totally NOT New York I swear)”.[1]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 1
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chapter 27: Flirting with Disaster, page 3
  3. ↑ Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 5
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 6
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 11
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 7
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 10
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 9
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 6
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 8
  11. ↑ Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 5
  12. ↑ Chapter 58: Mother’s Day, page 4
  13. ↑ Chapter 108: Time Out, page 19
  14. ↑ Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 8
  15. ↑ Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 12
  16. ↑ “Ask Bittersweet Candy Bowl”. Tumblr. 2015-06-13.
  17. ↑ Chapter 108: Time Out, page 20
  18. ↑ “Ask Bittersweet Candy Bowl”. Tumblr. 2015-07-25.
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