Sin City - Setting

Setting

Basin City, almost universally referred to by the nickname Sin City, is a fictional town in the American west. The climate is hot and arid, although Sacred Oaks is characterized as being heavily wooded. A major river runs through the city, which has an extensive waterfront. Usually twice a year, a major downpour comes, and (in The Yellow Bastard) the city gets heavy snowfall in the winter. In the comics, Basin City has a surreal, Pan-American feel. Desert lizards and palm trees are common, while tar pits, desert areas, mountain ranges and flat farmland make up the landscape around the city.

The Basin City Police are more or less along the lines of paramilitary or SWAT, as they have to deal with incredibly high crime rates among criminals and civilians alike, which is why they have access to what most would consider "heavy weaponry" and full body armor. Those who make up the force have been described as commonly being lazy, cowardly and/or corrupt. Only a handful of the cops are honest, though frequently the wealthy of the city bribe the corrupt members of the police into performing their duty (usually as a result of some crime being committed (or threatened) against a member of their family).

During the California Gold Rush, the Roark family "imported" a large number of attractive women to keep the miners happy, making a fortune and turning a struggling mining camp into a thriving, bustling city. Over the years, as the Roark family migrated into other areas of business and power, these women ended up forming the district of Old Town, the prostitute quarter of the city where they rule with absolute authority. In addition, the people charged with governing the city, most of them from the Roark line, remained in power for generations, running it as they saw fit.

As the various yarns progress, the audience gradually becomes familiar with key locations in and around Basin City.

• The Projects, the run-down and poor side of Sin City, is a tangle of high-rise apartments where crime runs rampant. Its inhabitants have apparently evolved their own independent society with almost no legal contact with the outside world. Marv was born in the Projects and they make Dwight sick.
• The Docks, a collection of wharfs and warehouses that are local to the Projects. Hartigan and Roark Junior have their first confrontation here in That Yellow Bastard, and Marv drives a stolen police car off one of the piers at the beginning of The Hard Goodbye.
• Kadie's Club Pecos, a strip club/bar where Nancy Callahan and Shellie work, and Dwight McCarthy and Marv hang out. Though filled almost solely with drunk and violent men, Kadie's bar is one of the safest areas in Sin City. Marv, who possesses an extraordinarily high sense of chivalry, protects the female employees of Kadie's from any violence that makes its way inside.
• Roark Family Farm (a.k.a. "The Farm") is located at North Cross and Lennox and shows up in several stories, including The Hard Goodbye, That Yellow Bastard, The Babe Wore Red and Hell and Back. It was also home to Kevin, a serial killer with ties to the Roark family. Marv burns down one of the buildings, and the Farm is abandoned sometime after the initial Sin City storyline.
• Old Town is the red-light district and is off limits to the police, unless they're 'shopping'. This is where the city's population of prostitutes reside; it recently came under the control of the twins Goldie and Wendy. Though perfectly willing to engage in almost any sexual act for the right price, the women of Old Town show no mercy to those who "break the rules" and back up their independence with lethal force. The mob and pimps were thrown out after a period of fighting.
• Sacred Oaks, home to the rich and powerful of Basin City. This suburb lies beyond the city proper, a half an hour drive uphill. A university of some sort is also located there, and the entire area is patrolled by armed employees of its wealthy inhabitants.
• Basin City Central Train Station, which has a direct connection to Phoenix.
• The Santa Yolanda Tar Pits, an abandoned amusement park of sorts outside the city, where several tar pits are located and dinosaur bones were excavated at some time. After a 'big-budget dinosaur movie' (presumably a reference to Jurassic Park) caused a sensation, the county put up concrete statues of dinosaurs there to draw crowds. However, after an old lady fell through a railing into one of the pits and had a heart attack, the place was shut down indefinitely. They are frequently used as a place to dump things that people don't want found; high-schoolers also tend to sneak in there a lot. This is where Delia tells Phil to drive in Wrong Turn and where Dwight takes the corpses of Jackie Boy and his friends in The Big Fat Kill. Frank Miller has admitted the main reason the Tar Pits exist is as an excuse to draw the dinosaur statues.