[jason taylor]

Possible aspects of Starport Culture:

Backrooms:

These are places for preferred customers kept apart from the normal public. The Starport oligarchy of owners, investors, captains, builders, etc meets there to talk shop, gamble, and possibly negotiate some business arrangement. The room is decorated according to the tastes of the owner (this was inspired by Harbor and Town, a Maritime Cultural History by Wolfgang Rudolf). They will usually be kept by the owner of a local business with a good name.

Spacer Shrines: Religious Centers geared toward serving passing spacers. These can be of all sorts (this was inspired by the above, as well as mention of places like it in Moby Dick, and Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald). Not to mention a mild elaboration of the "chapels" in Starports. It is common for spacers to come wishing for a safe voyage and some leave a gift behind for propitiation.

Boarding Houses: Apartments for spacers off-season or while awaiting employment. Some provide meals with their services and they can be surprisingly good (again, a la Moby Dick). Others are fronts for nefarious activity.

The Board: This gives information about shiping schedules. It can be face to face or on the datanet. Usually it is both (obviously they have that in airports already, I remember the one in PDX).

Kintledge stores: stores that sell and buy general merchandise that was carried to fill up holdspace. Sometimes starships deal direct to the public from a temporary store at their berthing space but other times a specialty store will deal in this. These are often perused for the odd items that will turn up there.

Names and Logos: In the hospitality trade there will be all kinds of variation in the title and the sign of the business based on whatever whimsy of the owner. Just as equally it will receive a nickname which is a corruption of it's more formal version.

These are just some odds and ends