Southeast of the river, the Lunar Quarter is Aetherbridge's bohemian district, a warren of narrow streets where galleries crowd against independent bookshops, recording studios, and small theaters. The storefronts are painted in faded colors; the windows display work that will never hang in a museum downtown. It is the city's artistic conscience, and its outsider.
Artists, musicians, writers, and students of the arts live here in shared apartments, working in cafés that stay open past midnight. The night market sets up in a central plaza after dark, selling food, records, handmade jewelry, and the opinions of whoever is performing on the milk-crate stage at its edge. The Lunar Quarter's indie music scene is the city's liveliest and least successful, and its members wear that obscurity like a badge. It is also where the city's outsiders — the different, the nonconforming, the quietly broken — tend to find each other. Its signature detail is the night market's single string of bulbs overhead, flickering on at dusk and burning until the last performer goes home.