Bedrock (The Flintstones)

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Bedrock
Hoppy
Population2,500

Bedrock is the

prehistoric town where the characters of the animated television series The Flintstones reside.[1]

Size and Layout

Much of Bedrock's layout is unknown. The

suburban development and a well-developed downtown, complete with multi-story skyscrapers. The city is also served by a freeway system that is shown, in numerous episodes, to be subject to gridlock
despite Bedrock's modest stated population. In the original series it is depicted as having a subway system. The first two seasons' opening credits state Bedrock's population as 2,500 residents.

The street where

the Gruesomes.[3] Later spinoffs would introduce the Frankenstones
, similar monster-themed neighbors of the Flintstones.

Features

The climate of Bedrock cannot be resolutely determined due to differing portrayals over the course of Flintstones' history. Palm trees and

cycads suggest a warm climate, yet episodes and movies set at Christmastime depicted plenty of snow.[4] Sometimes the wilderness on Bedrock's outskirts is depicted to be desert-like, whereas at other times it is shown as a tropical/subtropical jungle (as shown in the opening scenes of the theatrical animated movie The Man Called Flintstone
).

The people of Bedrock are shown as friendly yet quirky citizens. They have a strong sense of civic spirit and are shown to participate in various charities,

service organizations, the best known of which is the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes, which counts among its membership Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.[5]

Law and government

A

police department is present in the city, with Fred and Barney having been employed as part-time police officers for some time.[6]

Bedrock also has a volunteer fire department that was introduced for laughs due to the uselessness of such a service in a city of stone buildings. Instead, its members use it as an excuse to create a social club.[7] The concreteness of its fire department wavers like other aspects of the town, with several episodes featuring a more traditional full-time firefighting service.

There is also a military presence near the town, with Fred and Barney being stationed at Camp Millstone Army Base after being mistakenly inducted into the army.[8]

Bedrock's city government plays a role in The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show episode Mayor May Not, in which Pebbles becomes the city's temporary student mayor for a week.

Regarding health care, Bedrock has the Bedrock Hospital, where Pebbles was born.[9][10]

Media

For a fictional town its size, Bedrock was shown to have a sizeable concentration of media outlets. Several

call letters BDRX[11]), television stations, and newspapers have been depicted. One of the TV stations is an affiliate of ABC (the Abbadabba Broadcasting Company).[12] Later spinoffs show the people of Bedrock also enjoy a cable and satellite television service.[13]

Television programs produced in Bedrock include the

variety program The Ed Sulleystone Show.[16]

One of Bedrock's newspapers is The Daily Granite, edited by

reporters.[6]
Another newspaper is The Daily Slab (which was the paper usually clobbering Fred as it was being "delivered" by Arnold the Newsboy).

There are also two recording companies located in Bedrock: the Keen Teen Record Company[17] and the Flippo Record Company.[2]

Cultural and educational institutions

Bedrock is only depicted as having one high school, Bedrock High School, alma mater of Fred Flintstone, his wife Wilma,[18] and later his daughter Pebbles.[19]

Universities shown in or near Bedrock include Prinstone University. Prinstone's arch rival school is Shale University and both universities are members of the Poison Ivy League.[20]

Bedrock is also not far from the Oceanrock Aquarium, home of Dripper the Sealasaurus.[21]

Businesses

Businesses in Bedrock include

Safestone's[23]), one catering service—Cobblestone Caterers (as the owner proclaimed, "we're the only caterer in town!"[24]), a costume store, and an amusement park.[17]

Several department stores service Bedrock; among them are Macyrock's (where Fred once worked as a department store Santa Claus during the Christmas season[4]) and Gimbelstone's (where Pebbles briefly worked as a teenager).[25]

Bedrock also features the Pyrite Advertising Agency, where Pebbles works as an adult.[26]

In the

first-season episode, The Tycoon (in which Fred switches places with his double, J.P. Gotrocks), Bedrock is introduced by a narrator as having "a butcher, a baker and a pizza
pie maker."

In the episode The Long, Long, Long Weekend, which originally aired on January 21, 1966, Slate Rock and Gravel Company is shown as still being in business after two million years, with Mr. Slate being shown as the company's founder. In the future the company is being run by his descendant, George Slate the Eighty Thousandth, though in Fred's dream sequence Rip Van Flintstone, it was mentioned as having been out of business for twenty years.

In one instance,

sauropod dinosaurs are seen being used as cranes
at the town's most well-known employer, Slate Rock and Gravel (also known as Rockhead and Quarry Cave Construction Company in the series' earlier episodes).

Entertainment

Bedrock is depicted as having a

The B.C. 52s. At the other end of the scale there was The Poiple Dinosaur, a dive located by the wharf that was known for attracting seedy, criminal types.[28]

Dining

Bedrock features plenty of dining options including a drive-in restaurant serving brontosaurus ribs (as seen in the original series' closing credits) as well as several dinners.[14]

The two live-action films also showed Bedrock with fast-food outlets including RocDonald's[29] and Bronto King.[30]

Bedrock also has a number of upscale restaurants including the Rockadero,[31] Maison-LaRock, and Le Chateau Rockinbleau.

Sports

Baseball, boxing, and football are all watched in Bedrock. The episode Big League Freddie shows a baseball team named the Boulder City Giants, whose home stadium is Candlestone Park. The 1981 prime-time unique Wind-Up Wilma also shows Bedrock has a baseball team called the Bedrock Dodgers.

Bedrock also features a professional football team, the Bedrock Brontos. Their rival team is the Rock Bay Pachyderms.[26]

Boxing matches are also popular in Bedrock; a season three episode features Fred and Barney trying to see a match featuring boxer Floyd Patterstone.[32]

"Stone Age" names

The Stone Age setting allowed for gags and word plays involving rocks and minerals.

Cities/Places

San Antonio becomes "Sand-and-Stony-o"; the country to the south of Bedrock's land is called "Mexirock" (Mexico). Travel to "Hollyrock", a parody of Hollywood, and Sun Valley becomes "Stone Valley", run by "Conrad Hailstone" (Conrad Hilton
).

Bedrock store names include:

People/Celebrities

The last names "Flintstone" and "Rubble", as well as other common Bedrock surnames such as "Shale" and "Quartz", are in line with these puns, as are the names of Bedrock's celebrities:

Once, while visiting one of Bedrock's houses of "Haute Couture" with Wilma, Betty even commented on the new "Jackie Kennerock (

Jackie Kennedy
) look".

In some cases, the celebrity featured also provided the voice: "Samantha" and "Darrin" from Bewitched were voiced by Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York. Examples from the above list include Ann-Margret, Curtis, Darren, and the Beau Brummels. Other celebrities, such as "Ed Sulleystone" and "Alvin Brickrock", were rendered by impersonators.

Some of Bedrock's sports heroes include:

Ace reporter "Daisy Kilgranite" (Dorothy Kilgallen) was a friend of Wilma.

Monster names include:

Location

Bedrock is the county seat of fictional Cobblestone County and is described in the first-season episode, "The Tycoon", as being 200 feet below sea level. Presumably, the nearby town of Red Rock was located in Cobblestone County as well.[33] However, no further information was ever given for any of these locations besides being set in a prehistoric version of the United States. Near Bedrock lies Granitetown, given in one episode as the one-time childhood hometown of Barney Rubble and Fred's boss, Mr. Slate.[34]

Bedrock in one episode is shown as being a two-day drive from

Rock Vegas,[35] and in another episode, several hours drive from Indianrockolis, which suggests that Bedrock might be located in what is today the Midwestern United States.[36]

Travel to

pterodactyl, with the passenger compartment being a hollowed-out log strapped to the pterodactyl's back,[37] or a wooden plane with smaller pterodactyls on each wing as the "engines".[38]

The season three episode, "The Buffalo Convention", shows Fred and Barney going to a lodge convention in

Frantic City
.

The season two episode, "The Rock Vegas Caper", shows the Flintstones and the Rubbles, while driving to Rock Vegas, passing the Grand Canyon; being in prehistoric times however, the "canyon" is depicted as little more than a small stream. Fred, however, notes it "might be a big thing someday."

The season one episode, "The Monster from the Tar Pit", shows Mr. Sandstone of the movie studio Miracle Pictures talking to one of his directors about staging his movie in a real town. When asked where, Sandstone walks to a

flat earth
globe, closes his eyes, points to an area of the map that appears to be in modern-day Northern Iowa or Southern Minnesota and chooses Bedrock.

It has also been suggested that Bedrock is fairly close to the ocean or to the Great Lakes, as the city has a yacht club,[39] plus the Flintstones and Rubbles have taken several trips to the beach.[40]

The episode, "Shinrock-A-Go-Go", which originally aired on December 3, 1965, featured (in a dream sequence of Fred) an animated caricature of President Lyndon B. Johnson as well as the United States Capitol in a prehistoric version of Washington DC.

Real life

Several small tourist attractions and/or camper parks have been built in honor of Bedrock. The most famous and oldest is

Landmark Grand 10 multiplex theatre and a strip mall. The second one located in Bridal Falls, British Columbia (near Chilliwack) was closed in 1994 and was changed into a dinosaur theme park called "Dinotown"[41][42][43] which was in turn shut down on September 6, 2010;[44][45] the owners are exploring options for moving the park.[46] Another Flintstones themed park in Canada was Calaway Park
near Calgary, Alberta. It is still in operation, although the Hanna-Barbera licensing was dropped several years ago.

The reason for the closure of the two Canadian theme parks was due to licensing. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the licensing for any intellectual properties of Hanna-Barbera changed hands numerous times before they ended up in the possession of Time Warner.[45][47]

In the late 1970s, plans were developed for a Flintstone Fun Park to be located in suburban Jackson, Mississippi[48] but never got past the initial planning stage.

For the Flintstones feature film (1994), a street in Bedrock was built adjacent to Vasquez Rocks in California. It was open for a short time to visitors before being totally demolished.[49]

In 2018, the City of Helsinki proposed adding English as the 3rd official language[50] after Finnish and Swedish. This led to the local area of Kallio, which translates to bedrock in English, to be colloquially known as the namesake of the fictional city in the Flintstones. This has been exacerbated by the cultural ambiance in the area that is home to non-conformist bohemian souls,[51] including artists and vagrants, some of which are living in conditions very similar to the ones depicted in the prehistoric animated series.

See also

References

  1. ^ Blake, Heidi (2010-09-30). "The Flintstones' 50th anniversary: 15 things you don't know". Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 1 October 2010. Retrieved 2010-10-01.
  2. ^ a b "Masquerade Party," The Flintstones, season 6
  3. ^ "The Gruesomes," The Flintstones, season 5
  4. ^ a b "Christmas Flintstone," The Flintstones, season 5
  5. ^ "The Beauty Contest," The Flintstones, season 2
  6. ^ a b The Flintstone Comedy Show, 1980–82, NBC
  7. ^ "Arthur Quarry's Dance Class," The Flintstones, season 1
  8. ^ "The Astr'nuts," The Flintstones, season 1
  9. ^ "The Blessed Event" (also called "Dress Rehearsal"), The Flintstones, season 3
  10. ^ "Her Name is Pebbles," TV Guide, February 22, 1963 issue
  11. ^ "FREE RADIO by CUE Art Foundation - Issuu". issuu.com. 2012-03-22. Retrieved 2024-04-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  12. ^ a b "Shinrock-A-Go-Go," The Flintstones, season 6
  13. ^ A Flintstone Family Christmas, 1993, ABC
  14. ^ a b "The Happy Household," The Flintstones, season 2
  15. ^ "Peek-a-Boo Camera," The Flintstones, season 4
  16. ^ "Itty Bitty Freddy," The Flintstones, season 5
  17. ^ a b "The Girls' Night Out," The Flintstones, season 1
  18. ^ "High School Fred," The Flintstones, season 3
  19. ^ "Gridiron Girl Trouble," The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, CBS
  20. ^ "Flintstone of Prinstone," The Flintstones, season 2
  21. ^ "Dripper," The Flintstones, season 6
  22. ^ "At the Races," The Flintstones, season 1
  23. ^ "The Gravelberry Pie King," The Flintstones, season 6
  24. ^ "Pebbles' Birthday Party," The Flintstones, season 5
  25. ^ "No Cash and Carry," The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, CBS
  26. ^ a b I Yabba Dabba Do, 1993, ABC
  27. ^ "Ann-Margrock Presents," The Flintstones, season 4
  28. ^ "The Big Bank Robbery (originally aired on January 20, 1961)
  29. ^ The Flintstones (movie), 1994
  30. ^ The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, 2000
  31. ^ Droop Along Flintstone," The Flintstones, season 2
  32. ^ "Nuthin' But the Tooth," The Flintstones, season 3
  33. ^ "The Missing Bus," The Flintstones, season 2
  34. ^ "Fred's New Boss," The Flintstones, season 3
  35. ^ "The Rock Vegas Caper," The Flintstones, season 2
  36. ^ "Indianrockolis 500," The Flintstones, season 5
  37. ^ "Fred El Terrifico," The Flintstones, season 4
  38. ^ Hollyrock-a-Bye Baby, 1993, ABC
  39. ^ "Fred's Island," The Flintstones, season 6
  40. ^ "Divided We Sail," The Flintstones, season 2
  41. ^ "Surrey wants Dinotown". Peace Arch News. August 25, 2010. Archived from the original on October 15, 2012. Retrieved 2011-04-06.
  42. ^ "Surrey wants Dinotown". The Surrey-North Delta Leader. August 25, 2010. Retrieved 2011-04-06.
  43. ^ "No to Dinotown". Langley Advance. September 3, 2010. Retrieved 2011-04-06.
  44. ^ Mike Lloyd/Vancouver Sun (2010-08-19). "Dinotown going extinct". News1130. Archived from the original on 2011-07-17. Retrieved 2011-04-06.
  45. ^ a b [1] Archived August 9, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  46. ^ "Location | Dinotown, North America's Only Cartoon Dinosaur town!". Dinotown.com. Archived from the original on 2011-01-19. Retrieved 2011-04-06.
  47. ^ "Welcome to the Chilliwack Times – On Line – Features". Replay.waybackmachine.org. Archived from the original on March 12, 2007. Retrieved 2011-04-06.
  48. ^ Nadel, Norman (11 November 1977). "Theme parks outdraw everything, and more are planned". The Prescott Courier. NEA. Retrieved 30 April 2011.
  49. ^ "Flintstones Town of Bedrock movie set (Old VHS footage) Vasquez Rocks Pt1 V13827 - video Dailymotion". 29 February 2016.
  50. ^ "Englantia ehdotetaan Helsingin virallisten kielten joukkoon". Helsingin Sanomat. February 25, 2022. Retrieved 2022-02-25.
  51. ^ "10 Great Sights And Activities In Kallio, Helsinki". Culture Trip. February 9, 2017. Retrieved 2022-02-25.

External links

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