Stock 305

Stock 305 turns up four times in Rockstar's Ultimate Edition press material with no explanation attached, which is unusual enough that we've given it its own page. The Ultimate Edition's PlayStation Store listing has since filled in the basics: it's a streetwear shop in Stockyard, selling unique looks for both Jason and Lucia, and it's one of the five Special Destinations that come with the Ultimate Edition.

Graffiti outside, spray cans inside

A shopfront and hanging sign completely covered in graffiti and stickers, in a building where every surface has been painted. Inside, there's a wall of spray cans running floor to ceiling behind the counter, with a character standing in front of it.

The exterior shots put people on and around a car outside, and inside there's a customer leaning on the counter against more painted walls and murals.

305 is Miami's area code

305 is Miami's original area code and one of the city's most-used bits of local shorthand. You'll see it on clothing, in music and on businesses all the time. Naming a shop Stock 305 is about as subtle as calling a London shop Stock 020, and it's exactly how a real store in that city would name itself.

Not a paint shop after all

We first read it as a street art supply shop, because a wall of spray paint behind a counter usually means one. The store listing says streetwear, so it's a clothes shop dressed up like a paint shop, and the cans are probably part of the look. It's an easy mistake to make, and the setting still matters, because in Miami those paint shops are real cultural institutions. The city's Wynwood district turned large-scale mural work into an economy, and the shops that supply it sit right inside that world. They aren't on the edge of it.

That connects to something already visible in the base screenshot set. One of the official Vice City images shows a street of large-scale murals under an elevated railway, which is Wynwood in everything but name. That district is Stockyard, and Wynwood Walls has since been reported as saying Stockyard is based on Wynwood. The store listing puts Stock 305 right there.

Could tagging come back?

The big question is whether any of this is playable. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas had a tagging mechanic, with a hundred pieces to spray across Los Santos, and it's still one of the most fondly remembered collectible systems in the series.

A shop with a wall of spray paint, in a city built on mural work, in a game that's already shown tattoo and vehicle customisation as businesses you visit, is at the very least a suggestive combination.

As it turns out, it is a clothing shop that happens to be covered in paint. That doesn't rule tagging in or out. Rockstar hasn't said anything about spraying walls yourself.

What isn't known

Most of the detail. The store listing tells us it's streetwear, in Stockyard, for both leads, and that it comes with the Ultimate Edition. It doesn't say what the clothes are, whether the spray cans are for sale, whether Standard Edition players can walk in at all, or whether any of the paint ties into a tagging system.