Aw, Shen :)

This is the welcome sign at Shenlei Flasheart’s SL10B exhibit.

Seems like only yesterday, and ages ago, that we were all frolicking about on Shengri La, accidentally bringing the sim to its knees when temp prims stopped being temp, watching Shen enthusiastically spike overly bitey vampires, meditating in the streams, and generally having fun figuring out what all of this collaboration among creative people in these new-fangled “virtual worlds” was all about.

Now, of course, we have it all down pat. :)

Thanks, Shen, and everybody, for the memories, and also the ongoings, and the yet-to-bes!

Sniff!

Bygone Picks VI: Gypsy’s

So this entry in the Picks series has to be a bit melancholy. My Picks entry for Gypsy’s Midnight Mall and Club looked roughly like this:

My favorite dance club, and the first one to welcome me when I was a newborn. Lots of lovely dancers, many with advanced degrees. Good conversation, neat people. And of course Gypsy!

I don’t remember if I’ve ever told the whole story of that day, very early in my SL career, when I went to a gallery opening randomly from Events, and there joined the just-born Virtual Artists Alliance and met Lynn Innis (obviously a cousin) who turned out to be a dancer at Gypsy’s, where I soon become a regular. From that one little gallery event came at least half of the friendships of my noobhood.

Eventually Gypsy even did me the honor of inviting me to become a dancer. Here’s a snapshot from my stripping career.

(Hey, no snickering! Like you’ve never been a stripper.)

Gypsy’s was wonderful, back in the day. The girls and the regulars would dance about and exchange witty banter (the part about many of the dancers having advanced degrees was entirely true), tip each other, and play the ‘sploder, and show off ravesticks and silly gestures and Daleks and things, and then in the wee hours when the club closed up sometimes Veronica Quackenbush would take the stragglers out nude skydiving in one of her many vehicles.

Good time, good times…

Then there was the day that Gypsy IMd me saying that the club was gone! She’d tried to return some prim litter that someone’d left lying around, and somehow SL returned pretty much the entire club, walls and floors and all, to their original builder, who was still the owner and who hadn’t been in SL in like months.

Gypsy was pretty distraught, but I cheered her up by more or less rebuilding the club around her. :) Either I did a pretty good job, or people were just being kind, because no one who came to the events that night said anything about the place looking different. (Fortunately the DJ booth and the dancepoles and much of the art stayed, even if the walls didn’t.)

So there are too many fun stories to tell about Gypsy’s, and I won’t try to tell any more just now. Eventually the stress of running a club got to Gypsy, I think, and she started to be around less and less, and there were fewer and fewer events at the Club. (At some point Tammy started running events, and those continue in other venues, but that’s another story.)

These days the place is empty and the land is abandoned, sniff, although my prims are still there.

I made that scrolling “Welcome” sign (to replace one that got returned in the Big Return). And most of the walls and ceiling and walkways that you can see. I think everything that Gypsy owned has vanished now.

Sweet nostalgia!

So what have I replaced this Pick with?

Well, the other day I went exploring with a friend and after cycling down the road a bit and following a Sandbox sign and taking a random Stargate and a couple of TPs…

XOPH. Just one of those great random SL finds… :)