I didn't want to do anything too terribly original here at the site on Saturdays, since the majority of blog readers are doing so from their day jobs, Mondays through Fridays only. So instead, I thought it'd be fun each Saturday to just post some random photos from recent things I've seen in SL, stuff that for one reason or another I never ended up writing about in full here. If you've got a particularly awe-inspiring or funny photo that you'd like to see run here next Saturday, by the way, please feel free to send it to me at inthegrid [at] gmail.com for consideration.
Ah, the perfect gift for the moody undergraduate goth in your own life; a flaming home crucifix, complete with torture-style manacles. This is one of the greatest things about SL, in my opinion -- er, not the flaming crucifixes, that is, but that the entry barrier to owning your own store there is so low. All you need, after all, is a little land, a bit of skill at building, or at the very least a friend with a bit of skill at building; no paperwork needs to be filed, no zoning laws to be kept in mind, no health inspectors or tax auditors to deal with. In effect it's allowed just thousands upon thousands of people in the grid to do exactly what you see here; to build small, extremely niche-interest stores, consisting maybe of only 10 or 20 things that particular owner has created on their own, just for fun or perhaps as accoutrements to their own lives.
Of course, what you're looking at here is the flipside; that since land is so relatively inexpensive in the grid (compared to RL, anyway), many people often buy too much, leading to these gloriously expansive and impressive shopping spaces that are unfortunately 90 percent empty. "Just like a grocery store in Soviet East Germany," my friend Sebastian might say.
But then again, there are always options for getting around this as well; that's what the smartest business owners there realize, that the unique properties of the grid can be of benefit in all kinds of ways, not just in lowering the barriers to business entry. Check out here, for example, the lovely goth-lifestyle store silent sparrow, and the ingenious way they've dealt with an empty back hallway not currently in use.
By the way, it's not just weird sex clubs and nerdy tech conferences I go to in the grid; I also try to attend as many live music concerts as I can, if readers would like to give me a heads-up about these kinds of events too. Here, for example, are a couple of shots from a recent show by Ricardo Sprocket, over at Old Salt's Pub.
And then here's a shot from a "space rock" concert I recently attended, by a musician calling himself The Invisible Band, at the delightful Serenity Woods.
And finally, did I mention that I bought some new skin this week? I did! It's blue! I love it! Here are two shots of me wearing it; one in my basic black dress at a recent rave, the other while wearing one of my many steampunk outfits (because I heart steampunk, because I be a dork). There is a sort of strange culture divide in the grid, for those who don't know, regarding things like fantastical skins and non-human forms; namely, nearly 100 percent of those who are interested in such subjects are porting into the grid in the evenings, never during the day. This of course gets into the entire nature of why certain residents are in the grid at certain times (with most daytime players, of course, there because of something job-related), and has other social interesting repercussions; like how it's considered normal by most during the day to ask for a fellow player's RL info if curious, but is considered a rude breach of etiquette by most evening players. But as they say, that's another entry for another time.