Branching out

The other day I noticed a plurk from Al about a new commercial sim opening up. For some reason I cannot explain I felt compelled to find out more.

The sim, it turns out, is a newly renovated spot associated with Second Style magazine and somehow the idea of having a little spot to hang my art on a sparkly new sim seemed an attractive proposition. It was formerly Le Zoo if that means anything to anyone more worldly than me.

I contacted the girl-in-charge and after eventually our virtual paths crossed. She gave me a little tour of the sim, I liked what I saw, and a deal was struck. Cue spitting on palms and firm handshakes all round. Well, either that or simply payment to a rental vendor.

Unfortunately at the moment you can't go have a look, at either my new gallery or the sim, as it is not open yet. The grand re-opening happens on Friday evening (SLT) with a DJ set and free gifts to shoppers. I would tell you the exact time, but I don't know it. It's just the evening. 7pm or 8pm or something probably. *shrugs shoulders gallicly*

There's a rather cute map of the sim here and Swirly Disco Flames mk III is in shop 19, even though at the time of writing, it's not stated there.

OK, so now I had a shop. An empty shop. To fill. Bugger. What now?

Well, the shop is effectively two stories high so I figured a mezzanine type thingy with some stairs would not go amiss. Otherwise it would just be a big empty box with art randomly (but artistically) scattered on the walls. I had a tiled floor plinth that I'd previously 'built' for a bathroom a few houses back. I thought I could re-use that. Except it wasn't big enough. I figured I'd need to rez two and join them. Half an hour later I had the textures matching perfectly. Hmmmph

Next up I needed stairs. I plurked to ask friends about stairs, given I was a staircase noob, and almost started a fight between the pro-spirals and the anti-spirals. I was directed to a awesome spiral staircase. And it would have been perfect too. If only I could have figured out quite how to place it. But somehow it wasn't quite right, so I went back to the conventional staircase solution. Again, rigorous XStreet searching followed, followed quickly by success. I had a staircase. I had a mezzanine. And I even had a smoked-glass effect barrier to stop people falling off said mezzanine.

Art was rezzed and placed. A hop, skip and a jump over to my fave furniture store resulted in a sofa set which was duly rezzed. A few plants were liberally scattered. And a banner template for the sign outside the door was created and placed. And wow, three or so hours after I started the rental the place was set, ready for the grand opening tomorrow.

But, just in case you can't make it tomorrow (and because I am proud of my amateurish handiwork and want to let you see it), here's a little sneak preview. Just for you...


It is true to say that after I finished, I was pretty excited about the whole thing.


"Welcome, welcome. Come on in. Please."


"If you build it, they will come!"


Aaaaaaaaaand relax....