Atmosphere

Shopping is buying atmosphere. We are not buying because we need an article. We are buying because we lack atmosphere, mood, feeling, warmth, compassion.
The shops don’t offer articles, they offer something they think is this 'lacking' atmosphere.
This idea of shopping for…having a great time, was discovered, or invented between 1850 and 1900. Shops were paying more and more attention to the design of the shop, the way to present, the effect of lights and color.
Malls exists mainly because of this, a continuous display of atmosphere without worries, where everything is fine, where everything is possible, oops, buyable.

If this is true for RL, than certainly it is true for SL. In fact you don’t even buy something, when you buy it, you only buy shape, colour and light! An idea, that’s what you have bought. Ideas are in the mind. Indeed the mind is the centre of these ideas, the mind is only working with ideas, mind-sets, even the image of the body is only 'in the mind'.
All of course when the belly is satisfied, lol!
Ok then in SL everything is a bit more primitive then RL, more cartoon like. Most SL shops don’t worry too much about atmosphere.
But there are a few fashion lines which have to carry along there mood, and they do! The gothic, the punk. So 5 likes to search out these places. Here it is where the high design, the neat, the clear is attacked, made a fool of. Filth is around, rust, dustbins, graffiti. But all, well again, all as an idea....
Why is it 5 always ends up in these places, not wanting to be ‘nicely dressed’. How can 5 know, even the mind is an idea of the mind…
Follow 5:

!Kalico Kreations! Neko, Emo, Goth, Punk, Hair, Clothes
Situated high up in the air, beautifully arranged buildings, even a bit out of balance.
5 bought super boots here, Chernobyl boots! Real terrible boots! 5 loves this kind of imagery.
By the way in the basement are lurking monsters….don’t forget to wander around!

On the ground:
!Punk-iT!
Here too, under construction 5 supposes, very much this sought after atmosphere, not really a lot of stuff to buy. It is a bow, which has only an inner side, from within you think you are in a big town, sky scrapers and all, but if the camera wanders further out….
Really a great place for practicing your wide angle with CTRL 8
This is fun too: litter is flying around in small gusts of wind…..

Also high up in the air:
*THE PSYCHOBILLS BUNKER* PUNK GOTH ROCK ROCKABILLY ALTERNATIVE
A nice bunker, high in the sky, made with a lot of love for the ‘underground’. Nice paradox. There is a ‘high dive’ into a tank with green water.
Look at the image of the windowpane, still having the bottle in it, which went right through it!
Under construction too, some nice boots, 5 bought here a ‘Skull waistcoat’, better in german: ‘totenkopf weste’…

Death, the last idea...

Gothic!

Five went in search for gothic clothes.
What is gothic, well……a rich mix of punk, fairy tails, fantasy, a bit of revolution, not too nice, certainly not civilized, but with lots of “style”. It looks like Victorian sometimes.
Gothic is total fashion comprising hair, make-up, hat, shoulders, large coats, big boots.
Colours, mostly black and a bit of red, or very bright.
Clothes are individual, you are supposed to work on the clothes yourself to make them unique.
You have to have courage the wear them!
Most classifieds or advertisements of shops selling clothes include gothic in their keywords, but most of them don’t have a really gothic line of garments.

The real gothic shops have a tendency to create a gothic atmosphere around them. That is to say a desolate landscape, garbage, fences, ghetto like buildings. It becomes an interesting mix of things to buy and surprise, mystery. This mix is very understandable, gothic is a state of mind, more than just nice clothing. These places are best visited by night!

Well this is the interesting thing for Five! Five likes this kind of themes, see former blogs! And the kind of against the fashionable, "nice" fashion side of gothic is also not far from Five's taste!

So let us go then you and I!
Five dived into the search engine, and a few of the best gothic fashion places are described, always including the surroundings of course!

Schlachthaus auf apfelland Ghetto
Very nice theme sim. Built around an abbatoire (in german Schlachthaus)
Garbage dump, with opening and closing doors.
The most original camping chairs ever seen: urinals in the toilets for man. Discrimination: toilest for women pay only half the amount of the urinals of man!



Goth1c0 - the big shop: goth,punk and cyberpunk clothes & hairs
This shop is situated in small theme region. Between two shops, there is snow and garbage containers, in which you can chill! Snow is blocking doors, you have to search your way in.
Really gothic style clothing, as far as Five understands gothic: lots of rich blacks, with here and there reds. Nice details, and really lots of top hats.
Hm, Five has never seen these clothes in freebies, for these: you have to pay!


~ silent sparrow ~ come explore! (gothic : victorian : eclectic)
The clothes are “nice” version of gothic if compared with the Icewater shop. Very rich details. Hm as with the last shop, you have to save a bit of money to get these clothes, but they are probably worth it. The shop is situated in a big Victorian mansion (greenery included) and there is a small village in Victorian style in the neighbourhood.
The cellars are really creepy, embalming sets? Gas masks? You can even enter the sewers again! You will end up in other Victorian houses!

Ok you cannot write about clothes and not buying, so Five bought The checkmate Loli boy, with darkdelion make-up. Broke again!

Don’t pay too much!

Just after starting with Second Life, Five March discovered the ways to make money, like everyone else. Dancing and camping, brings in the first Linden dollars. The aim of camping is to attract avatars to special places. When searching on the map people tend to choose places where some people are around. So to attract people is to have people around. This is the aim of paying avatars to camp and dance. It results in a row of zombies in your place, because people are working on other things while letting their avatars earn Linden dollars.

The first thing Five bought was prim hair, for 1 L$! Later on Five found out that nearly all you need (on a material level) can be found in Second Life for free. The free things are called the freebies, really all can be discovered for no money at all: dresses, houses, animations, everything. Only for very special things you have to pay. Good shoes are not very often found free.
Nowadays, with a premium membership Five gets a weekly allowance and dancing and sitting on other premises is no longer necessary.

Five even bought expensive shoes, as you can read in another blog.
But every now and then Five goes shopping. Five is always looking for smaller shops, which appear to be try-outs, or starting designers. Here things can be found which are not common.

‘Shiny things’ is the name of a nicely built shop where Five found some jewellery, not too expensive, for instance a necklace for 35 L$. The necklace was really an exception, being worn on a very thin chain, not seen anywhere. With the prims it is impossible to construct a necklace like that. How is this made?
On another night Five was on the hunt again, and found a shop where everything costs only 1 L$.


- enkythings - L$1 SHOP is the name of this shop.
It was a surprise to find out that this same necklace costs only 1 L$ here! Other frivolous items are sold for 1 or even 0 L$! Roller skates, with a pleasant skating animation included and prime hair can be found here. Ok this prim hair is a bit stupid after a day or two, but who cares for 1 L$! Two times, you even get the 1 bug back, from a sploder!

But the price difference and the very thin shape of the necklace really still remain a mystery. Where does this necklace come from? How is it made, and what adventures has it seen? How did it lend in the hands of a 1 L$ shop?
This shop is high in the air. Down on the ground can be found a TP to a sky diving platform. Diving down, will be right through the shop, and boing on the ground: humorous signs are telling you to be carefull: falling newbies! LOL!

Clo@Yu-ki

Five happened to come across a small shop, which was particularly nice.

Above the shop is a sketch, in a childlike style. You can make out a name if you look at the right way and puzzle a bit (de-Chloe or de-clue)….

...makes....."Clothes for You"

Chloe Yue, seen in the drawing, apparently Chinese, making clothes "4 a yonug GRIL", for a young girl. The profile says Chloe Yue, which fits well with the puzzle. And in the text of the profile is written: 香港人,居於荷蘭, which I don’t understand at all…..

The shop itself is very simple, just a few transparent panels of bluish glass. You really have to look into it a bit to see the creative poetry of the clothes. Just what Fives likes to do….

The clothes on sale are obviously made by hand, not in a mechanical way, and the prices are very low, another sign that the person designing the clothes is not having a commercial goal, but is still having a lot of fun inventing and making them. Going back there from time to time you may see some items added, but not very often.


Five particularly liked the backpack for, well for only 10 L$. The design is very cute: flowers and cherries, but if you look closer, the flowers are interspersed with….skulls. This makes the thing more than just something nice. Also the hang-blouse is a thing Five has never seen. Your sweater, as worn on a day which suddenly became hotter than you thought, in a knot around your waist. Five wears it very often.


The flex mini-skirts are really very mini, and as with all Chloe‘s designs, having a sharp edge. Discover this on your own!
The name “sjallie” for another item, a free gift, gives away a strange clue, and looking further in the profile you discover that Chloe Yue doesn’t only speak Chinese, but also dutch!
The only negligible disadvantage of the “sjallie” as well as the “hang-blouse” are that they cannot be resized, which almost forces you to become a small person when wearing these items…..but the items are well worth it.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Boobero/154/172/23

Five starts a flower shop

After finishing a big scripting job, Five had an incredible desire to do something nice and simple. But what is nice and simple? And of course: not what can be found everywhere! Ok you have guessed it: flowers! When young, so three months ago, Five made a lot of drawings of flowers.

And the spring was so beautiful this year. Starting early with snowdrops and starflowers, the whole display of colours and shapes went on and on with crocuses, hyacinths, tulips, lilacs, and there was no end to it, roses, rhododendron with their deep reds. Some flowers are inconceivably fragile, others so robust! But also the weeds and grasses are flowering, Gypsophila for instance, buttercup, daisies.
The daisies were particularly bright this year, and Five choose an name for the flowershop: Five Daisies!
As the Virgin Island Sim is attracting lots of customers, Five decided that for a try it would be good to start a shop in this beautiful sim.
Armoe Lipo helped Five finding a place in the palace and Five started working on flowers.
These flowers are animated by wind and movement. Together with the possibility of softening the shapes and a bit of manipulations of the pictures with the use of alpha channels new and unexpected objects consisting of a diversity of flower combinations were made. Of course the creations all reflect this gorgeous spring.
The shop must not be filled to the top with flowers and endless variations. It must be in style with the classy sim. So Five started experimenting with the interior design of the shop. The colours must remain isolated and the background must reinforce the colour and not muddle it up.
After a few days of shifting things around the shop really reflects the feeling of flowers in Second Life. The flowery objects are not real copies of RL flowers, they are a bit stylized. Five is continuing with experiments and new creations are added on a daily basis. And because of this Five must also remove some items. Adding and removing makes the shop come alive and customers will always see different aspects of Second Life possibilities and different flowers. The flowers are following the seasons, because Five thinks that this also contributes to a natural atmosphere. Well Five would be delighted if the dear reader would come around and stop by, looking at the new motives and patterns of nature.
Of course an ad belongs to organizing a shop and a text was made with the word flower in all languages which Five could think off at that day, including Japanese!

Five buys boots! To Joe Stravinsky!

Five has to admit that spending money for Five, this poor, poor artist is the most difficult thing there is. Living without much money is not at all a problem. Certainly not in Second Life. ACtually it is very good: you learn to make everything yourself and to help yourself. Usually this is fine for Five. Of course Five’s clothes, shoes, hair are either giveaways, second hand, or badly made!

But then Five walked around in the desert, actually Five worked in the desert…on high heels. That was hilarious really. So Five made some poorly shoe shapes and textures to be able to do the work, programming and testing the game of searching gold. See the last blog, or use this teleportation.

But this situation was untenable. Visitors complained: who is this…..poor thing. So friends got together, searched their wallets for loose money, and finally collected enough to be able to send Five on a mission. Buy yourself some decent shoes for in the desert!

A terrible quest was started: what shoes for in a desert? Boots. But search SL on boots, and see for yourself that there is not that much around in the shops. It had to be cowboy boots, because the setting is a desert, Indian country. Some entries can be found for boots. But the things offered were rather poor. Search again! Strange enough, there are a few shops to be found, for cowboy hats, gear, boots, and longcoats. These will be listed at the end of this blog. Five was not thrilled to spend the money which was given to her. What to do, already lot's of time was lost!
But suddenly Five strolled in the shop of Joe Stravinsky “Heart’s Desire”.

In this shops Five was amazed by the imaginative shoes and boots on offer, Five really thought these designs were made by somebody with a talent for these kind of thing.

Shoe making is a specialty in Second Life. The feet of the avatars are awful; you have to hide those small monsters at the end of your legs using a combination of visible and invisible prims. In the edit mode you can perceive the complexity of the construction, quickly running into 30 or more objects being put together.

Of course if there are suddenly so many good boots on offer, it becomes difficult to choose! This is going to take long! Five called Armoe Lipo in for help. Actually he paid Five a pair of boots! Thank you Armoe! (Without him, Five would still be around on high heels in the desert.)

With the help of Armoe, Five decided to take the Red Venom. Actually Armoe advised dark colors, so Five took the opposite, red ones, sorry: this is Five!

And Five was so pleased about the new boots, immediately a IM was sent to the designer, Joe Stravinsky. Five wanted to know more about him! Is he a shoemaker, a designer? How do you become a talented builder of objects in SL?

He was prepared to talk to me! Joe Stravinsky is a very modest person in a very fierce avatar.

…..

[8:53] Five: how do you get your ideas for the shoes? it is quite special to make them, it is clear that you have a great feeling for these things

[8:53] Joe Stravinsky: well
[8:54] Joe Stravinsky: this is a nice story hope you like it
[8:54] Five: please tell us?
[8:54] Joe Stravinsky: well i had been playing for a few months
[8:55] Joe Stravinsky: just building any like castle and furniture
[8:55] Joe Stravinsky: then one in jan 2005 i met my SL wife Heart wishbringer
[8:55] Joe Stravinsky: we got know each other fell in love and got married on Jan 31
[8:56] Five: in SL?
[8:57] Joe Stravinsky: yes
[8:59] Five: but .... the design and the shoes?
[9:00] Joe Stravinsky: well Heart said to me Joe thee are no good shoes on SL do you think you could make me a pair
[9:02] Joe Stravinsky: i wanted to open a furniture shop
[9:02] Joe Stravinsky: i did and sold one candle stick
[9:02] Five: lol!
[9:03] Joe Stravinsky: it was Heart that said Joe make shoes you are really goood at that
[9:03] Joe Stravinsky: so we opened Hearts Desire named after heart

[9:02] Five: And how do you imagine the boots? Where are your ideas coming from?
[9:04] Joe Stravinsky: and my shoes and boots are from my imagination and dreams
……

Isn’t it true that when something “really good” is made, always love is involved? His sweetheart Heart asked him for shoes…he dreamt about them and made the shoes. He isn’t a special designer of shoes in RL at all. He got on with shoes, made his shop, now you understand the name: “Heart’s desire”! His specialty is developed and nurtured in SL. This made Five wonder again. Indeed it is the people Like Joe Stravinsky who are constructing this world, the dedicated people, not the commercially interested professionals, not the land speculators. It is still the wonderful time in SL at the moment of constructing and experimenting with something, before the professionals come in and make it a dull commercial place, like television, websites, and most of the movies.

That is why you can buy shoes from people like Joe Stravinsky for 350 L$, shoes in which he probable has put days of work, getting the shapes and textures right!

The story about the shoes doesn’t end here…Five was invited to do some beta testing in another part of SL, but Five couldn’t teleport in….that was strange! Then it daunted Five that maybe it had something to do with the boots. And yes….half naked Five was teleported through. Five never wondered about the class 3 sims, the older ones. But being “loaded” with prims on feet and hair, you become too heavy to be teleported to the older sims. LOL!

A list fo the shops Five visited:
Hearts desire, this is Joe's alright!
Wild Horses Saloon, much to be seen here!
Cafe Ca, lot's and lot's
Anthony77777 Bandit, what's the name of this shop?