Chrysty Carolina
I was out on the grid coffee shop hopping this morning. There are a lot of truly lovely coffee shops around SL. And pretty much every single one is empty pretty much all the time. It wasn’t bad. I took a table – no waiting – and had some nice-n-hot all-worlds chai and butter cookies.
My third stop was Willow’s Nordica Cafe, and there was a person there! I said “hello” to Chrysty Carolina and we had a nice chat about coffee, SL, life, and such. Chrysty said that she liked to people watch at SL Coffee Shops. That if she hung out long enough, peeps did come by. She also thought that empty coffee shops weren’t a bad thing. They tend to be beautifully designed & decorated. They tend to not have all that lag that popular dance clubs have. It’s at least as nice a place to visit with a friend as a busy dance club is. And if you want to be in-world while multi-tasking on other stuff, they can be perfect.
The more we talked the more I realized that being packed with avatars isn’t, or maybe shouldn’t be, the definition of success. Capitalism likes it. The Internet loves it! Facebook. Kim Kardashian. More is never enough. But is that what life, virtual or otherwise, is about? Accumulating excess? Gluttony? Narcissism? Maybe you can just have a beautiful, low-traffic coffee shop in a virtual world near you and that’s enough.
As Chrysty and I were talking I created a new SL group: Empty Coffee Shop Club.
- secondlife:///app/group/a244c5f4-38ba-6f1b-fd52-35363f52fc21/about
You’re welcome to join us in this new adventure to discover sweet spots for enjoying caffeine in both worlds. We’ll share notes about places we find and have the occasional meetup for… coffee!
Willow’s Nordica Cafe
Welcome to Willow’s Nordica Cafe! Come relax by the fire with cocoa and enjoy winter year round!
Christmas tree cafe bakery snow cocoa coffee shop cider tea cupcake gingerbread holiday deer ocean couple family
I’ve worn many hats and tried on many identities as an avatar. I’ve been young and I’ve been old. Skinny and full-figured. Black and white. And red and green. A cheerleader and a derby girl. A barista and a host. I’ve seen so much love and beauty, so much desire, so much hunger for love and connection in the virtual world. I’ve seen that hunger and need expressed in unhelpful and destructive ways. Ways that can make living in this world as frustrating as living in the first life we came from. I’m touched by the tiny acts of kindness that surround us every day. If we can make it here, we can make it anywhere.
