By DrFran Babcock
Federal is the fifth sim to come on line in Second Life™. It
is another sim that I have ignored largely during my many explorations of the
mainland. As usual, the history and details of a sim can be uncovered to some
extent by exploring and inspecting. Join me as I reveal what I found out about
this largely forgotten territory.
History of Federal
Same as for Stanford, the week before, Federal was one of
the weapons sims, or the Outlands as they were called. Aside from this bit of
information, all the material on the Second Life Wikia is incorrect now.
Federal used to be the home of the Second Life Botanical Gardens, which are now
housed on their own sim, and the Club Elite, which is not in existence any
longer. I had hoped to find the Federal drawbridge still around, but I couldn’t
locate it. The bridge was built by longtime resident, and creator of the SL
Universe Forums and Snapzilla picture sites, Cristiano Midnight.
For Rent
It seems that about half of Federal is for rent. There is a
huge, flat portion of the sim that is empty of everything, except a map of old
Second Life™. The landlord for this
piece of property is the same person who owns the parklands on Federal:
Deltango Vale, who is not nearly seven years old—a veritable newbie in this
territory of a world that began in 2002. The land title says that Cinnamon
Beach is for rent, but right clicking the land gives you the information that
the land is for sale for one million Lindens. Any takers? I am sure Podex will
do the Linden transaction for you.
Who Lives Here?
The aforementioned
Deltango
Vale has created a minimalist parkland on much of the sim. The trees are
all autumnal, have falling leaves, and are nicely complemented by the elfy
lanterns dotted here and there. I believe that this is another attempt to
preserve open space on the mainland and prevent the uglification of Second
Life™, and I applaud this endeavor.
There are two oldbies who still have land on Federal.
Sturm Valen, over ten years old, has a
piece of land, and there is a house up in the air a few meters. There are a few
untextured, plywood prims in the build, so I assumed that he was busy still
building. However, an inspection of the prims revealed that they were
created in March of 2003, making them
some of the oldest prims in Second Life™!
When I do these reports, I always send an IM to the
inhabitants who are old-times, asking them for input. I have been unsuccessful
in getting a response so far.
Simon Metalhead is
the owner of MetalHead Stables and the supposedly very old Über Mall on
Federal. The stables are a newer addition to the sim, as they are meant to
house Amaretto Horses. Sadly, the two horses I found in the stables had turned
green and were sick without food and water.
The Über Mall is a bunch of blocky cubes that rise out of a
small hill that is surrounded by the Federal Park. Robert Jung, SL historian,
has described it as one of the oldest malls in Second Life™
(
http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=547141
), but unless it has been rebuilt, most of the prims date from 2007. There is
very little in the mall. Basically two stores: Bowulf and Altered Visions make
up the inhabitants of the mall. Altered Visions has two signs and no stock at
all. Bowulf, which is the work of Simon Metalhead, has only a series of
goggles, a kitchen set, and a fireplace for sale. This is one gigantic mall
with only a few items for sale. This is one of the drawbacks of having Lifetime
Members. They let their horses die, along with their malls.
The only item of interest that I found, by perving
into the basement of the mall, was a sign for the FICs. FICs are the Feted
Inner Core—a conspiracy theory that certain avatars had an advantage with the
Linden Lab employees that favored them in business and other product
placements. It became somewhat of a joke over time, so the sign was a fun find
for me.
Second Life
Art Gallery
For the most part, the mall is not worth a visit.
There are other things to see on the sim. The Second Life Art Gallery being one
of them. You will not see a single picture from the works in the gallery here
in this article, because they are all erotic in nature, and many of them
extreme in nature. Of course, you may go and see for yourself. The gallery is
owned by Tony Tigereye, and many of his works are there. Each display in the
four stories of the gallery has a notecard to tell you about the artist. Tony’s
is worth repeating:
Tony
uses Yahoo! Doodle to create his colorful works of art. A lot of his inspiration is drawn from his
good friend, Porscha, and many of the works are a collaborative effort. Many people notice the stunning over-use of male
genitalia in Tony's works, perhaps leading them to believe he has a fixation on
the black male penis. Later works
suggest, however, that Tony is simply out of his mind crazy and has no rhyme or
reason to anything he does.
Tony’s art work is, um, infantile, to say the least. I guess
he’s just having fun. Isn’t that what Second Life™ is about? Well, it is for
me. Come visit Federal. Maybe you want to rent the beach.
Visit Federal:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Federal/154/202/28
DrFran Bakcock
