Jo Yardley

You could try using more sculpts, especially with vehicles you're stuck with a 32 prim limit so details will need sculpting I think.

Well said. I first came to SL after hearing about it on tv, looked around, thought this was just a place for oversexed people who only wanted to chat about clothes. Not for me, so I left. Two years later I came back to try my new laptop, wanted to see what it could handle. Minutes before leaving SL for good... again, I tried to search for something I would like, I love history, vintage stuff, old music, etc. I found the retro scene and never looked back. Scripting makes my brain bleed, fashion just isn't my cup of tea and simply chatting to people and dancing isn't for me either. But once I discovered vintage places I started thinking about what I was missing in SL and if I could build it myself. To me that is the secret of SL: If you can't find something you love, make it yourself! So still very unexperienced and young (a month or so?) I started building the 1920s Berlin Project. Just as a little test, see how it would go. Very small, very basic. But very quickly people started gathering who shared my love, nay, passion for this era and this city and soon the project started to grow. Now we have a nearly 2 year old busy full region sim where is a waiting list for apartments and with a community that is so strong, so much like a RL neighbourhood. So I sort of wandered in and once I got the secret of SL I threw myself, head first, into the past

Well besides my own sim there are a few that spring to mind. One of the most amazing sims I've seen are the ones made by AM radio, a MUST see. And I also love Vintage Village.

Yes there was a topic about churches, where did it go? Anyway, in our 1920s Berlin sim we have a lovely church, best thing about it that we have a priest who has his services there, even some in latin as they used to do back then! There is a 1920s Dresscode (freebies at the entrance) and our priest won't hear your confession (his ears are still glowing red from last time) but it is a nice quiet place to contemplate busy life outside or play some organ music.

We have a mirror ballroom in the famous Hotel Adlon, right at the feet of the Brandenburg Gate in 1920s Berlin. We have a 1920s dresscode (freebies at the entrance) and the ballroom is realistic scale (so small for most people in SL). The music stream plays a European mix of 1920s music (no advertisements) and there is a grand piano. The dance system only has vintage dances. Just like in RL there isn't a party there every night (there is one in our dirty old smelly basement bar on other side of town) but now and then we have a lovely dance there.

When I first came to SL I looked around for a few hours, thought everyone was just obsessed with sex, chatting and dancing and asumed SL was not my cup of tea. A few years later I got a new laptop and wanted to try it out, SL demands a lot of your computer so I decided to go back to SL. This time I found the search button, looked for vintage sims and never looked back, the rest is 'history as they say. Not much later I was building and managing my own sim and now a full region sim that is busy, has full tenancy and is doing rather well. But I am not very interested in appearance, my avatar often wears the same clothes for weeks or months and I've only ever had 2 skins and 1 hairstyle. The hairstyle was simple, I have vintage hair in RL so I when I found the same hair in SL I didn't haver to think about it very long. I always wear vintage glasses so when I found those... and when I found the same kind of clothes... yes also vintage... It was simple, with my first money I bought the things that would help me look as much like RL me as possible. Except for the skin, I don't like spending money so when I found a freebie 1920s moviestar skin, I got it and kept it for a year or so. Of course I was too tall and way too pretty and slim, like most people in SL. When I realised my avatar was a giant I changed her into something more realistic, tried to match her with my rl me as much as possible. Still not happy with the skin, I look too young but finding a realistic 30-something tired woman skin is a bit hard. So here she is, in grey suit as I looked when I first got here and below in my bar the way I look today;

The winner is...

It's coming! Well mesh anyway; http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/Mesh-Coming-to-Second-Life-This-Summer/ba-p/902061

The winner will be chosen on june the 5th during Happy Hour at our dance club!, at 2 pm slt. There is no limit on how many photos you upload to our flickr group.

Pabst is brilliant and the story extra fitting for our sim as part of the sim shows that dark side of the city, the poverty, prostitution, crime, etc. And of course... Greta Garbo!

Yes, just like in most historical themed roleplay sims, in our 1920s historical roleplay sim we only allow 1920s historical themed avatars. But as mentioned, you can also see this online or visit 1920s Berlin on one of our relaxed dresscode days.

Mila Edelman wrote: Jo Yardley wrote: Mind you, toontown would be an awesome sim...:matte-motes-inlove: Project number #5986 added to the list. :matte-motes-evil-invert: At this rate, we'll be building from the grave. I'll make sure I'm burried with my Macbook. Pay my internet bills!

Yep, they are part of 1920s German History and the subject is part of the sim. But for most of the 1920s Nazi's dressed like everyone else, the few that did wear uniforms often just wore brownshirts and on several ocassions they were forbidden by law to wear any kind of uniform. Until 1929 they were changing their uniforms all the time. Nazi symbols are against ToS so authentic 1920s Nazi uniforms would be difficult as in the 1920s the swastika armband was often the only bit of uniform they wore. Besides that Berlin was not a Nazi stronghold, more of a working class 'red' and bohemian kind of city in that period, even during the later (war) years, support for the Nazis was not strong there. In the 1920s they appealed more to the rural areas and after their failed Putsh they were trying to be more political and less street fighting revolutionaries. Much of the 1920s the NSDAP was in a lot of trouble, they had been forbidden for a bit, hitler spend time in jail and up till late 1928 he was not allowed to even talk in public. By 1929, the party had less then 200.000 members in a country of 64 million people, Berlin alone had 4 million inhabitants. We have an excellent documentary style movie showing in our sim, filmed on the streets of Berlin in 1929, showing daily life as it was. Not a Nazi uniform in sight. Also important is that because we have people in uniform with actual powers (police), we don't allow any uniforms unless permission is asked in advance, to avoid confusion for guests. Of course we may consider allowing such an uniform for educational purposes in certain cases, but only if the wearer is someone we know very well and trust.

We have a lovely art deco cinema on Unter den Linden in the middle of our sim, The 1920s Berlin project. Every now and then we change the movie there. From today you can see; Die Freudlose Gasse (1925) ACHTUNG: this is a SILENT movie, there is NO sound whatsoever. In reality there would have been a band or someone at the piano playing along. If you want you can turn on your music stream and listen to 1920s music while watching this gem of a movie. ************* About the movie ************* Joyless Street (German: Die freudlose Gasse, 1925, exhibited in the U.S. as The Street of Sorrow, in Britain as The Joyless Street), a film based on the novel by Hugo Bettauer and directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst in France, is one of the first films of the "New Objectivity“ movement. Greta Garbo stars in her second major role. The film is often described as a morality story in which the 'fallen woman' suffers for her sins, while the more virtuous is rewarded. ******** The story ******** In 1921 in the poor part of an Austrian town called Melchiorgasse there are only two wealthy people: the butcher Josef Geiringer and his wife. Mrs. Greifer runs a fashion boutique and a nightclub patronized by wealthy Viennese. Annexed to the nightclub is Merkl Hotel, a brothel to which the women of the nightclub bring their clients. The film follows the lives of two women from the same poor neighborhood as they try to better themselves during the period of Austrian postwar hyperinflation. They are Marie, who becomes a prostitute, and Grete who does not. At the finale Else kills the butcher because he will not give her meat. The poor of the neighborhood, hearing the sounds of the nightclub, revolt against the clients by throwing stones. The nightclub burns down killing two beggars. Only Grete seems to have any hope of leaving Melchiorgasse and this because of her relationship with an American Red Cross officer.

BTW, we DO allow animal avatars, we don't care about how avatars look like, as long as it fits the theme. We had some great tiny rat avatars, cats, dogs, etc, exploring our sim. And as long as they behaved in a realistic way there was no problem. One dog was chased by our feared Police, but that was because he bit an officer in the leg. AND, we also have Relaxed Rules days in 1920s Berlin where we every now and then forget about the dresscode and give ALL avatars a chance to explore the sim.

Dogboat Taurog wrote: Your avatar is an exact replica of your rl self then? I somehow doubt it. its impossible to create an exact replica of your RL self in SL and i'm suprised you didnt know that. My avatar comes petty close to who I am in RL, not there yet but friends who know me in RL spot my avatar in a crowd. Next step, stick my RL skin on the avatar. If I could step in a machine that makes an exact copy avatar of me in RL, I would. I don't get the whole dressing up either, making your avatar look prettier, different, or whatever. But if people want that, go for it.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: Its a little less intellectually interesting when you come from one or more of the class of people who had target signs on them back in those 'glory days'. Just deleted a very long rant about how that time a lot less glorious feeling to those of whose roots suffered. The short version is that if you enforce one rule for realism in a simulation, then you leave many of us feeling the others, even if you try to gloss over them. If you were not white, and to be correct only certain kinds of white, in the 1920s, the world was a very dark, nasty, brutal place. If you come from a background who's roots didn't go through those horrors you might not 'see' the darkness that was all around everyone else. I get that you can 'romanticise' these eras and gloss over the suffering of most of the human race. But to do you kinda have to remove a good dose of the realism. Saying 'gotta be human and in theme to the locale' for me just puts my mind into that dark history again. So yeah, if I'm going to look 'back' to certain styles of the past - if I don't place something patently unreal into there, all I can see is a world of nightmares - because for 90% of humanity, that's all there was; and that's the 90% I come from. 1920s Berlin wasn't 1930s Berlin, but it was still on Earth. It all depends on how you look at it. Berlin in the 1920s was extremely liberal, progressive, forward thinking and tolerant. I've read stories by people with "target signs on their backs" who felt like they had ended up in paradise, especially the ones who came from America. Besides who hasn't got some sort of target sign on their backs? As a white woman in 2011 I personally experience racism, sexism and even anti-semitism (even though I am not jewish) . Jewish friends of mine here in my country feel more discriminated today then they did before the war. Pretty much everyone I know feels that in some way or another things used to be better at some point in time then they are today. As an unmarried, unreligious, 'red' kind of woman I would have had a target on my back in the 1920s, just as I do today in 2011. As an historian I do not romantize the past, but don't look at it overly negative either. Every era has its good and bad sides, all depending how you look at it. Most people still think that in Medieval Europe everyone had the plague, died at age 30, had no teeth, threw their chamber pots out the windows, had pigs and chickens in their homes, women had no rights whatsoever, etc. The truth is that the 'dark ages' were not as dark as their name suggests. The 1920s were not as roaring as their name suggests either, but in much of the world and for many people these years were a lot better then the ones leading up to them and the ones following them. Yes, also for the 90%, especially for the 90%. Anyway, sorry about hijacking this thread. It is a general post about one case and I managed to stuff it with history. Sorry, history is an addiction

Every era has good and bad sides. But still, there was a lot back then I would prefer to what we have today, a LOT. Not many of those horrible things you mentioned were happening in 1920s Berlin back then but other awful things did, we just had 3 days of riots just like in RL 1929 Berlin, 33 people were then shot dead by the police. To me reality, especially when it comes to history, is a lot more interesting then a funny, romanticized, over-dramatised, unrealistic, overly negative or overly positive view of the past. Or a cartoonized version of the past, so no 1947 Rrrrrrrrrrroger Rrrrrrrrrabbit in 1920s Berlin Mind you, toontown would be an awesome sim...:matte-motes-inlove: Either way, every sim has its own rules visitors should respect. Sometimes it is just about the theme and nothing personal.

It is not always about being uptight, unwelcoming, exclusive, etc. Sometimes it is just about the theme of the sim.

Don't worry about it. When you're new to SL you have lots and lots of questions, as you should. I run a 1920s Berlin historical roleplay sim, we demand people to follow our 1920s Dresscode. There are lots of warnings, notecards and messages at the entrance at the sim telling people our rules, but we still get people walking in who either don't get them, ignore them or just like to break rules. And they are not all new to SL, people who have been in SL for ages still get ejected sometimes, often not sure why. It is part of the SL experience. The only thing to be upset about if is the person ejecting you is rude, mean, unreasonable or if it is totally unclear why you're ejected or banned.

Yes sorry, it was a reply to anthony, I too often just click reply to a topic at the bottom as that is how many forums work and I forget they then reply to the last poster

When you visit a sim, you visit someone elses home, in a way you're not just walking into their house but into their brain, their dream, their fantasy. Everything you see, they build, they paid for, they work hard for to maintain. So behave like a guest and follow their rules or accept them ejecting you if you don'. BUT, civilised people should always be polite, no excuse for rudeness. So whoever does the ejecting, better do it in a nice way. Also, I was thinking, perhaps you were pushing people around because of the size of your avatar or by bumping into them, so not verbally.

Why not start small? I started the 1920s Berlin project in a 1024 meter parcel with 4 tenants and now I have a full region that is pretty much fully booked, my apartments have waitinglists. You need to offer people something unique, something they love and will not only pay rent for but keep paying rent for a while. So start thinking about how your sim will look like, what the houses will be like. WHY would anyone want to live in your sim? Once you've answered that you can grow. Only if you're sure you can keep a full region tiers close to 300 dollars a month paid for by the rent the people pay, only then should you buy a full region. And yes, there are regions out there for half the prize, so try and get one for 500 dollars or so.

Is there a lot of stuff around? I asume these bunnies walk around a bit, perhaps they walked into a object or got lost in the hills, trees, etc. If you are on a phoenix viewer, try a area search. The bunnies may still be there, somewhere hiding. Did you check your prim count? How many prims are you using on your land, has it gone done, up or remained the same?