Location: Christabel North’s Store 4MC Props, Garuda Sim

It’s hard to find the right shoes for guys in Second Life.  Women have all the choices, so I long ago decided that I’d either go in drag (uh, no, my chest is too hairy for a corset) or settle for jeans and a punk T-shirt, or maybe a suit for academic occasions.

Imagine Iggy’s surprise to find, in a typically grunge-SL store, not only the usual ripped T-shirts and trashed jeans, but some very cool combat boots. The good design of the store itself should have clued me into this, but go see for yourself.  Just point your avatar to 4MC Props, the shop where I found my “Quasi Military Boots.”

With a click I could change the color from desert tan to black-and-green “Nam” boots to dull black or parade gloss. I snapped up a pair.

I interviewed the boot-maker and shop-owner, Christabel North, who literally tumbled onto the scene in a flurry of acrobatics during my shopping spree.  As always in SL, one is not surprised by a tumbling madwoman in ripped-to-shreds jeans, a pink lacy bra, and a set of welder’s goggles. She put on a ragged miniskirt and “the semblance of a shirt” for my photo, as we sat among post-apocalyptic rubble and chatted.

Ms. North’s good design-work says a great deal about why the major real-world companies who come to SL get disappointed.  Residents seem to prefer SL’s own start-ups and one-of-a-kind shops (my Dominus Shadow vs. Pontiac’s Solstice).

My opinion remains firm that the open-source playground of SL represents the future of the Internet, in particular virtual worlds, not 20th century giants such as GM and Microsoft. The former bailed on its virtual world investment, and the latter?  Well, Microsoft was late to embrace the Web…I’d guessing that they’ll be an also-ran, albeit an important one, in the history of life online, unless they embrace the wildly creative folks involved in the open-source community.

Soon Tenchi, Beeble, and I will ruminate on why Grunge is a dominant style in SL--I think it is related to this home-grown ethos of SL; as William Gibson wrote in Neuromancer, we know “where the street finds its own use for things.”

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

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