Librarians Gone Wild! (Part One)

For the past few months I've been getting more and more involved with library activities in Second Life. As I've gotten to know my fellow librarians, I've felt that we all needed some serious girlfriend time. So was born the "Girls Night Out." I put the word out that we'd be getting together at a dance club in SL to have some time to socialize and let our hair down, and I got some positive response.

In preparation for the event, I contacted a librarian friend whom I'll call EJ. She was doing a build in SL and needed a break, so she came with me to see a few clubs so we could figure out where we wanted to hang out.

If you've never gone dancing in SL, here's how it works: there's streaming audio, usually courtesy of a DJ spinning tunes live, in real time. In order to animate your avatar into dancing there are a couple of options. One is to click an object in the club, either a sphere over the dance floor, or to click on the dance floor itself. When a box appears at the top of the computer screen that asks, "Animate your avatar?" you click 'YES" in order to dance. Sometimes the dance is random, or sometimes a menu pops up and you can select the dance you want. The second way to dance is to use your own animation. Some of these dance animations are free, but if you want a particular dance or something more distinctive, you can purchase the animations from a variety of vendors. At any rate, you click on something, start dancing, and have fun.

The first place we checked out was Bubblegum Music Factory. They play mostly 60s through 80s rock and pop music, and have a different theme for each of the 4 two-hour sets each night. Sometimes it's guitar bands, sometimes the theme is "best in red" and sometimes it's bubblegum music. EJ liked the music and the atmosphere, so we put this one on the "maybe" list.

After the Bubblegum Music Factory we headed out to Blackhearts, an 80s club. Now, I like me the 80s music—it's the music of my youth. But with the Ramones and the Cure, also comes Billy Ocean and Wham, so the set list at Blackhearts is hit or miss. We decided to pass on this club. Besides, not only was the music kind of iffy, but the lag at he club was horrendous.

Club number three was a trance/house music place that neither of us liked; number 4 was another trance club that we couldn't find the entrance to; and Club 5 wasn't so much a club as an alley with wooden crates, and hardcore punk and oi music being blasted through the air. Not crazy about this one either. EJ searched SL and found a heavy metal club that looked promising. The music was loud and obnoxious (in a good way), the atmosphere was fun, and there were lots of people there, but not too many that we had a lag problem. We decided that this was the place. That is, until the next day, when I discovered the club of my dreams. (To be continued….)