Krissy Lately: Your New Hang-Out: Ethereality

5:07 PM / Comments (1) / by Heather

Ok, maybe not your new hang-out, but I bet you'll love this new sim as much as I do. Ethereality is Second Life's newest combination entertainment/shopping/residential sim where people can live, shop and play. At first it reminded me of Mill Pond but there are some distinct differences. Ethereality has an artsy atmosphere, and indeed uses SoHo for it's inspiration. The hub of this neighborhood is Starbrook's Coffeehouse. Remember those little games that used to be so easy to find? Hang-man, chess, trivia questions... As a new resident I loved finding those and so I was pleasantly surprised to see plenty of them here at the coffee shop. Next door is a great little art installation gallery called Artpounce!, with interactive installations by Misprint Thursday, four Yip, Oberon Onmura and others. The shopping village caters to indie retailers, those off-the-beaten-path kind of designers we might not consider mainstream. Something we might actually find in a neighborhood like SoHo. The textures here are stellar, the builder Kitty Umarov really gave Ethereality an immersive quality. If you are looking for a townhome you might be out of luck here, at least for the short-term. There are no vacancies, all townhomes are rented. Pretty good since their grand opening was just this past Saturday. In fact, Jenda Starbrook told me that they may add more townhomes since they have a demand for them. I kind of want to rent one with an alt... or maybe have a "vacation home". I can have that in SL, right? :)

The blue window to the right of this picture is the facade of Artpounce. This tree branch and swing are available for purchase just inside.

I really love this interactive piece by Oberon Onmura. The blocks attempt to stack themselves nicely into a cube, until someone (Pippi) walks through them and they all scatter. The cool part for us is that we found this out by accident which made the experience all the more fun.