Teen Grid Fly-over by Claudia Linden

The mysterious Cyan Linden was tour guide for my first glimpses of the Teen Grid (TG). Cyan describes herself as a Kabuki head trapped in a flying deco-dolphin bot. Entering storyteller mode, she drew my attention to the Teen Grid World Map for historical perspective on "the early grid." Once upon a time in Teen Second Life Beta (February, 2005) there was Card, Nix, Pullman, Lewis, Adams and Oasis. Today four of these regions are used as the TG Welcome Area, identical to the Welcome Areas on the Main Grid, designed by Jimmy Thomson of Bedazzle Studios.

The first stop on our tour was Oasis and the Basics Store filled with freebies for TG Residents donated by designers from the Main Grid. Delairen Baysklef has donated several hair styles. Aimee Weber gives away jelly bracelets and some of her Preen outfits. The design house avalon. donated several color boxes—one for each color of the rainbow—offering playful objects to the new TG Resident. Opening the yellow box revealed must-haves like cheese, a lemon slice, a chicken avatar, tulips and a yellow balloon. Lee Linden’s highly-armed inner tubes are there along with Cubey Terra’s do-it-yourself plane kit and Juro Kothari’s 43-prim Tubular Home.

The outdoor vendor stalls on Oasis are given to teen Residents in a lotto. In a short flight around the marketplace, I saw Cartoon Tandino’s anime-style Naruto avatar and Jackson Widget’s Prim Works selling art, carpets and more. Semaj Jarrico has a unique assortment of avatars for sale including a piranha with flexi prim fins, male and female furballs and a flexi prim grim reaper. The enterprising Java Gamers Laboratory not only sells essentials like particle strips, walkie talkies, carrot guns, coconut trees and space pods…they sell a Java Gamers Lab vendor so other entrepreneurial teens can sell these items and receive a percentage of the sales.

From Oasis, we flew on over to the "racing sims," named after famous drivers—Andretti, Biffle, Earnhardt, Gordon, Martin and Stewart. Cyan told me racing never caught on and these regions are now for sale.

The next stop on the tour included the regions of Behemoth, Dougall, Meiji West, Meiji East, and Zauis, which were named after the five original Residents of the Teen Grid. Malarthi Behemoth was the first teen on TG (by 5 minutes). Malarthi has kept his original in-world home a pristine forest reserve with one lone dog house – Malarthi has a Snoopy avatar. I could see a small group of furries gathered in a clearing as Cyan flew high over head.

Dougall, once the site of Ron Dougall’s castle and an underground cavern, is currently in transition to an event area – it has a duplicate of the rotating center stage built by Lethe Naumova for the Second Life Third Anniversary party. Teen Residents will soon be able to rent Dougall to host events.

From Dougall, Cyan flew off to Meiji West and East, named after Kurenei and Otaku Meiji. On Meiji East, we hovered briefly to appreciate a magnificent dragon created by Kurenei Meiji. Cyan flew in for a closer look at the Meiji Bazaar. Otaku offers freebies like a no prim trash sign and Valentine bear and Kurenei sells several outstanding animal avatars. The hippo, alligator, giraffe and fox were my favorites and Cyan loves the Godzilla avatar.

The final stop on my tour of the TG were the author sims: Carol, Tolkien, Rowling, Snicket and Pinkwater, which are now abundant with land for sale. Tolkien has The Coffee Scene, a spacious coffee shop for events and parties. The Coffee Scene was built by several Main Grid Residents, originally for the Library, and was donated to the Teen Grid by Jade Lily—it’s a full espresso café minus the barista. Be your own barista and drop by for a latte and sunset views.

My first tour of TSL was a history-lesson fly-over. First impressions—Teen Grid Residents are rich with creativity and ripe with possibilities. Like all of Second Life, the Teen Grid carries reminders everywhere about the ephemeral nature of things. I appreciate the Second Life History Wiki editors, offering hints for the aspiring Second Life archeologist to reconstruct how TSL once was, and what it may become…Stay tuned for more TG tours in the future!

Editor’s note: Claudia Linden is the newest addition to the Community Team and will be focusing on the Teen Grid!