Saying Goodbye to a Favorite Destination

I hadn't visited Simple's Zoo for a while, so it was a shock when I stopped by last week and found both the Lythria and Plebja sites surrounded by ban lines.  The parcel information indicated that Whitney Linden had taken over the property on 3-31-2021. I was told that there had been a sign at Plebja indicating that everything would be closing effective the end of March. This seemed to be permanent.

Builds stayed up for a few days. I was able to cam in and take a few more pictures and buy copies of some of Simple's builds and books that I didn't already have, but yesterday the Lythria site was barren, and I expect the builds on the Plebeja site will go soon.

A greenie opening a soda

Simple Wunderlich was 'born' in 2007, before I came. I never met him, but his Zoo in Lythria was one of the first places I visited when I was new, and it gave me the opportunity of seeing many of the early Second Life larger art works in a parklike setting. This was one of the first places I had seen the Greenie sculptures, the works of Pumpkin Tripsa, Art Laxness, Ub Yifu, and many others.  Most of the sculptures were high-prim, and because they had a lot of land impact as he bought more art Simple kept expanding his land until he owned parts of at least five regions so that he wouldn't go over his prim allowance.

Later I found his annex in Plebeja, quite some distance away, where he took advantage of a sheer cliff to build spiraling staircases up to a viewing spot, with cascading water features on many sides. 

In Plebeja, water cascades down the cliff near the High Mountain Road.

He had a big freebie collection that he gave away. Unfortunately, as he wrote "Most are set to notransfer, so your friends have to visit the zoo too " I found that Lankarian Lock is still offering some of them: a Box of Greenies, a copy of the Lion & the Horse sculpture, and a box of Starax sculptures for free on the SL Marketplace.

All of these sculptures are high-prim. I have seen copies of them in a few museums, and land managers with large parcels* may display one or two, but if you are a normal resident with a 1024 parcel or less, one statue might use up all your prim allowance.

One of many sculptures that were in the Zoo.

Simple was a gifted photographer. You can see a gallery of his photos on Flickr, and on his blog . His Flickr album has about 297 entries, from February 14 2003 to February 14, 2011. His blog was apparently started on 1-22-2011 and the last entry appears to be March 5, 2015. He placed his photos, with accompanying text, in books you could buy and read in Second Life. I bought all of them and hope to display them at The Unofficial Tourist Information Office at some future time.

Thoughts on Second Life mortality: Nothing lasts forever. Second Life has changed so much since it started. When someone stops participating in SL it is hard to know whether the person has passed away, found other interests, or is just not interested in keeping up with all the new technology. In my wanderings I sometimes run into parcels where nothing has been updated for years, but someone is still paying tier. Perhaps it is better for a landowner to close their parcels suddenly than to leave them neglected -- like one I visited recently where the fish were swimming in the air outside their aquariums and scripts in some of the builds no longer worked.

I hope in Simple's case he has closed his parcels because he has found better things to do. As he used to write

"Be nice and have fun!"

On the platform in Plebeja, a skeleton plays a guitar.

*The Hollywood Region currently has a copy of Starax' "Drowned" sculpture on common land near a yacht club.