New Tee Shirts from Cherry Street Creations

My brother Nugget Michigan is developing a line of tee shirts with most of the stars from NASCAR racing featured individually. They will be for sale at the Cherry Street Mall in Sensual Freedom as they are completed. Right now he has points leader Greg Biffle, Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards. About 30 more to come! If this proves successful then proceeds from the sales of these tees will go to a worthy NASCAR charity such as Relay for Life. They are L$99 each.

The Friday night events at House of the Rising Sun have been going strong. All of the previous week, the Rising Sun has been featured in the Phoenix Viewer's Location Guide. These are location featured on the splash screen of the viewer that are chosen as worthy destinations to check out. Actually, I suspect these destinations are chosen by Linden Labs, so the splash screen may apply to every SL viewer. I would not know as I only use Phoenix viewer. But what I do know is that featuring House of the Rising Sun in the Featured Destinations has made the place very very busy. Lots of new group members now and lots of people at the club for dancing, conversation, trivia and of course strip sploder. This past Friday was historic in the fact that it was the first time I've played strip sploder that I did not end up naked! Yet between Alo and Gus and myself, we were able to get 3 fine ladies naked, and that's what it's all about. You really owe it to yourself to come on down on a Friday night when quietygr and myself are holding the event from 6pm to 8pm SLT. See their schedule at http://cnrisingsun.wordpress.com/category/weekly-schedule/ http://cnrisingsun.wordpress.com/category/weekly-schedule/

Speaking of DJing. I ran into my sister Whisper last night. She is heavy into another virtual world called InWorldz. I exist in IW as Otto Turbo as well. I was marketing a couple of ladies outfits there and they were selling at a nice steady rate, but I ended up letting my land go and committed completely to developing shops and nightclubs in SL. Because that has not worked out, I think I'll be returning to IW at least once per week to DJ for one of Whisper's events. She owns an entire sim there and it's packed full of shops and events areas. There is a regular live performer there too. I'll post more as this develops but at this time, Whisper is allowing me to live for free on her sim so I might as well setup shop there too. You can find out more about InWorldz and download the basic viewer at: http://www.inworldz.com/

Turning

I'm not a vampire in SL, or vamp for short. But my SL wife/submissive/girlfriend/mine is. She is not an active vamp though. Long ago she paid a bunch of money so that she didn't have to drink another avi's blood to stay alive. The database they call Bloodlines keeps track of who has the most "souls" and if the vamp requires blood, and if they are about to 'die' from lack of it. I'm a blood doll which means I'm human and vamps can bite me for blood if they need it. I can purchase apples to eat to replenish my blood supply or "humanity". In the clan cat and I belong to, Champions Of Death, I'm considered a blood stud, which is a more playful way of denoting us male members as blood dolls.

Olu and Raoul 'turning' Valerie

A notice was posted the other day to come to a "turning" ceremony. That's where a human (or in this case some kind of demon/animal hybrid) has all their blood sucked from them in order to become a living dead vampire. Champions of Death has a pyramid with a ceremonial altar in it for this purpose. I was invited to attend. Because I have never witnessed anything like this in SL, I was eager to go.

The turning chamber had plenty of seating for members of the clan. I took a seat not knowing what to expect. Oluthus began the ceremony by laying Valerie out on the altar. She was bound by her wrists and ankles to keep her from squirming too much as the life was sucked out of her. Olu made a short speech then sank his fangs into Valerie's soft neck. Raoul took to the artery in her thigh and both vamps gorged themselves on her blood.

Olu and Raoul sucking the life out of Valerie

This took a surprisingly long time to do! In the end, Olu used a type of spike to pierce her heart and suck the blood out of her more efficiently. It was grizzly but fascinating at the same time. After all the blood was sucked out of her, Valerie was allowed to drink the blood of the clan's blood studs so I got up and volunteered. Olu immediately informed me that a good blood stud does not wear a shirt, so he tore mine off. I'll have to remember this in the future as shirts are not cheap!

Valerie bit me a couple of times and sucked out about 8% of my humanity. I would have let her have more had I known it was going to be such a small amount. I assume I'll only be needing 2 apples to replenish myself one of these days when I get the time.

She was then placed back up upon the altar as she transformed into a vampire, having drank of human blood and also vampire blood. She levitated as she turned and was enveloped in a dark cloud. And that was it! She was now immortal and one of the walking dead. Congratulations Valerie!

Natsuki's Party

Last night I received an invitation from Natsuki to attend her party. The invitation stated that she would be playing the music. Oh good! I finally get to hear her voice. So I finished up what I was doing (attending another party) then popped on over to her place.

Nat (now called suki by her friends) and I go way back to the early days of Cherry Street. She used to be the group slave. She would hang out in cages all day waiting for someone to show up and use her. It was very rare when that happened but it did once in a while and she had fun. She and Zuri used to be an item too. Check this out: http://keepingupwithzuri.blogspot.com/2011/06/one-night-in-natsuki.html

After a while she hooked up with a domme or two and sort of drifted away. She returned when she had an idea. She had met another nightclub owner and because they were in daylight while we were in darkness and visa-versa, that if we both advertised our events on each other's group that we could bring in more people. It was a nice idea but it didn't really work out. Most everyone in Cherry Street's group were offline when the other European group was online and they were offline when our group was active. And that was the last time I saw Nat for quite a while. Then one night she invited myself and cat to her new friend's party where he was DJing. Well, it was fun and while the music was certainly different, we enjoyed it. Darren and Zuri showed up there too. Then again, that was the last we heard from Nat up until last night.

So I go to this party to listen to her mix of music. The music was okay. It was odd that it never ended. I mean, there was no "song". It just went on and on and transitioned from one vague tune to another but the key and the beat were exactly the same. Needless to say, I did not get to hear the lovely Nat speak, because there was no opportunity for her to, but she sure looks amazing!

Her and her friend had a very nice dance floor and party spot. And she looked wonderful! It's obvious she has been working on her looks quite successfully. It was so good to see her again and I hope she stays in touch and comes to some of our parties too.

Cherry Street

After nearly a full year of giving it a good go, it's time to step back for a bit and regroup. I'm closing down the Cherry Street Nightclub and Mall. I opened it back in March of 2011 with the help of Lark for construction and Emi for events management. Events at the club were held between one and three nights per week. The events would consist of anything from clothing colors or styles to demon avatars to naked dances and the prize for winning the event was usually at least L$300. With the rare exceptions of Clancy and Nezzy and a couple of times Olu, I was the only DJ for these events. It was very very rare that I would get a tip and when I did, they were not enough to cover the cost of holding the event. Don't get me wrong. I would never expect for an event to profit or even break even. What I was looking for is something to offset my expenses in SL, not pay for them completely.

The idea of holding an event at a club is to raise the traffic rating. The more people who show up for an event and the longer they stay, the higher the traffic rating goes. The higher your traffic rating, the higher your place will show up in the SL search results. The higher your place shows up in the search results, the more people will show up to... in this case, shop for women's clothing. That's what I sell in my mall. My sis Pearl sells jewelry and women's complete outfits. She has a shop there too.

So after over a year of opening Cherry Street up to the public, I did a study of the last 6 months of transactions for sales at my shops and discovered that running the club with its events was costing 4 times what the shops were taking in in sales and profit. Even with my traffic rating at a consistent 8000 to 10,000 for the past two weeks, I only took in around L$300 in sales. That's the cost of just one of the 6 events I held in that time period. Certainly not worth it. There has to be a better way to offset my expenses and I think I might have found the answer. But before I get into that, let's discuss Cherry Street just a little bit more.

First of all, it doesn't operate on its own. Thank you so very much Emi and birdie for all your help. Without your support there is no way I could have built the group to the size that it is (300+ members). Thanks also to Nezzy, Clancy, Olu and Alobar, all of whom have DJ'd there at one time or another. Thanks to the few dancers we had over the past year and especially thanks to the regulars such as Darren and Zuri, Neva, Chica, Cupcake and of course my girl cat. The future Cherry Street (and there will be a reopening) will have a full staff and operate full time. Currently, I belong to Dolls of Death and attend their events at least one of the 4 they have per week. I strive to keep my events from overlapping theirs which may be another reason Cherry Street is a ghost town lately. Most of my friends are in that group or the clan of Champions of Death.

I will keep Cherry Street in place. The nude beach, cuddle forest, club, mall, free sex/orgy room, BDSM dungeon and the castle will remain right where they are for anyone to use. But I will no longer advertise for the place nor will I hold scheduled events there, at least until I can assemble a good sized staff to run events round the clock.

So how do I offset my expenses in SL? The most lucrative way I've found so far is DJing. I really do not enjoy DJing but I can learn to love it. I have only ever DJ'd in order to throw a party at a moment's notice. But I need to come up with a style and something that an audience will enjoy and want to keep coming back. I need to build a following. I need to attract more people to my shows. I need to expand my styles of music too. Right now I have hard rock and some metal and some country. But because my only regular gig is at a blues place, I need to add a heap of blues music to my list of styles as well. Then I will look into applying at high traffic clubs that run very nearly around the clock. As an example, I made more in tips at House of the Rising Sun Blues in 2 hours than I made in 3 weeks of clothing sales. If I were to have two nights per week of that sort of income, I would be able to cover half my expenses in SL and that's all I've ever wanted. So I guess it's time to become a professional DJ.