Close Encounters

Encounters - of any kind - it's not a word we always associate with Opensim. It's a whole lotta space! 

If you think that opensim's kind of empty today, then you should have seen it ten, fifteen years ago. The small population of pioneers was pretty sparse, and you'd be forgiven for describing it as a place of rare encounters, maybe even zero! 

Close Encounters - the space ship

Yet, for seven years from 2008, there was one fixed appointment on OSGrid where you'd find a regular band of happy dancers, some good tunes, the latest gossip - of a friendly kind, nothing hostile - and the chance to finally see someone after a week of building and experimenting in this brave new world.

The place was Close Encounters, a spaceship dance club on a region that was home to Dorothea Lundquist and Jay Maze. 

Twirling time!

For a hypergrid traveller like myself, used to sampling interesting but untenanted builds, this place was an oasis of company on a Friday night. That is something we all take for granted in SL, and nowadays in opensim, but back then was a rare fixed point in the calendar. I asked a few of my fellow dancers to give me their impressions and memories of the club and those times.

Foxx Bode: Before i became Admin in 2015, Friday party at D&J, wednesdays at Blue Wave, and weekends at the Maritime were the only " known " events

Yeah, this is ta trip 'back in the day', when Aine was still sometimes Mata Hari, and Lani Global could often be found on her Mall, and Vbinnia Radek  was supplying us with our steampunkiness; when your right shoe could be guaranteed to appear on your butt for no reason at all, when UMMA and clouds were just everyday people, trying to get by. 

Dorothea is a talented builder. Her sim 1001 Nights was one of the first places the Safari ever visited, back when HG was still a little scary, and more than a year later, the whole crowd of us sampled Feriae Quinquennial. I still remember too her freebie shop with elegant sofas and some lovely outfits

Wait!  There's Caro Fayray, Giu Balan, and - who's that redhead? Snakey, perhaps? Answers in the Comments!Speaking of red, Caro's skirt is a celebration of flexiprims... how did she end up at the club?

Caro Fayray: I'm not sure how it happened. I was  pretty  new at the time, so  I probably  found  out from someone telling  me, but  i remember  it was  pretty  much  the only  event  regularly happening   in  those days. Although  I'm not a very social  person,  it was a really nice  place to  go, and the  people were very  nice  too... and the  music was  good from  Jay:)

NPC dancers - an opensim innovation

OSGrid is filled with artists, as you know, busy with projects and builds. Not everyone had time, or made time, for dancing. But some people combine the two - think of Danger Lytton and Azi Az, well known for their art and beautiful sims, but also for their weekly dance event on Tuesdays, at the Almost Islands. I wondered if Danger Lytton recalled Close Encounters. He was emphatic!

Danger Lytton: yes i do... It's where I met Azi - 9 years ago and we are still together

Jay Maze (photo by Foxx Bode). 

If you'd like to know more about Foxx and the backstory to his OSGrid experience, you can watch an interview on Inworld Review  from a few months ago. You can also read his Red Dragon Nite Club blog  to learn more about the changes and milestones on OSGrid over the years.
Foxx Bode: Jay played pretty much everything. The only DJ that has similar knowledge of artists and music is the owner from Littlefield. Walter. Music was a passion for Jay. He was a walking music catalog!

The first Cornflakes Week party in February 2015

Jay and Doro had their fixed weekly appointment with the community, but don't think of them as overly set in their ways. When I was organizing first edition of Cornflakes Week, I proposed a party there, and, they jumped at the opportunity to hold it at the Close Encounters club. This gif shows how they decked out the spaceship - very cool transformation for that special week.

Showing up every single Friday for seven years, even when sometimes it's just for the benefit of a handful of people - that's hard work. By 2015 they decided to take a break,  and here is a video of that final party. 

Foxx Bode:  Huge respect for these people from me, and i think i can speak on behalf of the grid here.  Their contribution to OSgrid has been a vital part in the social interactions of all the tech nerds here at the time, and has laid the foundation for OSgrids current grid organised events.

The closure was seen as a sabbatical, rather than the end of an era, and Foxx Bode agreed to keep the event going, with the possibility that Jay would want to pick up again eventually. It seemed important  to maintain the continuity on OSGrid, since the Friday party has acquired a special place in the grid's weekly routine. However, Foxx's sims are not built for a crowd, so that raised a dilemma - where to hold the event? 

After consultation with the grid committee, Foxx ran the Friday party on Event Plaza. At the end of those two years, the job passed on to Aussie Envee, who has expanded that original dance set into a music marathon with multiple DJs and live singers.

While it's always a joy to see Dorothea around and about on OSgrid, always supporting events and bringing positive vibes wherever she goes. Sadly it must be reported that Jay Maze passed away a few years ago.

But Close Encounters is far from forgotten. You can even see a copy of the ship on Foxx's region on OSGrid - the address is at the end of this post.Foxx Bode: As you can see it's a replica of the ship from the movie. I am not 100% sure if Dorothea built it, or had it built. But they were very proud of it, that's why nobody has the asset. I got a copy from a demo made for OSGx Bday., its the same build, just sized a tad smaller with the promise  I would never distribute it. I kept a copy at Red Dragon. Thats one big historic yada. 

Foxx Bode: It's not pixels that bond us. It's your mutual memories of good times. Their legacy of good times, awesome music, and great parties should not be forgotten.  

HG Address :

hop://hg.osgrid.org:80/Red%20Dragon%20Nite%20Club/414/72/28