BIG GAY OLMY'S BIG GAY SIM!

A happy fun land where closets melt into rainbows...

This week until next Monday, the Athena simulator is gay. And I don't mean there's some rainbow flags here and there, I mean it's gay. Like the entire 16 acres, from the rainbow ribbons of light that surround you at its teleport point to the rainbow tent fair beneath it to the airborne rainbow disco dome streaming dance music to the pink Washington monument that seems to overlook it all.

The event is Olmy Seraph and Stoneself Karuna's tribute to Pride Week-- they own Athena together, and so they devoted the whole sim to its celebration. (Unsurprisingly, they're among the contributors to Slpride.com, a site for LGBT Second Life Residents; last December, Olmy organized the stirring inauguration of an SL AIDS quilt.) The week's events on Athena ran from the serious ("Principles of Buddhism/Homosexuality") to the silly ("Make-Over Booth Host"), though the most popular happening was probably the drag show last Wednesday.

"Osprey Therian got 1st place," Olmy tells me. Osprey took the crown with a blue ostrich feather dress, while. "Pancake [Stryker] was in the tutu [the lime green tutu! - HL] and got 2nd, Billy Fassbinder in the Xmas dress got 3rd." (Snapzilla pic of the winner here; way more of Snapzilla in Athena here.)

"This is the most fun I've had in SL since Burning Life last year," Olmy continues. "Barnesworth Anubis' drag show was beyond fabulous, and it's been great to see all the queer folk having a gay old time together. I'm looking forward to seeing the new quilt panels this weekend, and of course the parade on Monday. Mostly, people have been really great about pitching in and working together to make it all happen. That's what I love about this place!"

What I love about this place most is the sculpture created by Stoneself Karuna, at Athena's shore. It begins with a strewn pile of discarded closet doors. Those doors seem to rise off the ground, and in their rising, transform into open frames in a multitude of colors, and free from gravity's pull, move together toward the sky.