Retroville Welcomes You!

It's been a long time, almost a year, but Hard Alley's Retroville opened January 30 with a huge party that packed the sim with 60-70 people for nearly 3 hours!  Be sure to come by and start some fun, fifties Roleplay today!  DJ Spirit will be hosting "Fifties Friday" parties every Friday night from 7-9PM SL time!  Lots of fun 50s events planned, and 50s attire is easy to find at one of the many retailers in the sim!  Join the fun!  Hope to see you there!

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hard%20Alley/182/198/14

Here are some images from the sim taken from Spirit Eleonara's Flickr stream.

Ms. Spirit in the window of the Death Row District strip club

Kei and Jojo performing at the Dark Carnival

Ms. Spirit getting ready to take some boudoir pics of Ms. Dita Lamour

Ms. Spirit and Ms. Jaded relaxing on the beach

Ms. Dizzy and Ms. Gia in a kinky photoshoot at Studio Haute Demure

Ms. Spirit explores the Tomorrow Exhibit at the Museum

Ms. Spirit enjoys a tender moment with a greaser at the Drive-In

Opening Soon! Retroville!

IT'S OPENING!

We are pleased to announce that after 9 months of planning, design, and building, Hard Alley's Retroville will officially open on Friday, Jan 30 at 7PM SL time!  We will be celebrating with a 50's party in the new Hard Alley Social Club!  Everyone is invited!

It's taken a lot of hard work by some very hard working, talented people like builders Jaimy Hancroft, Tito DeVinna, and McChris Flanagan, and support and planning by Spirit, Jade and the Hard Alley staff, but we think you are going to love it!  I know I do!

Take a peek below at some teaser pics taken and edited by Spirit Eleonara.

Spirit and Hard rest for a moment in the Hard Alley Social Club

Spirit serves up a tasty treat in the Do Wop Diner

Spirit checks out the dinosaur at the Museum

Spirit off to work at Lynden Labs.
What fun, progressive times are these when women can find gainful
employment as secretaries at such prestigious institutions!

It Begins!

This is it! The End of Hard Alley!  Starting this weekend, I have begun deleting large parts of the Alley.  Gone is the Reform School!  And the Biker Bar!  And the Beach... the Jail... the Porn Studio... the Parking Garage... the Frat House... the Boiler Room... the Hospital... the Motel... and the rubble that used to be City Hall.

From now until Nov 17, only the central core of Hard Alley will remain.  The Strip Club will remain open, as well as plenty of areas to roleplay and enjoy, such as the Diner, the Asylum, the Back Door Club, Lynden Labs (what's left of it), and more!

The Cemetery remains until we have had our Annual Halloween Party (always the BEST party in SL)!  THIS IS WHERE WE WILL DISCLOSE THE FULL PLAN FOR THE NEW HARD ALLEY!  DO NOT MISS THIS PARTY!

After the Halloween Party comes Erotigacha 3 - Amorous Autumn, our quarterly adult gacha fair! 

After that?  It's the end of everything!  It all gets deleted!  Every last prim of the original Hard Alley!

We will close the sim off to the public, except for a temporary Strip Club up in the sky while we rebuild below.

The Strip Club will actually be very important during this rebuild period, as we will use it to adjust people to the new Hard Alley!  It should be fun if we can pull it off.  lol.

Here are some pics of the old Hard Alley areas that are gone...

Hospital

Frat House

Boiler Room

Parking Garage

Beach

Porn Studio

Motel

Alleyway

Jail

Reform School

Reform School Gym

Biker Bar

Alleyway

While We Wait...

While we are all waiting for the new Hard Alley, Spirit, Jadelyn and I thought we would do some "teaser" pics.  Each of them has a meaning and a purpose.  Of course, I'm not going to tell you what that is, otherwise it wouldn't be teasing.

Please enjoy.

Good Things Come...

Yes, the new Hard Alley is being delayed.  The builders are taking great care to create a really awesome place for you to play, and that takes time.

This rebuild is not going to be easy.  We're not taking a bunch of mesh buildings off Marketplace and slapping them down and calling it a rebuild.  The new Hard Alley will be nearly 90% original mesh buildings, created specifically for Hard Alley.

Some of these new buildings are easier than others and take less time.  But the iconic buildings... the Club... Lynden Labs... City Hall... the Burlesque Hall... those are more complex and require more thought and planning and modeling and texturing.

I hope you will bear with us as we progress.  Our builders, Jaimy Hancroft of Death Row Designs and Tito DeVinna of Rule 34, are doing an incredible job and it is obvious from the work they have done that this is a labor of love for them.

I wish I could share more with you.  I wish I could show you what they have accomplished so far, because it's amazing and I can't wait to see it all finished.

I can tease you with one shot... one glimpse at the new Hard Alley.  I hope it makes you go "Wow!" like it did me when I first saw it.

Good things come to those who wait.

The Destruction of Hard Alley

During the War with the Faction, many parts of Hard Alley were burned down or destroyed.  Spirit Eleonara did a series of pictures showcasing the destruction...

First Strike:  City Hall

The Burning of the Brothel

Random Destruction

Jailbreak!

Attack on the Strip Club

The Fall of Lynden Labs 

The end of Hard Alley brings with it many questions... What will happen next?  How will Hard Alley recover?  Is there a future for Hard Alley?

The answers to these questions is coming... soon.

Why Do Things Have to Change?

Big changes are coming to Hard Alley.

But why?

I've been getting that question a lot lately.  That, and things like, "Why do things have to change?  Why can't you just leave things as they are?  What's going to happen to my favorite spot?"

The basic answer is that we have to change or close, and I'd prefer not to close.

Hard Alley just celebrated its 8th Anniversary in July.  What began as something new and different and original in SL is now looking very old and common.  When we started, Hard Alley was the first and only dirty urban RP sex sim.  Now, you can't swing a dead meeroo without hitting one.

The basic answer is that Hard Alley is not exciting anymore and no one comes to play.

So I had a choice.  I could close the sim.  After all, 8 years is something to be proud of, right?  Very few places in SL have lasted that long.  I could close the sim and relax for the first time in 8 years and no longer have the stress of running a sim and trying to keep people entertained.

Or I could change the Alley and try to make it fun and interesting again and give people something they can enjoy.

Honestly... closing was looking like the best option.  After all, rebuilding the sim in all-mesh might make it look as good as some other sims, but it wouldn't change the fact that it would just be one of dozens of dirty urban sex sims.  I was very much less than enthused about that idea.

I had been thinking about ways I could change things to make it fun and different again, but it was just too much effort and would have been too difficult to make it work.

Then Jaimy Hancroft of Death Row Designs had an idea.

Her suggestion was very similar to what I had in mind, but her idea would work.  It wouldn't be as hard to do, and more importantly, she was volunteering to do all the mesh building herself!

I was excited again!  For the first time in years, I was excited about the potential that Hard Alley had to offer.  If we are able to pull this off, it will bring something new and different and fun back to Second Life and offer people a new reason to come enjoy Hard Alley again.

Of course, there are detractors.  The people who don't like change.  The ones who don't want me to change one thing or another.

I'm sorry, but things are changing.  They have to.  It's still going to be Hard Alley, but not like you know it.  Not every thing you love about Hard Alley will survive the change.

I will be brutally honest here.  The people coming around now and telling me not to change haven't come to play in Hard Alley in years.  Maybe if they HAD been here, we wouldn't have to change, but they haven't, and an empty sim doesn't pay the $295 a month in tier that the Linden's extort from me.

The people I am listening to are the ones who have been faithful and stuck with me through thick and thin.  The ones who have really shown their love for Hard Alley even in the bad times.

It will still be Hard Alley... kind of.  Just changed.