I saw it all in my searches: suspiciously reasonable for an old region but oddly shaped and beside adfarms and/or glowing particles, suspiciously priced but surrounded by banlines, reasonably priced but on a ledge (which means you need to spend prims making a platform and a means to prevent visitors from falling off), and one place where it would be perfect once the sale signs were returned to the seller but the vibes were "funny."
After checking hundreds of sale plots, I found myself coming back to four:
1 - One in the snow but it lagged. There were ad towers and sale signs but the purplish glow of the snow at night just seemed nice to me. Except how could I sell pools there?
2 - A hill overlooking a marina. It seemed half the sim was for sale for cheap in 1024 plots. I had a good feeling about the place from a vantage point southeast of the harbor. This was in Corsica somewhere.
3 - A perfect 2048 plot only a few parcels from a shore, the land would be sand if lowered just a touch. It wasn't terribly priced for what it was - 10kL - but it was on Gaeta, which I found to be a laggy and unstable continent after my time there previously.
4 - A place in Heterocera not too far from Flo and at the northern border of a region owned by a Jewish group which focused on culture and the arts. It has that gravel-vegetation mix for terrain, and the available land bordered the SLRR. The other side had Adfarms, but the side of the resident and Jewish sim beyond were still pristine. I referred to this as the "Jewish Neighborhood," as its only resident in that nook also had Jewish cultural references in her profile. She also had spiritual and healing refs, and her place was a welcome locale for people to enjoy themselves. I liked the Michigan J Frog she had dancing around the steps. This wasn't a pretty place but it had good vibes.
I had to wait for payday. When it came, the marina choice was obscured by some clueless lout who bought the land on the hill just in front of my target areas. They made an ugly build on a platform and backed it with a huge opaque prim. Asshole didn't think to make the back of it transparent. Looking at their profile, it was pretty laughable. It wasn't just someone into fetishism, but someone who didn't know anything else existed. "This is so and so my sister. We have so much fun together and she's always there for me - AND SHE BEATS ME!" lol mustn't forget that part or you'll leave a paragraph about getting beaten out of your profile. Well, someone should beat some aesthetic sense into her head between her cat ears. Did I forget to mention she likes to get beaten every three frames? Sorry, Japanimation joke...
since then row houses replace the back wallI really couldnt bring myself to take the snow one. If I had lots of money I could have done something totally different with it than a pool shop, but eh no thanks. And something else settled nearby with huge laggy glowing particles; no chance for aesthetics in such a place.
This left the Gaeta sand and Jewish neighborhood. The Gaeta sand one had "Make an offer" on it so I IMed the sales person whether they'd be game to go down to 9k. I thought I'd wait another day since both of these went unnoticed before I showed up, and I had seen them untouched for about 8 days already.
RL intervened. The next morning I got a call to accompany Dad to take Mom to ER. She's fine now, but at the time we had to wait 6 hours to get her in and we would finally have lunch and he'd drive me home. When I got home both places were bought and a belated message from the salesperson of the Gaeta one was "well it's bought already." Well what's the fucking point of putting that? To mess with people? If it just had the price I might have taken it. The poor Jewish Neighborhood... while I was in ER someone snapped up the land and it now has this eyesore behemoth of an office building (I guess it's going to be a mall?) which offers no harmony with its surroundings.
But hey, things happen for a reason. Labor Day was the next day, and I spent the morning searching anew, shaking my head on some repeats, but - what's this? - a pristine region in Nautilus, all sand and most of it shoreline or islets. I met someone in the sim just west of it, who was also new and setting up a little tiki style shop. I would already have her and her SL husband for acquaintances. Suffice it to say I took one of the elevated 2048 parcels in Angler which were priced lower (hey I dont need a beach - I am selling POOLS, right?) one 2048 east of the sim border but right on the border of Seahorse region to my north. I over looked the rows of islands with their piers and torches.
My artistic instincts took over. I could not bring myself to make it tiki. I had California Surf in my head. That was what the vibes gave me. Beach Party and 60s music. The start of it is wood and tropical deco, which had further inspired me to make a line of shirts sold in posters. Suffice it to say more pools are forthcoming, but for now I am working to complete the last of the series of posters/tees and enjoying a renaissance of creativity.
