In January of 2007 I had just discovered Second Life. Spent my time exploring, sometimes randomly, sometimes by searching out key words I was interested in, and mostly marveling at how clever people are.
One of the things I regularly searched for was "Firefly" and "Serenity". I'd visit all the places that came up on searches for those words, hoping to find some hangout or community of fans, maybe a role-play area.
Unfortunately (or fortunately as it might be) every place I'd visit, day after day, was always empty. Some were small parcels made as little fan devotions, some were entire towns, like Washtown, but there was never anyone at any of these places, no matter what time of day it was I'd visit.
When my wife Jen joined me in SL we'd both look around for Firefly or Serenity places to hang out at. Never could find anything really. And the few times we did run into someone at, say, Washtown, we weren't really a part of the "in crowd", we were just newbies and all.
So with about a month of SL experience, we decided we'd just start up our own Firefly bar! A place for fans of the show or just anyone who wanted to, to hang out and enjoy music, dance, flirt. We'd build it ourselves, on a commercial rental sim.
We were probably crazy. I mean, one month old newbies who are going to build and then run a club business when we didn't know anything? Not even the difference between "mainland" and "private islands"?
Well, we built the place and started it up, with a regular schedule so that patrons would know for sure when someone would be there. Wednesday nights, Friday nights, Saturday nights, and Sunday nights.
Jen focused on building stuff, I focused a bit more on texturing, decorations, figuring out how to make dance poseballs work (yes, this was way back when). Jen and I spent so much time building, shopping for stuff, hiring people to script and build what we couldn't figure out how to do ourselves. It was great fun and a great challenge for both of us.
From that first effort on the Sterling Heights sim in February of 2007, then to our friend Ariel's sim "This Land", then expanding to a full sim on the "Blackburne" sim, onward to the Sailor sim where we downsized our hours and how much time the place was using up, then to the last days on the "The Verse" sim in 2013 we had a lot of fun, built up a pretty good community of patrons, seen our traffic go up, down, up, down again, worked our way through slow times and enjoyed the busy times.
Jen and I met so many friends, people who left imprints on our lives, mostly positive, only occasionally negative, and enjoyed owning and running Firefly's for the last six years.
Now, on the occasion of our sixth anniversary (which is like, forever in SL years), it's time to draw the curtain, take a last bow, and exit the stage.
Jen and I both want to thank all of the wonderful people we've met over the years through Firefly's. If I start mentioning names I'll be here all night so I'll just leave it at that. We appreciate the support we got from so many people, patrons who donated to keep us in business, others who helped run the bar or DJ'd or bartended or danced on stage to entertain the crowd.
It's not easy, making the decision to call it a day on a place that's been a part of your life for six years. But everything comes to an end, and it's time for Firefly's to move on.
In February of 2007 when Jen and I had our first Friday night open, with no one there in the bar but she and I for most of the night, we never would have imagined what the next six years would be like, how great so many people we met would be.
Thank you all, from the bottom of our hearts.
Rick and Jen Aucoin, January, 2013
