June is traditionally the month when LGBTQ* Pride festivals happen in cities around the world, but of course, most such festivities have been cancelled because of the ongoing public health emergency that is the coronavirus pandemic.
Luckily, Second Pride, Second Life’s biggest Pride party, starts tomorrow, June 5th, and runs until June 14th, 2020! This year’s theme is Together, and there’s never been a better time for queer people and their allies to come together to celebrate in virtual worlds, when meeting up in the real world is difficult or impossible!
Many Second Life stores are giving away group gifts to celebrate Pride month. For example, if you join the Luas group for L$50, among the many free group gifts you can pick up in the Luas store is this new, versatile Claim minidress, which comes with a HUD to allow you to tint the top and bottom parts of the dress to any of six different colours, as well as choose one of six different stickers for the front (including a pair of rainbow lips for Pride). You can also choose to go logo-free if you wish!
As you can imagine, this is the time of year to pick up rainbow-coloured freebies! The rainbow flag was popularized as a symbol of the gay community by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker in 1978. The different colours are often associated with diversity in the gay community, but actually have literal meanings as follows (source):
- life (red),
- healing (orange),
- sunlight (yellow),
- nature (green),
- harmony/peace (blue),
- and spirit (purple).
The store group for EQUAL is free to join for a limited time, and among the many free group gifts are these wonderful, rainbow Jensen sneakers, which come in sizes to fit Maitreya Lara, Belleza (male and female), Slink (male and female), Signature (male and female), Legacy (male and female), EXMACHINA, and Aesthetic mesh body feet, as well as an unrigged pair which you can probably adjust to fit many other avatars:
Fancy Decor has a trio of free, lovely decor items for your Second Life home. Head on down to The Arcade gacha event, and just inside the entrance to the arcade to the left (SLURL), the Fancy Decor gacha machine has a free gift of two different Pride coffee mugs. Unfortunately, they don’t come with a hold/drink animation, but they will still look fabulous in your virtual kitchen!
And, in one of the small white tents that circle the central stage on the Second Pride sim, Fancy Decor has another gift: a beautifully-decorated Pride cake on a platter! (Here’s the exact SLURL so you don’t go hunting all over the place.)
There are a few of the other freebies you can find at the stores at the Second Pride festival. Here’s a fun, spilled-paint rainbow shirt, courtesy of the Saint Elizabeth Catholic role-play university for women (who knew that such a thing even existed?), which comes in both men’s and women’s versions (here’s the SLURL of their tent):
The gift from Lucky Lola’s tent is this festive set of helium balloons (SLURL):
At both their tent (SLURL) and their store (SLURL) on the Second Pride sim, the Gay List is giving away oodles of free stuff from the Regimade Factory Store: animations, dance fans, particle effects and attachments, and a box which, when unpacked, gives you several hundred different dance effects to experiment with! Here’s a shot of one pair of dance fans, and one of the dance animations in the boxes:
RIOT’s free gift is a Pride flag you wear as a cape! It comes with a HUD to change the design to one of six different textures, in sizes to fit both men and women:
See you at Second Pride! Here’s a complete schedule of performers and events.
UPDATE June 11th, 2020: Cat Pink has just released another one of her videos, giving an overview of other Second Life stores that are offering Pride-themed group gifts:
*which, of course, stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer…and the asterisk at the end of the acronym is meant to cover everybody else who feels that the previous categories don’t include them. We queer folk are nothing if not inclusive!
