To an extent i agree and my first couple of visits did not leave me with a good impression, on my third however the hostess was mama norfolk from the 'old days' the atmosphere changed almost immediately and I wish her all the luck in the world especially with some of the staff there now. good luck!

While it's important to recognise that that DJ Mama is doing her best, and a good job at that, she can only do what she can. I think the important thing here is that it's another display of why trying to recreate the atmosphere of a particular time and place is always impossible, and that as a wise man once said "You can't go home again". When the reason behind recreating such a thing, as I'm under the impression was the reasoning with the pit's new owner, is to cash in on existing popularity, rather than a love for the source, you will always get a pale imitation.

Hey! Lava Pit is the greatest Club in SL! They have very good Musik and they are very nice! So i like the Club and you should come here and visit it! All the Contests are very good and we have many visitors!
The text about the Lava Pit is already a lie!
Belive me!

Well I find this article so untrue it shouldnt of been published, we are doing great things at lava , and yes its true we are not all about the sex. We are about the music and people having a good time , not camping to fill empty spaces Like the old pit . We have live music with wonderful performers daily and great djs that play awesome music , daily events , We are proud of this club and sorry some of the old ppl that cant move on cant seem to get over it . But Lava is a great place filled with great staff and happy members come check it out sometime during one of our concerts or events .

Hmm not really sure what to say. IMO the article is well wrote. I do believe that the pit should have stayed buried. It was fun while it lasted but it is the endof that era and has been. Most have gotten on with life in sl. Sad to see some are not so willing to let go. The pit will never be what it once was. Trinity is right it is a shell, barren around it naked without the volcano. Why rebuild something less than what it originally was. Can't take the pit from its glory as was remembered, strip it into a shell and expect people to flock. I for one am saddened by what it has become. The place wasn't just a club it was a community. Something that will never be again. Everyone moves on and continues on. Stop clinging to it. There is much better things to do in sl than try and live in a memory.

Unfortunately you feel this way. I have one remark for you. Instead of breaking Durell down you better come with some suggestions to make the lava pit the way it was.
My opinion about the lava pit now is that the club is a nice place to be. The DJ's and the hosts do their best to entertain you.

All I can say is that when I am there whether there is live music or a DJ, the place is rockin. Just like venues in RL, they are not 24/7 and depending on when you visit you might have mixed responses however when I am there I am treated like a king!

Reading the review only reminds me the reason the lave pit fell the first time i was there and some of best moments were the community but most of all was the music and mama taking dj responbilty if anyone can make lava better then the first time is new owners and new members and new direction is going might not be the same lava pit its much better with live music such as kevin and cole marie luvs there music and live events and there concerts..

what could i say .the new owner do his best too make a nice place of it so give the man a fair change,
and thats the same for mama aswel, i know she is doing her damn best .
of cource it is not the old lava and it will never be the same , but what durrell and mama have create was a damn good job

In my opinion Trinity refuses the reopened Lava Pit Point-blank as a matter of principle 'cause there are some differences.
Great people come to the reopened Pit day by day and you can really see that they have much fun with dancing, chatting and the music (by DJs and live concerts).
Everyone who enters the club is welcome and Lavas' partypeople and staff always show that.

The Pit has always great events and contests and the staff invests time, much work and money to have fun by seeing that the guests have fun!!!

When i arrived in SL the Lava Pit was the first club i enter, then it was closed soon, to soon.
Now i´am proud to be a dancer in the new Lava Pit. Yes in the NEW Lava Pit. The world and SL is changing. Somthing is in the club better, somthing must changed to fasten to the old club. The old Lava Pit wasn´t perfect from the first day, why should it be different by the new club.
We have old stuff Mama, Miriam, MJ and some more and new people, and they do all there best.

Criticism is okay, when there are ideas how it could be changed, so where the ideas?

It's not a fair to compare the successfull old Lava Pit to this new initiative. Success depends for a great part on timing in this business and they are still gaining momentum and expanding their group of regular visitors and performers. I believe it has a great chance of performing at the level you describe in your article, and perhaps even top it. Times are achanging and SL is progressing, slowly. The new Lava Pit will evolve into the new era Rock Palace. I enjoy being there and i never really noticed the sex related items you mention. The dancers are very stylish and subtle in their teaser chat-lines.
I can only recommend visiting them, it's a wonderfull club.

What's important to remember here is that this is my opinion, in a freedom of speech way. By its very nature it's controversial. I personally attack no-one, and compare old for new nothing more. As far as the new Lava Pit is concerned it is different, it always will be, I am sure in it's own way will be a success. However in a like for like world I found it disappointing. I, unlike many previous replies, have the experience of both Lava Pits.

Well written trinity, The Lava Pit should have stayed buried, and remembered for how awesome it was. We visited the new lava pit a few times, which resulted in it being removed from our groups list. We were so disappointed by it, and mostly by how rude the staff were. And I too was there when mama N was there..

I must say i agree with several of the above, why recreate a place that was so great?
I think i just made a point why.

Should we expect it to be like the old days?
No, The Lava Pit was about the people who made it what it was.
I visited the new lava pit and like most of my fellow old pitties i was disapointed, not because of it being less classy or even the tacky decorations, but by the plain fact that i didn't bump into my old friends.
Like me, most of the old pitties have grown and developed themselfs further into their second life and don't seem to be bothered enough to be in a club comunity anymore.
The Lava Pit was like a place of birth to most of us old pitties and it seems only human to think that such a place should stay in our memories like the place it was.
Trin pointed it out herself, like her i walked into The Lava Pit as a newbie and stayed eversince, i even stayed on kiva for as long as it existed.
It's all about roots, and looking at the reactions from new lava pit visitors, i would think they are just as passioned about the place as we were about the old one.

No it's not the same, it never will be, but do we realy want it to be the same?
Imagine a truly exact copy, that doesn't include your old friends and the vibe that it used to give.

No, i think this artical only proves the right for the new lava pit to exist.
Therefor i think it's a very good written artical that points out the things that make people tick in second life: roots and wanting to be connected to all of it involved.

The new lava pit will grow and it's members with it, just like we did with the original one!!

on that bombshell i will leave you with much luck and lot's of fun for the new owners.

Speric Lane

p.s. if anyone feels attacked by this artical, get a life.
(preferably a real one)

I've kept quiet about this so far, but it's been eating away at me for a while, so I think it's time I broke my silence for some catharsis.

In late August, I received a message from Lord Leafblower saying that he’d been asked if he would rebuild the Lava Pit for a new owner. However due to other commitments he did not have the time available to do so himself, and he asked if I would consider doing the work in his stead. I was flattered that he considered me up to the task of recreating something he had put so much time and effort into originally, and had many fond memories of my time spent at the Pit. I doubted I could do it justice, but with his and other peoples’ assurances that I was up to the task, I pushed all doubts to the back of my mind and took it on.

While Lord generously provided many original items, such as the dance machine, art work etc. the building itself was lost. So I collated every picture I could find of the original Pit, taken from every conceivable angle and over a couple of weeks studied and analysed every detail, rebuilding it prim for prim down to exact dimensions, texture repeats and offsets. However, while I did this, those doubts returned and grew. I came to realise my ability was not the problem, I had created a replica that even Lord referred to as “Spooky”. This is not a boast about my building work, but I wanted it to be right, perfect in every detail, virtually indistinguishable from the original. The problem was I had let my nostalgia cloud my vision; while I can only speak for myself and not for Lord, I now believe we had both made a huge error in judgement. The Pit was special to a great many people, and suddenly I felt like I was defiling its memory by trying to bring it back from the dead.

However, I had given my word I would deliver, and I don’t go back on my word once given. So again I pushed away the doubts, and informed the new owner that the club was ready, He then informed me that he was now opening another club first and wouldn’t be able to take delivery. So I continued to stew for a while about whether I should be doing this at all. Eventually I received the go ahead to deliver, so, good to my word I did. I couldn’t rebuild the whole of Kiva, but I placed the replica on it’s new home parcel and carefully landscaped a volcano around it, true to the original. I won’t go into the details of what happened next, but after much bending over backwards, I did everything I could to make the new owner happy and walked away.

Shortly after, the volcano disappeared, apparently because “the neighbours would complain”. Yet, this leaves the naked shell of the building hovering in space in a gravity defying fashion, like some proud bird of prey stripped of its feathers. The building is ugly, even without the later additions, and I can say that freely as I (and originally Lord) assembled it, never intending it to be on show as it is now. The green landscaped sides of the volcano formed a far more attractive backdrop to the immediate neighbours’ homes. Their opinions of what is there now are quite clear for anyone to see from their efforts to hide it.

I have been back several times since, though other than the opening night, I have been unable to bring myself to enter, it frankly upsets me too much to see what has become of it. I am all in favour of evolution, one of the main principles of the original was that it never stood still; I was forever coming in to find that big changes had been made overnight. But this is not evolution. In rebuilding I simply created a snapshot of what was, which could only sit there as a museum piece. The singular vision, management ethos, and design aesthetic that formed the REAL essence of the Lava Pit have moved on, along with the people that created it and worked there. The fact people loved it so much that, in the fast moving world of SL, six months after its closure people even remember it, let alone want to reuse its reputation, is flattering and testament to what was achieved there. But this is not the Lava Pit.

I love Mama, Koru, MasterJ, who I am told are now working there, I am proud to still count them as old friends and I wish them well. I was at least relieved to see names I recognised, I am sure visitors will always receive a warm welcome while they are there. But please, create something new by all means, but move on and don’t use the name and reputation of the Pit. I admit my mistake in trying to resurrect the dead, I can only urge you to do the same.

I will reserve judgement until durell is finished - he has a lot to do and is still building, so cannot be judged on 'the pits' surroundings. I have heard all the comments and can understand most peoples feelings on this, it will never be the pit - the pit we remember was more about the people than the building as speric has said. I don't see any reason not to give new players the chance to experience some of what we had in those days when we were new to SL, also give them the music which Mama N is concentrating on and allow 'the pit' to grow. I think the new PIT has a lot of potential to bring a lot of happiness to new players - to the older players who don't like what it has become, well, you are entitled to your opinions, some I agree with some I do not, why not allow Durell and Mama to at least finish before judging, we all know how hard finding GOOD staff is!

all i can say is dont judge me, and ye i know i hurt aimees feelings.

It's important to see here that this article of course is not a review of the New Pit, but rather a comparison to the old. For those who were there in the past, the new pit is in many many ways a shadow of it's former self. That's not to say that it doesn't have it's good points, and getting, for my money, SL's best DJ involved in the running of it was a master stroke. However, the biggest question for my mind is WHY bring it back at all. It will never be the old pit, for the MANY reasons above that I won't say again. And all the fantastic things like the people there, the music, the atmosphere, and the dancers and sex (if you like that kinda thing) would no doubt be just as good if some creativity had been used, rather than digging up the corpse of a much loved time and place, and trying to give it a makeover and inviting people to come make friends with it. Why invite comparison with the old pit by using it's name and rep. Why not let this new club stand on it's own, and become the club it is destined to be in it's own right?