Spotlight on Ted McKenna, Owner of Carnel Oasis- Mackenzie Abbot Reporting… ~ The SL Enquirer

On first impression, you would see a quiet, unassuming resident dancing his heart out in a local nightspot. But Ted McKenna has, after 6 years of playing, been there, done that and bought the shirt.

We meet in his club, Carnal Oasis, after a well-attended 2 hour DJ event on one of Dream Walker Isle's beaches. He offers me a drink and we start talking about his early days in a club on Kokomo. The story starts with him being brought in as a Security Manager but losing the job not long after when the entire sim disappeared.

So what happened and why did everything disappear?

It was a private sim. In those days, copy-bots hit Second Life real hard and the sim owner did not want to be responsible for any vendors losing any of their items, so he shut the sim down to any vendors and shortly after that he closed the sim. A number of merchant sims had major issues during that time until safeguards were put in place to control the copy-bots and still, to this day, they are a factor.

Interview with Ted McKenna

Mackenzie Abbot: So what did you do after Kokomo?

Ted: "I started work at Teaser's Strip club which, by the way, was here on Dream Walker Isle. I knew the owner so they brought me in as security for the club, then security manager to where I started dancing. About 3 months later after I had worked at teasers for a while, the owners at that time had some issues with running a club so they closed it. A lot of drama happened in that time frame so I moved on to another club, Phoenix night club. I was brought in as security manager there and the night it opened… it closed."

McKenna laughed at this point and I asked him if that was his epiphany moment.

Ted: "I decided then 'Hey, I know I can do this better', I had seen how not to do it so I can only go up from there. At that point I had a building design studio and a guy contacted me wanting me to design and build a club for him he would pay me 63K for it to include custom scripts. I contacted a good scripter friend of mine and we took the job. We built the club in 30 days, got paid and a week later, he made us co owners of the club and that is where I got my feet wet running clubs. I’ve been doing it ever since."

Mackenzie Abbot: Anyone who has ever tried to run a business knows, it's not an instant money maker and can take a long time to establish a client base. Was it tough in those early days?

Ted: "The first club had 6 owners and we all chipped in. We had a half sim for the club but it was rough. 'Too many cooks spoil the stew' was the kind of scenario, with too many conflicting Ideas, so it was not the best situation. After about 4 months, we scaled back the owners to 4; me, my partner and the two original co-owners and things smoothed out at that point.”

Mackenzie Abbot: So how does someone make the transition from a 4 owner club to the Carnal Oasis? How many owners are there here?

Ted: "Well, what happen was, we moved the previous club from the half sim to Dream Walker Island, where it exists on a quarter of a sim. It ran good for some time, then the other owners that had the banker for the club kept saying they could not make tier (fees) so my partner and I were picking it up. They were on the other quarter of the sim they decided one day to rip the club up and move it without telling me or talking to me. I came in as they were pulling up the club, so I gave them 30 minutes to be off the sim or I was going to personally throw them off. They pulled the club up in 20 minutes and my staff contacted me to tell me they would support me and came in and helped me to put down another club. Within two hours, we had a full functioning club on the sim ready to go for our first event as Carnal Oasis at 7pm that same evening. Kaylee and Talos were our DJ's and they stuck with me along with Lena (who is now a senior manager at Carnal Oasis) and Stormy. So we were up and running that same day. We've had a lot of twist and turns over the years, but we are better for it and I thank the previous owners for giving me the drive to keep on going"

As you look around the Oasis, you can see a lot of love has been put into it. In the club itself, there is a large stage beset with a DJ system and tip-jars of all shapes and sizes. But for a club on an adult sim, and with a name like Carnal Oasis, there isn't a great deal of sexual content here. I ask McKenna if that was intentional or down to the many changes he's seen in Second Life.

Ted: "No, we have no sex going on here at all and it is a rule that people respect. We have never had escorts and we don't allow freelance escorting. We're a strip club, a dance club, classy not trashy. We want everyone to have a good time and we show respect to all that come in. We want to provide a club that Mr. Jacobs can bring his wife into and not be slammed with sexual IM's or content but can come in, dance with his wife and enjoy the club as a strip club, but with that extra twist of class. We like to consider Carnal Oasis as Second Life's answer to 'Cheers' where everyone knows your name and you feel at home"

Mackenzie Abbot: So what next for Carnal Oasis? After the quite monumental struggle to get it to the stage it's at now, how do you see the future?

Ted: "Well, really, the future is open. I will not leave anything out of the master plan. We are a one of a kind club and we are not huge in size, but that is by design. I have kept all my clubs this size because it looks busy with 10 people and rocking with 20 people where as a large club would look empty with 10 and busy with 20. As for the future, I have opened up a greed no greed gaming area which we are working on starting up. We have a Ballroom on the sim with events every Saturday and Sunday. I would like to say one thing. All of our staff; our dancers, hosts and DJ's, are the best in Second Life and very professional at what they do. Anything I do in the future will include them. Carnal Oasis would not be where it is today without them”.

As I was leaving, I couldn't help feeling that here was a man who had been through a lot and was now comfortable with his present situation. There are very few people in power who speak so highly of everyone but themselves. Yet here was just such a man.

Maybe real life could learn a thing or two from Ted McKenna.