Hangars Liquides, a cyberpunk city created in Second Life by an elusive 3D artist known only to the SL community at large by her avatar name, “Djehan Kidd”, is among the virtual world’s greatest works -- shadowy, moody, awesome.

Unveiled into the metaverse in June 2007, it has surely attracted hundreds of thousands if not millions of visits over its 12 year history. As its reputation spread through the virtual world, numerous cyberpunk roleplay groups flocked to it, adopted it as their oven, turning it into their staging ground for ongoing stories they created on the fly. Over the years, they have uploaded thousands and thousands of HL screenshots and videos, documenting their adventures (many of them inevitably Adult-rated). They even started renting apartments from Djehan Kidd, so that they could have a permanent (albeit virtual) home address in Hangars Liquides.

During that time, as this reputation grew, the outside world took notice: It was featured by the UK Guardian in 2014 (see above); cyberpunk godfather William Gibson mentioned it on his Twitter feed; Oprah Winfrey herself once posed in front of a giant poster depicting the city.

At the end of this month, however, Hangars Liquides is destined to be deleted from Second Life, at least as it exists in its current form -- so click here to visit it in Second Life while you still can.

As with countless other beloved sims that have left Second Life, Hangars’ fate was sealed by Linden Lab policies, chief among them the high cost of monthly tier. And that is even though Hangars is owned by a non-profit French media organization of the same name, and qualifies for Linden Lab’s nonprofit discount.

“As a cultural nonprofit organization,” Djehan explains, “Second Life has become unsustainable for me. Several months ago, I was told that the new Terms of Service for nonprofits did not permit us to offer rentals anymore; as a result, the city couldn't pay for itself any more.”

As Hangars became unsustainable, the real person behind Djehan Kidd (at right) was increasingly swamped by the demands of a project based in another floating, magical city -- but more on that down the way.

Linden Lab has been in contact with Djehan in recent months, and there’s talk about the company making an exception to the “no rentals” rule, since that’s how she subsidizes HL’s operation. There’s also discussion of Linden Lab itself taking over Hangars, to preserve it -- but that may only consign the city to becoming a ghost of its former self. (When the Lindens acquired Svarga, a fully operational ecosystem, some of its scripting went awry, breaking its simulated cycle of life that made it an early masterpiece of SL.)

In any case, Linden Lab has not announced anything to Djehan Kidd as of yesterday, and so the city as it stands has only a few weeks more to remain.

“So I am going to have to send a ticket asking to close everything down on July 31st,” Djehan explains, “and tell [the Linden rep] who submits the regions for preservation to tell me if they preserve Hangars Liquides or not, so I can move on.”

But again, even if the Lindens intercede at the very last moment, Hangars will likely no longer exist now as it has since 2007. But before it went away, Djehan Kidd told me the story of the city, how it came to be, its thriving culture over the last 12 years -- and the surprise opportunity that came from it.