Hurricane Carter Speaks Out !!!

Interview Carter and JamesT

JamesT Juno - Owner & creator of SL-Newspaper.com and Carter Giacobini

JamesT Juno : Firstly welcome to our home. You have asked us for this interview can I ask why?

Carter G : Well, there have been some pretty ridiculous rumors and flat out lies by the people that I had the misfortune of doing business with. After the whole mess with Fire Island, I figured I would just give the magazine I had started to the graphics guy and be done with it. But, for a reason unknown to me, the graphics guy (who I thought was also a friend) got just as ugly as the new owners of Fire Island. So, after being crapped on twice, I figured enough was enough. There have been a lot of true friends that have been defending me while I've been silent. So... Now I'm not silent. :-)

JamesT Juno : I think a lot of people have been reading things in blogs and hearing rumours and gossip, it seems that the shit has been hitting the fan. Can you tell us what has happened? and why you have twice been called a 'hurricane'?

Carter G : First, you have to know that there are two legs to this story. There's Fire Island and then there's the magazine. These are two completely seperate transactions with completely seperate parties. That being said, let me start with the sale of Fire Island.

In the earlier part of 2008, I had sold 40% of my 100% ownership of Fire Island Complex to a private investor in order to add an island, pay off debt and have money for marketing. I closed Ir Shalom, renamed it, and moved it over to Fire Island under the name of Cherry Grove. Cherry Grove was parcelled out and sold. The new island (Fire Island Pines) was to be where all of the rental properties were concentrated in order to free up the main island of any remaining rental homes and to expand our rental opportunities.

Cherry Grove took off almost immediately. Homes were being built even before it was moved over to Fire Island. Fire Island Pines, on the other hand, was not doing so well. But, with the added income from Cherry Grove and some initial interest, I decided that the best course of action would be to do some aggressive marketing to help F.I.P. reach it's full capacity. With a large portion of the money I got from the sale of shares, I hired a marketing firm inworld that presented me with a great plan of how they were going to help us reach our goals. They were far more expensive than I had originally wanted to spend for the marketing, but they had RL experience and seemed to have their act together. And, because of the large scope of the marketing plan, they had brought in a contractor to do some of the viral marketing, etc. However, the contractor that they had brought in didn't deliver on anything. My own time constraints had pushed back some of the deliverables that I was responsible for and it all fell apart. This was over the course of about 6 weeks from the date of hire.

Also, shortly after Fire Island Pines was born, the first change to open sims went into effect - drastically changing the real estate and rental markets in SL. I had initially resisted doing a bunch of small private islands because I didn't want Fire Island to turn into an Anshe Chung styled mess of tiny and unconnected islands. But, 3 parties came to me and said that they would be insterested in doing them - one of those parties was Beau and Micha (who later bought Fire Island).

In order to make up for the failed marketing, I had begun doing what had always worked in the past - I started to do some aggressive advertising and drastically increase the amount of DJ's at the dance floor. This pushed my expenditures way over the top, but I figured that it would pay off in the end and I would then be able to start paying out dividends, once again, to the shareholders. Fire Island Pines had started to see a little bit of growth, but it was not moving like I needed it to in order to keep my head above water.

There was another party that had come to me and said that they wanted me to start another island connected with Fire Island. I was hesitant because I was already dealing with a losing proposition with Fire Island, but I had thought that if I just hang in there a little while longer, it will start to pay off. So, me and the new investor had begun brainstorming about what would be a good compliment to Fire Island, yet still have it's own identity. Gatsby Heights was born. I had talked to other people about our ideas for Gatsby and got nothing but fantastic feedback, so I figured it would be a good move. I could use my share of the profits from Gatsby to offset the losses of Fire Island and it would be fine.

Well, Gatsby Heights was an utter disaster. All of the people that had shown interest in Gatsby before it was rezzed had all disappeared. So, now I had two seperate projects losing money hand over fist. And, not wanting to let either of the investors lose all of their money, I had started Venture Magazine in order to, once again, supplement the other losing projects. (It's always been a little ironic that I had started a business magazine in order to supplement my two losing businesses, but we can talk about that later.) But, my experience had always been that initial growth on Fire Island was a little slow, but that it would eventually pick up. So, all I had to do was hang in there. I also talked to the main investor on Fire Island and we decided that selling Fire Island Pines was the best way to go, and we would take another look sometime down the road about buying another island when the real estate market in SL started to even out a bit. So, I had sold Fire Island Pines to someone, so that albatross was off of Fire Island's neck.

Venture was an immediate success. I had more advertising than I had ever thought I would get out of the gate and it seemed like I had really struck a cord with the business community in SL. Things were starting to look okay. I was finally starting to be able to breathe a little bit. And, with the events for the magazine taking place on Gatsby and Fire Island, I was generating interest in them, as well. I really thought that I had turned the corner.

Then, my computer took a dive and I had no way of continuing things with ANYTHING. My personal savings had depleted and I was unable to buy another one. So, that's when I knew I finally had to let go. My boyfriend (at the time) let Beau and Micha know that I was interested in selling my shares of Fire Island. We (the investors, B&M and myself) had all worked out a deal to allow B&M to have full ownership of Fire Island Complex. Part of the deal was that I was going to keep my parcel on Fire Island and I was going to let them keep all of the builds and landscaping on the islands.

B&M paid me the money for my shares, I got a new computer and it was all good to go. They had talked one of my estate managers into not only clearing out the ban list, but also sending out invitations to people on the ban list to come back to Fire Island. Well, when they cleared out the ban list for Fire Island, they also cleared out the ban list for Gatsby, as well. So, I had contacted Micha and expressed my unhappiness with the situation. Things got heated, and the next thing I know, I'm booted from the Fire Island group and banned from Fire Island. So, I went there under an alt and saw that Micha had taken back my parcel. A little while later, Beau had paid me what he though was appropriate for my parcel.

If you're going to go back on a deal midstream, you have to count on the fact that the other party is going to go back on their end of the deal, as well. So, since my alt had mod rights on my things, I decided that I would take back some stuff from the islands. It's that simple.

JamesT Juno :We need to point out that we are not doing this interview about FACTS but about YOUR point of view, others of course will have their own opinions and will, or have already, shared them. Is it true that you gave the magazine 'Venture' away to others? Can you elaborate on this?

Carter G : Since I was growing more and more disgusted by the constant barrage of IM's regarding Fire Island, I had decided that I would just develop a new avie and call it quits. It honestly wasn't worth all of the negativity and SL had ceased being fun for me. So, I talked to the investor of Gatsby and told this person that I would start to repay the initial investment overtime as soon as my finances permitted. This was ok w/ them and so I stopped logging on as Carter. Solan (who was the graphic designer of the magazine) had asked (my assistant) Dar to ask me if he could take over the magazine. Why he didn't contact me directly via email is beyond me, but that's fine. So, I told Dar to tell Solan that it was fine. He had put a lot of time into arranging the pages of the magazine and (at the time) he was a friend, so I gave him the magazine for free.

During my absence, I had begun getting emails that Solan had begun bad mouthing me. Now, to be perfectly honest, I have absolutely no idea why this was happening. Solan and I had never even had a harsh word with each other. The only thing that I could figure out was that he needed the drama as free publicity. And, since I was retiring Carter, it didn't matter that much to me. Of course, it hurt - but, whatever. He's just a kid and that's the way kids will act sometimes.

I let Gatsby fall into arrears and "Carter Giacobini" got suspended. So, I wasn't able to log on and pass the group over to him. But, once Gatsby sold, it re-enabled "Carter" and with that, all of the rights that I had before - including ownership of the Venture Magazine group.

The night before I came back inworld, I had talked to concierge to make sure that the transfer of Gatsby was done ok and to see if they could just take back the parcel of land that I had on the mainland. The guy that I spoke to signed in as "Carter" and took back the parcel. That's when Solan noticed that I was now owner of the group, again. He had accused Dar of being in some sort of plot with me to "steal back" the magazine. Dar called me up on the phone and was VERY upset. So, when I came back in world the following day, I cleared out the group.

JamesT Juno : There are rumours that the Lindens also had a part to play in this story. Can you tell us of their involvement?

Carter G : The only involvement that I know of is that they had moved Fire Island away from Gatsby so that I couldn't take things back with using my camera view from Gatsby. I've never gotten an email or a request to answer any questions to the Lindens.

JamesT Juno : Its been said that you have been stealing money from people and have deliberately tried to push 'Venture' off a cliff, how do you respond to that accusation?

Carter G : I wish that I was making money to steal. During the last months of me being inworld, I was losing money hand over fist. It wasn't my intention to sabotage Venture. In fact, I gave the magazine to Solan so that it would keep going because I did believe that it was a worthwhile magazine. It's now nothing more than another gossip rag, but when I started it, it was a great business tool for people.

JamesT Juno : I can remember the day when you came to us with your ideas about a new business magazine full of enthusiasm, all guns blazing, what made you pull away from your brain child?

Carter G : I was just fed up with all of the negativity and the stress. SL had ceased being enjoyable for me. I dreaded turning on my computer and logging in because I knew it was just going to be one shit storm after another.

JamesT Juno : Why did you eject everyone from the group after you had already given up all rights to 'Venture'? Surely it no longer mattered what anyone else did with it if you were leaving anyway?

Carter G : The reason I ejected everyone was because Solan had not only hurt me, but also hurt Dar. Also, in all of the blogs that I read since he took over, he made himself out to be the queen of the universe. So, I figured if Venture was all his doing, he could start his own group with his own connections. All of the shit came from solan.

JamesT Juno : Rumours are rife that your finances are a mess and you have increasing debts and no accurate financial records. Would you like to address these rumours?

Carter G : Well, I did have accurate financial records. And, I did have increasing debts. The only problem was that there were no profits to report.

JamesT Juno : Is there anything you would like to add? or is there anything we did not ask, that you would like people to know?

Carter G : Well, I think that there in one thing I would like to say. That is that I am not the evil person that the sleazy rumor mongers have made me out to be.

JamesT Juno : Thank you for your answers. Again I would point out to readers this is one persons point of view and everyone has a right to their own.

Carter G : Yes yes! And, there are always two sides to every piece of gossip you hear. :-)

Remark by JamesT Juno : Comments are turned on in this newspaper article so feel free to comment, BUT if you start shouting or swearing or using "not-nice-language" I will delete your comment.