Tansan island life - Tansan 2.5

[dizzy bone]

Hello!! I’m back with a full makeover for Tansan… Tansan 2.0! I have a whole backlog of posts I want to make and a lot happened since then, so why not kick start page 2 of my island journal with photos from my island makeover?

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Tansan 2.0 went from a no-themed island to a rural, weedy beach town. Despite dirt paths taking over 90% of my island, I tried to keep it as colourful and lively as possible! You can see just how much my map changed since my last October update in my Map Progression post. Many of Tansan's small businesses from the last version have remained but have either moved locations or have been upgraded. Below are some previews of areas in Tansan 2.0!




Residential Block E-4

Residential Block E-6

Tansan Mungu (탄산 문방구)

Airbnb (Gnome clubhouse)

Tansan's dream address: DA-0488-2098-9558.

Check back later for entries about my remodelling process and more location highlights! I'm also planning on doing a map redraw since I'm probably keeping this version of Tansan for quite awhile! ACNH terraforming burn out is real.​

 

[dizzy bone]

Continuing Old Traditions: Annual Zombie Run 2020

I should have posted this for Halloween but I totally forgot. Better late than never! Back in New Leaf I used to use my much loved amiibo camera to stage silly family photos for my town Tinytree during our annual zombie run. I wanted to continue the tradition in New Horizons, but unfortunately there's no "running in place" reaction Still, I wanted to take a group picture of my New Horizons family the moment before the zombie run kicks off. This time, instead of participating in the zombie run, Freya and I are the unfortunate duo to be infected. Maybe for the next zombie run I will make a classic poorly edited photoshop version as well!

I think it will take a while for my islanders to warm up to this tradition. ​

Here are two of my past zombie run photos!

Pudge will be happy to know he'll never have to do another one of these again.​

 

[dizzy bone]

Freya's Birthday!

I'm a bit late posting about it, but a few days ago it was auntie Freya's birthday! Freya is our respectable neighbourhood florist and she runs the laundromat here in Tansan. She is the oldest resident, although no one knows her exact age... or really anything about her. In fact, no one knows why she decided to follow me back to my deserted island after that fateful island tour in March, although we all suspect that it was due to a midlife crisis after a messy divorce. But I'm thankful she did! Because our laundry would never get done without her!

Happy Birthday Freya I still love you even though you are unbearably pink.


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Here's me wishing Freya a happ birth. She did reciprocate my hug, although it is not pictured.

Continuing our "birthday tradition", I invited @poqu over to party with me in matching outfits. Today's theme: eccentric divorcees who met at a thrift store and bonded over their love for faux fox scarves. Featuring: my other unbearably pink bear Ursala.

Poqu was a little too happy that Ken was Freya's birthday guest. Leave it up to ken to pair a waistcoat with a balloon hat.

I will end this post with this amazing party favour Freya gave @Peter when he came over.
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[dizzy bone]

Wish You Were Here

Tansan 2.5 It's summer time, which means my love for Animal Crossing has been rekindled once again!! A few months ago, not long after finishing Tansan 2.0, I decided to knock down most of what I had just built to make some layout changes so it would be easier to navigate and get from one end of the island to the other. Even flattening a small portion of my island overwhelmed me, and my loss of motivation and inspiration caused me to take another long hiatus from the game. It took some time, but I finally got round to making the changes I originally planned for! After not playing for 4 long months, Tansan opened its gates once again!

My first visitors were my fellow bell tree friends who have suffered through much confusion and disorientation every time they land on what seems like a completely new island I promise I won't change anything too drastically any time soon! Thank you @Peter and @Pyoopi for coming over and giving me some pointers during my remodelling process!!

Once in a blue moon, my best friends IRL and I are able to miraculously coordinate a perfect slot of time to play ACNH together (just like making plans in real life). I haven't seen them for almost 2 years after I moved back home, and meeting up again became impossible due to the pandemic and flight restrictions. Most of them are not regular players by any means, but I'm so grateful that a game like ACNH can make us feel like we're off on one of our travels once again. To be honest, it made me kind of emotional. Maybe one day in the future we will be able to recreate one of the many classic reaction/poses in real life, like shooting sparkles out of our fingers. Anyways, please enjoy this update post of my island's changes with photos courtesy of Tansan's tourism board! Featuring my friends Raki, Kira, and Mogu!

First things first, we head over to the Able Sisters in Tansan’s city centre to buy matching holiday outfits!

Technically it was only noon on the island… but it’s never too early to have a drink right? Tansan Pocha (탄산 포장마차) located in the marketplace has survived every update made to my island. Right next door, the mattress shop has also gotten an upgrade in size.

The size of the mattress shop might have gotten bigger, but the roofs are still quite unstable and rusty from monsoon season. That didn’t stop us from climbing on top and admiring the view! Further north past the marketplace are the stairs that lead up towards Tansan’s nature trail. To either side of the steps is a newly built seafood shack and icecream stall!

This nature trail was essentially moved from the centre of my island to the very back. I love that it now overlooks the ocean. Residents of Tansan will hike up here for a quick work out or to shoot fireworks at night. One of the entrances to the nature trail even has a small work out area, seen above in the picture with me and Peter.

Just below the little mountain is a sitting area with a fountain! We met Cyd who was out on his afternoon walk, but I don’t think he appreciated the drunken tourists.

Close by is another staircase that leads back to the city centre where the museum and town hall is located. This means that the main city, nature trail, and the shops surrounding it can be accessed in one big loop. I initially struggled to find the right place for my museum, as I felt like the building was too awkwardly large to place anywhere without obstructing a view. Turns out the best place for my museum was where I had it in my very first version of Tansan - smack in the middle on the ground floor. I wanted to make the museum building and area look more like a public library or school.

Back up on the second tier I made some major changes to the area behind the residential block E-4. A HUGE lake! I’ve always waited to do one of these builds after seeing it done many times on some of my favourite dream islands and it was my main motivation for landscaping/terraforming again. If no one checks my map before exploring the island, the impact of randomly stumbling upon this lake feels so breathtaking. Sometimes I still shock myself when I walk by it! Off in the distance you can see Tansan’s lighthouse!

Another view of the big lake and lighthouse can be seen from Dizzy’s house. The path then leads down into Tansan’s traditional folk village (“Old Town”) where Ken and Hamphrey live! This connects the more modern/rural part of Tansan to the natural and forested area. Most of my island is covered in dirt paths so I like how green this area looks in comparison to the rest. Initially I wanted to have it less accessible and hidden but it gave me a good excuse to use a back facing incline. Pictured to the right is Hamphrey’s classic noodle shack that has been around in Tansan’s earlier versions as well.

The following areas have not changed since the last version. Large terraforming projects always tempt me into tearing down more areas to redo, but I’m trying my best to resist the urge. However, I also like the idea that some areas actually managed to survive all my impulsive destruction. One example is this view point of my zen bridge and picnic blanket seen from Residential block E-6! You can see the same view point in my first version on the thread’s original post.

Here’s another view from E-6 that has been left unchanged! This rooftop overlooks my orange hyacinth field and the main entrance into the folk village.

Dizzy ventured quite far from his home on block E-4 to visit the local stationary shop, but he can’t seem to escape the boisterous tourists.

A picnic spot by the beach!

Towards the end of our visit we stopped by Freya’s laundromat. The clothes did not dry by the time they had to leave.

Finally, we ended the day back in beach town in the city centre! My friends took their final bathroom break before embarking to their own homes.

After not playing for so long, I had so much fun messing around with my old pals again on my second home. We often complain about how lacking wifi play seems, but I honestly enjoy just running around and making our own fun.

Here’s the final map of Tansan 2.5. My dream address has not been updated to the current version yet, but I plan to do so soon once I add some final touches and details. I'm also going to update this journal a lot more with some wordless entries and photo snaps just to keep more active.

Thanks for reading!​

 

[dizzy bone]

Workin' out

July 5, 2021​

 

[dizzy bone]

Studio Apartments

My studio at Harvey’s currently has two rooms that have been decorated semi permanently as studio apartments! Back when I used to play HHD I would make it a challenge to design one-room spaces that had all the living essentials: kitchen, living room, bathroom, and bed room (mainly inspired by that show Tiny House Nation). Here’s an example of Henry’s tiny house-bus I made in HHD.

Spoiler: "Henry's tiny house-bus"

forever crying over some of these old acnl/hhd items.
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Following this theme I wanted to design 3 studio apartments on the ground floor and keep the basement and second floor as empty rooms for misc. photoshoots, since I don’t do these too often. I’m still working on the last studio apartment room, but here’s the first two! The current designs shared here have also been used as inspiration for rooms in my island rep’s house, which I will post about next.

Studio apartment #1

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Here's the main view as you walk through the door. I wanted to make it feel very cozy and nostalgic, and the mom's stuff worked perfect for it. The room is split in half with the climbing walls and bookcases. My biggest annoyance about room decoration is the fact that there's no real "wall" or divider we can use. It's fine for a simple Harvey's photoshoot but I would not use an actual climbing wall in my island rep's home because rotating would break the illusion. So a lot of the times when I need to split a room I will only use bookshelves, simple panels, jail bars, or partitions.

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The view of the kitchen and bedroom! The bedroom is very simple and to the point. I was going for something that was minimalistic but felt lived in.

I usually don't have space to put an actual dining area in these tiny apartment builds that I do, so any table tops are all multipurpose!

Studio Apartment #2

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And here's the second apartment room! This one is more bright and eclectic. I mimicked the general feel of this room when remodelling my island rep's bedroom. The kitchen was a little too colourful for my liking, but I did have a lot of fun designing it. The two bookshelves put together worked as a perfect wall and space divider. While I could have used one to make the bathroom more spacious, visually I liked that it fit the 1-square size of the cacao tree in front of it perfectly. Sometimes I struggle to decorate with the half size items.

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Here's another view of the kitchen and a work desk!

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Very colourful kitchen.

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Again, another simple bed room. When I redesigned my rep's bedroom, I tried to give it more personality and decorations because I had more space to work with. But more on that later!

Here's the top view of both studio rooms to show the compositions and item distribution. I'm working on one more studio apartment in this series. My next post will be my rep's home redesigns that were inspired by these two builds!

Thanks for reading!

 

[dizzy bone]

House redesign series #1: Living Room & Bedroom

Recently I have been working on redecorating my island rep’s rooms to better suit my rural beach city theme! It took me a long time to finally commit to this project because I knew ordering all the items would be a big pain. I grew quite attached to my first rooms ever since completing them early on in the game and I convinced myself I’d never need to change them. However, the interior didn’t seem to match my rep very well in my newest version. When I had first made them, my rep had luxurious real estate on top of a private mountain. Now she lives behind a gas station by the airport… and a golden themed bathroom didn’t exactly suit her new lifestyle. I realised I hadn’t shared interior photos of any of my houses in this journal, so I’ll be documenting the before & after pictures here!

This post will cover my living room and bedroom. Their redesigns were both inspired by my photopia studio apartments seen in this post.


Before!!! - Summer, 2020

Here’s what my original living room looked like alongside an early version of my house. My exterior theme was blue and white while the living room was red-themed. Maybe it would have made more sense to have a cooler blue-themed room but there were so many red items that I loved. I also planned to have all my other rooms follow a certain colour theme, like my golden bathroom and green bed room. I was really happy with the layout of this room because it didn’t obstruct any paths or doors. I intended my redesign to follow the same composition, just with different items, but I ended up using my photopia layout instead.

My bedroom wasn't as overwhelmingly one solid colour like my living room, but it did have a warm green theme. One side was my bedroom and the other side was a study. I basically used all the dark wood furnitures I could mix and match with and I loved the way it turned out! At one point I also had the golden seat in front of the bamboo partition but I took them out for these photos. I was very attached to this room and layout, especially because the longer floor plans were so hard for me to decorate without it looking too "empty" and I thought that something like this was the perfect solution for it. So for my redesign I decided to stick with the exact same composition!

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After!!!! - Summer, 2021

Here’s a picture of my current house exterior and the interior redesign! Technically the red-themed room could have worked since my exterior has a red door to match my neighbour Cyd, but I thought the old version was too stylish for my current version of Tansan.

Like the photopia studio, I fit a tiny kitchen in the first half of the room. I would have preferred to have the fridge on the left wall like my photopia example, but the door was in the way. It’s always challenging for me to work on the main rooms, even in New Leaf, because of the three doors taking up a lot of potential wall space. The bookshelves as walls don’t really have the same effect as a climbing wall, but like I said in my previous entry, I usually try to avoid items that break the illusion when you rotate the camera view. I changed some of the item colour variants to whatever was in my pockets because I was getting annoyed with the 5 items a day limit

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Instead of a bathroom and bedroom like my photopia studio, I made the dining and living room space larger. I managed to fit a sofa behind the book case for a cozy little reading nook! Thankfully the kotatsu doesn't obstruct the door to the right that much. There's still a 1-square walk way straight to the door. I tried out a few other item placements to make the room look more cluttered but I didn't like having to squeeze between items. That tiny delay in movement was enough for me to do some cleaning up.

And finally, here's the bedroom redesign! Since I used the same composition as my older layout I was even able to use the natural and blue versions of the antique dresser and rattan bed! The items in this room were inspired by my 2nd studio apartment build in photopia. Even though my old design was very elegant and calming and essentially how I'd want my actual house to look like if I had the money to splurge on antiques... I love how cozy and colourful the new version is as well! I also felt like I had a larger variety of wall-hanging items I could use with this type of room, especially photos of my favourite villagers that wouldn't have fit in the old design.

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Close up of my bedroom! It took me an embarrassingly long time to get the perfect shot of me rolling over... I kept snapping the photo when my butt was up in the air.

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And here's the side section! It went from a study to a little gaming corner, which I guess is more realistic to my life right now. I wasn't quite sure how to decorate one side of the wall, so when in doubt I just throw a lot of boxes around to create clutter and call it a day. That exercise bike hasn't been used in years.

Finally, here's a 360 view of my bedroom!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1413157986952904717

The next rooms I'll post about are the before & afters of my bathroom and record/music room. I also have another craft room that I decided not to change, so I'll show that too. Thanks for reading!

 

[dizzy bone]

Rainy Friday☂

July 9, 2021​

 

[dizzy bone]

Happy Birthday Dizzy! ​

It was Dizzy’s birthday yesterday! He turned… 10? I’m not exactly sure, but he’s forever a baby in my eyes! As many of you can tell by my username, Dizzy is my favourite villager and has been with me in every installment of the game starting with ACWW! He deserves the world! I threw together a pretty late birthday party for him but I was very happy that my Salmon Run buddy @Equity was able to come over to celebrate! I hadn’t checked who the other guest was until Equity arrived, but I’m so glad it was Dizzy‘s big brother Cyd. Look at em, trunk to trunk! Despite being a baby, Dizzy actually managed to give an appropriate present as opposed to the usual towel wraps and baby rompers. We dressed in blues for his birthday and Dizzy also gifted Equity a blue dress shirt! I’m proud of you, buddy.

Here's a few bonus pictures under the spoiler of me and @poqu at Dizzy’s birthday last year, since I forgot to post about it back then! A lot has changed on Tansan but it remains the same that Dizzy always gets the best views! Back in an earlier version of Tansan, Dizzy's house overlooked Godzilla’s lair Now he gets a beautiful view of the lighthouse!

Spoiler: Dizzy's birthday last year

Birthday parties on Tansan can now have a big upgrade with some of the festivale party items and food choices! My past decorations were pretty sad back then. I've also recently completed a project that involved drawing every single one of my villagers onto standees (which I will post about later) so having their portrait outside is another fun party addition! Hopefully I can keep up with all the birthdays now that I’m fairly active again (sorry Scoot, missed your 2nd birthday on Tansan!). Finally, here's an afterparty photo I took at Harvey's. Dizzy insisted on inviting his bug friends to this one.

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[dizzy bone]

Happy Birthday Erik!
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It was Erik's birthday yesterday today! I wrote in the previous entry that I'd try to be more diligent with celebrating/posting about my villager's birthdays, yet I totally forgot that it was Erik's birthday coming up! Just like how I thought Jambette was a snooty frog, I always thought that Erik was a winter baby. Since this was another last minute celebration I didn't get to invite any friends over or make a super nice outdoor display for him, but I was able to throw something quick together as usual!

Earlier in the day my rep ordered a few cakes from the bakery right behind Erik's house (pictured above). The bakery is run by Erik's next door neighbour Hyuji, our only other human resident. The two share a small front yard up on residential block E-6. It was the perfect spot to set up a table of treats for party guests! Ok, maybe there were no guests. But let's just pretend Hamphrey came by for the party instead of attempting to fish where there's no water.

Here's a close up of his cramped entrance way, with the corner stationary shop in view!
I like how his standee looks like he's riding the springy horse.

My babies celebrating!
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Erik's birthday is another one I didn't post about when I first celebrated it. Last year on his birthday, Erik still lived on a small mountain overlooking Tansan falls, now bulldozed. Here's a few pictures of his birthday display back then!

Spoiler: Erik's birthday last year

Finally, here's an afterparty photo shoot at Harvey's! Erik is still a winter baby in my heart so I took him and a bunch of his friends to a snowy cafe ☃ Happy birthday Erik!!

 

[dizzy bone]

Summer Round-Up

Just like that, another summer on Tansan has passed! Despite not posting much I did end up playing a bit throughout this season, so I wanted to compile a post of summer happenings before they get forever buried in my archives. I’m still trying to find the best way to stay motivated to play and post in this journal and perhaps a seasonal overview is the best I can do.

Completed Artwork and Bugs Exhibits

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I finally completed two more museum exhibits - the art gallery and the bug wing! I ended up buying all my artwork off users on TBT but I was tortured over my last bug, the walking stick. I was finally able to catch it this summer. I wasn’t 100% sure that I could do it with all those items in the way!

Tribute to my villagers

Ever since I moved Tabby out of her famous Tabby town, I struggled to decide what to replace this peninsula with. How was I ever going to beat my number one tourist attraction, Turd rock? While I never ended up decorating turd rock’s old spot, I thought this was the perfect solution to rework my awkwardly thin peninsula. This area is now my little dedication to the villagers of Tansan! Initially I was going to order them by move in (Scoot, Ursala, Jambette, Tabby, Erik, Freya, Hamphrey, Dizzy, Cyd, Ken) but I decided to go by alternating height as best as I could, especially since I wanted to write “Tansan” smack in the middle of it. You can also see the standees from this view point up on the roof!

Fireworks show

Summer has always been my favourite season on animal crossing because of the fireworks shows! I spent the earlier weekends watching fireworks on my friend’s islands and we planned to watch the last one at mine. I designed a little festival spot on the beach specifically for this! While this area won’t be permanent, I thought it was a fun way to use the new handheld items. Since the stalls were a hit, maybe I should open a permanent boba shop somewhere in town? (Fun fact: I might be the only asian in the world that dislikes boba in real life). Here’s some photos of my favourite photos from the weekend my friends came over! As usual, we dressed up in matching outfits and boppers.

The signage reads: “Fireworks Festival”​

And just for a Tansan throwback, under the spoiler are some photos of the fireworks show I took last summer and never posted. Around this time, Tansan was already undergoing a more urban transformation. The very first version of Tansan pocha as also around back then!

Spoiler: “Tansan Fireworks last year”

The original entrance of the folk village! The village was later moved to the back of the island but I kept the layout almost exactly the same. Hamphrey used to hog an incline all to himself!

Tansan Pocha was just a puny shack! It since has gotten an upgrade to it’s own shophouse.

That’s all for the summer! I’ve also updated my dream address DA-0488-2098-9558 to the current version seen above and will likely keep it in the summer for the next update as well if I do make changes. Gotta make the best use of the hibiscus bushes I planted literally everywhere!!!

 

[dizzy bone]

Tansan’s Recreational Activities!
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In an effort to promote a healthier lifestyle in Tansan, I’ve decided to add a few more opportunities for recreational activities! Since my island layout is mostly finished, I modified a few existing areas to make room for a soccer field, surf shack, beachside pool, and a BEACH STICK BALL!! court (inspired by A Short Hike). I’ll also cover some older recreational areas that got a few tweaks done to it as well! This is the last big update to Tansan that will appear in my next dream update I'm currently preparing for. After this I'll likely take another hiatus until Halloween.

New Areas!

Beachside Pool ⛱I liked the idea of keeping some food stalls on the beach so I decided to turn my fireworks festival spot from my last post into something more permanent and less flashy. I threw down my trusty wooden platform to make a walkway and lined some of the edges with hedges and flowers to bring a little colour back since I used mainly brown tones in this new version! I also like how the entrance into this area feels a lot more obvious and intentional. Beaches to me are always an afterthought and I've always struggled to find nice ways to direct the visitor to that spot.

Surf Shack I had made a surf shack on the beach back when the diving update first came out, but I removed it because my beaches got too crowded to walk around. So this time I moved the shack onto the rocks and left the beach clear for walking and digging up clams. I've seen some really nice builds of surf shops as fake houses on land, which is something I originally wanted to try out, but sadly Tansan has no more real estate for vendors to move in. The only place I can think of is behind my rep’s house, in Cyd’s front yard. Currently Cyd and my island rep run Tansan’s auto shop, but perhaps Cyd can be in charge of the surf shop instead? Maybe it’s something I can try out next time. For now, a simple stall on the rocks will do! I made the colours match the general colourful beachy vibe of Nook’s Cranny.

Soccer Field This area was originally a small park with a fountain and sitting area (older version seen here). Initially I wanted to make use of the fountain somehow, since I always loved the PWP in ACNL, but the set up left little room to walk around. Recently I've been trying to free up some cluttered walkways and an open soccer field here seemed like the perfect solution! I ended up using 6 slots for the floor markings, which is less than my beach stick ball court below!

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Beach Stick Ball! On the South East beach I made a BEACH STICK BALL!!! court inspired by one of my favourite short games on switch, A Short Hike! The game version is a lot simpler, but I wanted to make this area a bit cluttered so it has a similar vibe to Tabby's house decorations nearby. I placed a whole bunch of ball options you can try out as well as different types of sticks you can rent!

Hiking Trail 🏔 This is by far my favourite of my area modifications! My hiking trail was originally all dirt paths with some flowers placed about to make it scenic, but in my newer version I added a bridge in the middle where the old log bench would have been! I felt like the log bench placement (the "viewpoint") didn't have great camera angles for photos, maybe because the area around it was just dirt paths so it was a bit boring. However, I love how the new bridge looks good and purposeful in almost every angle when you run through this area! Removing some trees in the front made it feel more spacious. This is probably the most pointless bridge addition I've ever made - but it's now one of my favourite locations. I've also added a music player nearby that plays "New Horizons" but unfortunately the sound is mostly drowned out by the waterfall.

Old Areas

Basketball court & Outdoor Gym The basketball court and outdoor gym were already around before this, although I did make some minor edits to the outdoor gym. In my older version my outdoor gym had a lot more flowers and was a little cramped. I removed a lot of the flowers to open it up and I also added a climbing wall! I initially wanted to put the climbing wall on the beach and make another little tribute to A Short Hike and the Rock Climber's Association, but the wall itself is so tall that it always looked awkward as an item in the foreground. So instead I decided to use it as part of the hiking trail entrance next to the jail bar "gates".

Ahhh so there's my last big update until Halloween, probably. I might still try to move the surf shack into Cyd's front yard but for now I'm happy with Tansan's new additions! I'm hoping to update my dream address with these changes sometime this week but I want to get everything exactly the way I like it because I will be decorating everyone's yards for Halloween again but I don't plan on updating my dream address in the autumn season. Thanks for reading!