Saturday Night on the Strip

There are many reasons I no longer frequent the Las Vegas Strip as a sidewalk pedstrian, especially on the weekends where the crowds of tourist hordes only seem to exponentially multiply. The only times I may have to be around these people would concern work that might take place on the strip itself. Today sort of falls inbetween the two as I attempt to brave the elements of the strip masses who are ping ponging in every direction, be it for Cirque shows, happy hours, or the infamous buffet extravaganza, either way, who said the economy is in recession, it feels almost like New Years Eve with all the foot traffic tonight, though not out of the ordinary, all the new sidewalk street vendors give my current trip a bit of almost third world glint, that additional layer of inner city scent, where random people stand off on the sides of the walkways selling everything from bootleg DVD's to bottles of water, now this mentality has proliferated its way onto the Las Vegas Strip, as some Mexican Indian woman catatonically hawks bottles of water from a plastic white cooler, chanting, one dollar for a water, as if it was some ritualistic prayer with buddhist undertones that needed a plethora of repetition before its magical power could be fully realized.

Next to her was a cascade of modern day lepors in which chairs and assorted other forms of visual artifacts that let the tourist know as they passed by with their freshly bought high end boutique clothing and jewelry that they needed to fork over some money to these worn down at the heel, helpless, and most unfortunate lot of despots, but their pleas went unheard for the most part, the vibrance, possiblity, and sheer mass of the strip had captivated everyone's attention. Jeez there was beer to drink, gambling, and all sort of forms of carnal activity right at one's fingertips, as highlighted by the gauntlet of workers sporting "Dial 966-SLUT" t-shirts, when those shirts first came out I always tried to buy them off of the workers but none of them ever budged. It was a badge of honor, an ultimate sign of rebellion to go around filling up all those metal magazine racks at 2am, where one or two of the workers went the extra mile by taking out the spray bottle and cleaning the plastic windows as well as the magazine rack itself, who says you can't get into your job. The sex mag ad worker contains a special almost laughable position in Vegas, as the workers do their magic with the small color flyers about the size of a business card, back years ago, the men and women employed by these companies use to smack the cards on their hand in a way a card dealer might shuffle the cards then lay them out on the table. The porno flier distributor brought a certain flair with this deliberate wrist to hand motion as a way to gather attention and for the most part it worked. This point always stuck in my mind even today, as the main artifact of the whole experience, besides the time my son tried to grab one of the fliers from a distributor, who casually replied, " You too young holmes. " an instant classic line that still gets brought up today, even though the event itself happened four years ago.

No matter the slap motion of the fliers has now been replaced by the flipping motion of the fliers like a deck of cards, no one cares anymore, no enough attention, so let's replace this over familiar sound with a new and unheard sound. I can imagine some overpaid consultant sitting in a meeting room with all the distributors discussing new methods of gaining potential customers attention, how do you think the whole portable truck billboard with half naked women on the adverstiments got started in the first place. People were floored while waiting at a traffic light on the strip, and here comes crusing through, 702-HOT-BABE, where a gaint fourteen by eight photo of some woman bent over doggie style in scant clothing enters my visible periphery, granted nothing surprizes me on the Las Vegas Strip, there is no level of base behavior that comes as a shock, this is the arena where the human race dumps such emotions, like an abandon child, to forget and never look back, burn it out of the mind, this never happened, and various other dirt paths of the sort convene. So seeing this steriod like billboard cruising the strip strapped to a small truck did not appear out of the realm of possiblity, just merely smart advertising as well as something to discuss amongst other friends who could take the entire situation and dissect it with a generous helping of dark humor.

Well, the card flick is the new system of passing out porno bills, cool, along with the new motif, well worn out in other tourist destinations which is the guitar music combo, nothing like you might see in New York where real jazz musicians hang out in the park and play standards that will rock your socks off, no this is more like pity employment, where the hell did these two burn outs from the sixties get their funds to buy their axes, you kidding me as the two men sit there in some sort of metaphysical trance, part religious fixation, part chemical induced freak show, but by this point, they look content of run their fingers up and down the fretboard of their guitars in an infinite rock and roll solo, the sound is reminisant of two blenders running at different speeds right before the motors give out for the last time. There is nothing cultural about this performance except for the sheer desperate nature of them being on the crosswalk bridge in the first place, wasn't there cops around to control this kind of impromptu behavior or were they merely sideshow freelancers employed by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce who had decided that Las Vegas needed a bit more of that downtown metropolitan feel so prevalent in many other large cities around the world. Either way, the strip has now become a fertile ground for new artisans who wish to enchant the masses with ear piercing versions of Santana and Motley Crue, peronsal requests for an additional couple of bucks, but people still felt the need to throw a few dollars at these would be musicans so their place in the circus of the strip had been cemented.

Last of course, who could forget all the drunk teenagers hanging out with large forty ounce white buckets filled with Coors light, smoking cigarettes, talking to other underage teens who have yellow plastic Gutiar Hero like guitars filled with bottom barrel watered down frozen alcoholic drinks that shall only serve a speed train to the platform to the mega headache township, a first class trip to the feeling of a spike being shoved right through both temples of the brain,but that is why you do that kind of thing when you are young, easier to bounce back, recover from all that poison being forced down the throat, do it a couple more times and you get the picture, cheap booze, is cheap for one reason, because it is crap and makes you feel like crap, these teens tonight did not care about such things and only appeared compelled to push the Vegas experience to its known limits or whatever their wallet would allow, probably the main reasion they are sitting on a brick retaining wall at the moment with their buddies like it is spring break in Cancun as oppose to a hotel suite with piles of cocaine and an assortment of loose women moved by the large amounts of readily available blow. Slowly through the throngs of tourists I moved toward my destination, an affordable meal on the strip, now their is something you don't see everyday.