235 Diners and 127 Liquor Stores

One day some time ago I had the thought of counting the amount of eateries and liqours throughout my travels in Las Vegas. Whether it is work, the running of errands, or just to go shopping, a conscious effort was made to keep track of how many of the above places existed on the street corners while driving around town. After a week of taking excursions about the entire valley I came up with the number 235 for diners and 127 for liquor stores, of course there are some parts of town that have a very strong concentration of booze outlets which lie either predominately near the strip, the weekly motels, or any other economically depressed locations, so without getting into the social, cultural, and political meanings behind such facts, my rationale existed around more of the overall total of liquor stores in general. It is amazing how much emphasis we as humans put on eating, drive past any strip mall in suburbia where the concentration of places to eat is at least somewhere between 10 and 20 dining establishments per block. We are talking pizza, fast food, mexican, Vietnamese, sushi, mediterrean, Indian, Thai, Hawaiian, Cuban, donuts, bar food, hot dogs, burgers, pitas, gyros, wraps, cinnabons, ice cream, dairy queens, spanish, bbq, english, german, sub sandwhiches, chinese, and plenty of others that escape my memory. There is a complete assualt on our freedom of choice to gorge down at any other these establishments, either going to work, at lunch, coming home from work, going out, stumbling back drunk from partying; this town lives off the idea that people enjoy going out to eat as oppose to staying home, granted there are plenty of single people here in town with time on their hands, but that is not the only motivation, many great chefs make their home in Vegas, many small family owned diners boast quite a reputation with Las Vegas local which can mean quite a profitable business.

One great example is Lindo Michocan, best mexican food in town, not only that the atomsphere is pleasant, party like with live musicians joining in the activity ocassionally. The place has been around forever, survived a fire, then reopened a year later picking up where it left off, where usually on any weekend the parking lot will be overflowing as line forms inside with customers anticipating some great chips and salsa, homemade gaucamole, chiveche de camaron and those are just the appetizers, the entrees are as unique as the restuarant itself attaining such success over the last decade that they have opened five others. This is the kind of place that word of mouth has turned into a real winner, every person I have taken there the first time always asks to go back there when he or she comes back into town. Lindo has that kind of memorable experience.

I lived at a friends for a few month before getting my new place while having yet to jump on the health kick bandwagon as of late, a period of adjustment was neccessary in scoping out the new eateries in the nearby strip malls. My friend lived out in the west suburbs which is a completely different world than my former near by strip centric established restuarants and small family run diners. It takes a few days of driving off to work or back from work to get a proper perspective of what existed in the new neighborhood as well as my self conscious nature of feeling like a bother or intrusion at my friends place, he was above and beyond hospitable that made my transition from a recent breakup as well as fast paced self destructive party behavior a welcome retreat, yet it did not feel like home where cooking up food then leaving the dishes for a week was quite normal to me, could not do it at someone's place who was gracious enough to let me invade their life for over a month, therefore the alternative consisted of Thai, Hawaiian, and Roberto's while periodically spliting some food with my friend as we watched Olympic coverage.

Okay, figuring out our to go menu nature

Convenience is first, plenty of people in Vegas have weird hours by standards of almost any other cities in the world outside of a handful. Getting off at work at 3am is normal, people are out, some restuarants still open, crazy as it sounds, but an entire neon sun culture exists here in Vegas, you might think most bars would be empty at 3am on a weekday but in Vegas there are usually plenty of people having a few while grabbing a bite to eat off the bar menu. Second, the single nature of most people, without others to cook for, picking up something on the way home takes all the hassle out of preparing food, doing dishes, and cleaning up. Three, time, never is enough time in Vegas, the place runs 24hrs a day, there is no way to keep up with the city it shall grind anyone who tries into little space dust, floating right back out into the stars where they came from to never be heard from again, for the few who try to run with the demons of sleepless posession, from clubs to casinos to bars to afterhours to pools to day parties to house parties, then repeating the process over again, what remains is an extended timeout, hopefully only missing a few days of work, but the bench is right around the corner, no escape, people will break, shut down, and ultimately fall apart. I have experience it first hand, a great salvation is knowing one phone call away while laying in bed with a screaming headache, neasous stomach, and an feeling of impending mortality is any number of restuarants which will deliver to the house, after a few bites from not eating for three days, life begins to come back into focus, the end of the world grows a bit further away to point where the idea of a few drinks does not sound too bad, that's Vegas for ya.

Who does not like to get their drink on, honestly I might go to the mega liquor store once and a while for beers, but do not hit up the neighborhood liqour stores as much, someone has to be doing it because there are quite a lot places selling 22 ounce malt liqour, cheap rot gut wine, as well as various other goods such as chore boy, rose petal glass, and Philly blunts, it was shocking the first time I went into a liqour store with a friend who understood the purpose of the previous mentioned items, but to see them displayed in plain view for those in the know to purchase seemed outright absurd. Didn't the cops get a load of this when they came around, anyone in their right mind can tell that these glass pipes with the circular bulbs on the end were for smoking meth, right? The clerk at the register told me they were for smoking tobacco, really? you sure? I mean I know how to make a crack pipe so this is looking dodgy. So I asked him what the Chore Boy was for and he told me to clean pans, this made me laugh to no end, Chore Boy is stuffed inside a crack pipe to be used as a filter/barrier to keep from sucking the rock into the mouth, it is my interpetation someone may have a more accurate one, but there it is, you learned something without spending a weekend in the prescence of career junkies, but maybe everyone should, plenty to be learned, would radically change your view on a lot of things in life, primarily people.

Liqour store is like a candy store for adults, people who can't simply get drunk off of a few beers but need at least a liter of hard alcohol to begin feeling anything resembling a buzz, but what happens over the years as these people become more jaundice, their body begins to die, shutting down organ by organ until their speech no longer makes any sense leaving them completely helpless to communicate the dire pain these folks get themselves into, it is all funny at first watching them get drunk into oblivion, start fights with random strangers, give blackjack dealers the business as the dealer is pulled over the table by the collar, but then the humor starts to wear thin, as they booze it up at lunch, stone drunk at 12 in the afternoon screaming at little old ladies and small children, then one day there is a call, a friend telling me that this party animal is dead, flipped his car over on the freeway, no seat belt, ejected through the front windsheild of his car at 110mph. A slow deathwish for anyone who desires to take the trip down the well, more, more, more, how do you like it, how do you like it? This town rules in that exact mindset sending more than the population of one small town down the tubes.

We encourage drinking; it is the social fabric of this city, a blind eye is turned to anyone who has gone around the bend in their inability to handle the booze, weakness, party spoiler, these people shall be cast aside like the sick amongst old Native American tribal ideals. Here you go, here is some more booze, keep getting it down, the rest of us are going back over to the party, we'll come and check on you ocassionaly which really means to collect the dead body if the vultures don't get to it first. So many people make their living off of alcohol sales, all the female bartenders who text me to come in for a few drinks as a tease to possibly getting laid, it is merely a desperate plea for those who are suffering tough times in this 21 century economic landscape, not everyone is uber keen on spending their nights at the local tavern playing video poker, watching sports highlights on tv, and drinking the standard 8 to 10 beers a night, drive home hopefully not incurring a DUI. Everyone has to get paid, so the servers will keep pouring them, even after the DUI, their dilemma is being trapped in a job without any future, surviving week to week living in a city where the strong eat the weak, no white knights here, all those guys sport fuck women bartenders, cocktail waitress, and strippers for a living, leaving behind at most a kid, tough times indeed.