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March 2015
A Small Piece Of This Town
The following is a short excerpt of a short stop in Las Vegas between some family business in Laughlin, NV and even more family business in New Orleans, LA. The latter lasted for three weeks. 'Nuff said!
With ‘all of that’ out of the way, we were looking forward for the two days in Vegas; so much that, at least for me, I wasn’t aggressively all over the town as part of my usual Vegas abuse mode. Another reason for the more casual attitude this time around was that I made a big mistake halfway through the first day, I wore my sandals (without socks!) the first two hours on the Strip. When I got back to the timeshare from this half-a-walk, I took off my sandals and noticed some blood! Apparently, I developed a blister under my left feet and nuked it good! But wearing them worked in Laughlin!! Well, it didn’t work here, you dumbass.
Thanks to this accidental self-inflected injury, I had to not only scramble to seek immediate care from my bag and look for the apocopate bandages from the Walgreens from across the street, but I had to stayed off that foot. As you may guess, I had to pull back on any plans for this trip.
Bummed but not deterred, I casually made my way through the town, starting with downtown and its residential area; mainly have trekked around Downtown and its Experience and, in the last five years, moved further down Fremont Street to El Cortez and the Container Park. This time, some have even brave down two more blocks down to a new bookstore called Writer’s Block. When I heard about this place, I sent an e-mail asking if they had any zines and what I got back was some sort of passive aggressive legalize talk, informing me to call their manager in person. Hmmmm, Oooookay.
Anyways, I did visit the book store and it was a nice place, they even had a large section of Vegas books some by local authors. A plus. See if this place can survive the lazy digital days of Nooks, Amazon and iPads. If this talk of backlash against the digital is correct, they MIGHT have a chance. See what happens.
As mentioned before, many are discovering more of Downtown. Well, I’m already been there and a tad further. In recent visits, I’ve discovered some old neighborhoods just southeast of downtown; a fine collection of old buildings that have not been invaded by post-2008 ‘genderfication’ yet. As per usual, I took many boring photos of boring old buildings. The only real difference is that I didn’t take much as I already carpeted this landscape…..in fact, this was the only day I actually took the camera out and about!
The rest of the time, I didn’t feel like luging that big Nikon around the place. Limping can do that to you.I didn’t even have the Nikon with me on the night I visited the Riviera Hotel & Casino. It was announced shortly before this whole trip that the Las Vegas Convention Authority had bought the place and were quick to announce its plans to wreck it to make room for even more convention space. In fact, the plans were made so quick that by the time you’re reading this, The Riv will be long cleared out and the first of the pillars for the new convention space will be planted. Guess they’re taking notes from the disastrous Stardust explosion; the Stardust was imploded in 2008 to make way for a big $4 billion mega-resort, but a year later, the project was stopped due to the now wrecked economy and the lot has been collecting dust and sand since. However, recently the empty lot was sold off and construction has begun on ‘Resort World Las Vegas’ a few days after they close the Riviera.
Anyways, I showed up at the Riviera to pay my respects and a few coins. I even got a comp card. They didn’t have any postcards anymore, so I might as well get the next cheapest souvenir.
An addition to the strip on this trip was the famed White Castle that opened up a couple of months before to a rousing line halfway around the block. By the time I got there, the crowds were a tad smaller, but no less intense as they still had three rent-a-cops scoping the area. There was a no line, so I decided to sneak up to the counter to look at their menu and one of the cops told me to step back a bit or I’ll upset the costumers. When I told him I was just looking at the menu, he sympathetically told me that the menu was on their web site. Ooooookay.
Our last full day started off with our traditional sidewalk cafe visit at Paris for some Country Pate. This time, Mom & I got a table that was even closer to the Strip traffic and in time too for a religious group doing a God’s Guilt Parade down the Strip. After all these years of seeing them in New Orleans bouncing up and down Bourbon Street and on Venice Beach Boardwalk, this was the first time I’ve seen any group bring their religious megaphones to this town and on this street!
…..and much like the ones on these Streets and Boardwalks, their message were met as if was a traveling tourist trap with on-lookers taking pictures and mountain of joyful curiosity. This level of indifference was infuriating them so much that they got more insistent with their message by slowing down their pace and getting louder. The group should have taken a hint as a couple of nights before from a guy holding a very large wooden cross at the base of the Bally’s sign with a by-standard adding his editorial commentary by yelling “Fuck You!”
Anyways, one lone member from the Guilt Parade strayed ahead and planted himself right in front of the sidewalk cafe and rattled off his trite at us. At this point, it wasn’t a religious act, it was out of sure spite; the more we either ignored him, took pictures of him and/or laughed, he got more spiteful. This lasted for 10 minutes until the rest of the now Spiteful For Jesus parade caught up with him and made their way to the neighboring Planet Hollywood.
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