Living in Las Vegas is a trip. We moved here in 1990 to live for a couple of years while my husband figured out what her wanted to do with his life. He had tired of the corporate world and it’s system of promoting the least talented people who knew how to kiss-up to the boss. When his boss dropped dead on the street in New York City and the company replaced him with someone he didn’t respect, we moved to Las Vegas where he played poker and did not come home for lunch..
We’d visited here a number of times over the years at the invitation of the Stardust or the Hilton or the Sands or the MGM. Those were the days when the Casino would pick up your tab as long as you played a certain number of hours and ran a certain amount through their bank. Oh my gosh it was fun! We ate at the finest restaurants, dressed to the nine’s, and danced at the top of the Dunes …I think it was? We had a ball! It was a small town then, back in the 70’s and 80’s. We would meet at the Blackjack tables, order a Manhattan or a Martini and the croupier would set us up for dinner and everything was “free”. Of course my husband had spent a good portion of the day playing Texas Hold’em at Binions’ or the Stardust, and that’s who paid for dinner and our room. It was all so fine- Elvis, Sinatra, Sammy and Dean. We saw them all. Vegas was The Place To Be.
Now it’s 25 years later and the bloom is off the rose. Vegas is not so beautiful any more. Oh sure, once you get inside The Bellagio or The Wynn or the upper-end casino’s it’s fine, but on the way there it is filthy. The streets are nasty and often scattered with litter. Really, from Sahara to Tropicana, or even further South on Las Vegas Blvd. to the Welcome to Las Vegas sign it’s decent. It’s pretty much a pit from the STS all the way downtown. Obviously it’s not a walking town because the sidewalks are grimy and it’s a long way down The Strip and it passes through a number of relatively “unsafe to be out at night alone” neighborhoods. Not to mention it’s likely 115 degrees in the shade. Talk about cooking eggs on the sidewalk? Yecch!
Come on! We’ve quadrupled the population and that plus the number of tourists and locals who look and act like bums don’t exactly inspire the same reaction we used to get from a trip to Las Vegas. The casinos no longer comp ordinary people. You have to have a bazillion dollars in their bank. You can look and act like a bum, drink like a fish and be rude as hell and the Casino will pick up your tab. As long as the bazillion is in play. When exactly did the Casinos decide money was more important than the way we treat each other? So meany mean and rude people in the shows, in the restaurants–loud and obnoxious–but the Casinos look the other way when in the old days those people would have been kicked out. Meanwhile, customer service for the locals is nonexistent. The latest example of this is the MGM Parking fiasco.
Here’s my idea…What if Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Association or the Junior League started a drive to clean up Las Vegas. Start with steam cleaning the sidewalks. Put the people who think it’s okay to spit on the sidewalks in jail! (hehehe- but really?) And double the time if they spit their gum on the sidewalks. And fine them $500 every single time they throw their cigarettes or cups on the streets. Not to mention the porn flyers all over the place . Okay! Okay! That’s not likely to happen. But what if we just ran a campaign for civility– good, old fashioned, decency and good manners? Can we do that? Please? And I’m not even mentioning how people are dressed and popping out of their clothes these days. Enough with the perfectly perky and round boobs and skater shorts at the Celine Dion show! Fine if you have them, but you don’t have to show them.
And maybe we could have a Manhattan and Martini night where we all dress up in our finest, close off The Strip, put Sinatra on the loud-speakers and dance in the streets? Of course we’d have to end around 8 PM because that’s when people my age go to bed.
Be kind to one another and understand loving self requires being a self worth loving,
Wennn ich raste, roste ich.