There is one aspect of Rexville that people have been asking me to cover for roughly the past six months, but I have so far resisted doing so. At least in-depth.
In addition to weekly motels, wedding chapels, drug sales, streetwalkers-r-us, tattoo parlors, strip clubs, and bail bonds places ... the next most prominent business type in the neighborhood would probably be pawn shops. I don't think I've ever seen a two-square-mile area in the world with more pawn shops than Rexville. Unfortunately, these are probably the businesses in which I am the least interested.
Something about pawn shops have always depressed me. They represent the aspect of capitalism that I am the least fond of. Basically, one man's misfortune is another's gain. I generally don't think well of payday loan places, or realtors who take customers on tours of houses where the occupants have just been thrown on the street. I could never go to a foreclosure sale or an auction where people's lives are sold off piece-by-piece. I would feel like a parasite.
The USA has gone from a nation of innovators to a nation of professional middle-men. We don't really produce anything anymore. Instead, we just stick our finger in as many jars as we can find. We re-sell the same product or service as many times as possible so that multiple people can skim value off of something they had no hand in creating.
Why create something of value when you can buy, sell, or broker it?
In my mind, when people criticize me for making fun of global warming, it is akin to meth addicts with DARE bumper-stickers chastising me for my caffeine intake. It's irrational.
If one were to do a comprehensive audit of fully-functional 41 year old males in the USA (paraplegics probably use little gasoline), I would estimate that my personal lifetime carbon footprint would place me in the bottom ten percentile ... if not the bottom five.
I've always made it priority #1 to live where things were actually located. I've never "driven to work" on a daily basis. I've walked, biked, roller bladed, and taken the bus/subway ... but hour-long daily automobile commutes are a completely foreign concept to me. Driving in traffic feels like torture and I go to great lengths to avoid it.
Sure, I own a car now, but I've earned it. I paid my "carbon" dues in spades for damn near 35 years. I'm too banged up to self-propel myself quite as far as I used to. Especially in 110 degree temperatures. Still, personal drives of over 5 miles are uncommon, and I still overwhelmingly prefer the bus or the monorail. On a day-to-day basis, my "carbon footprint" is still probably 80% less than the average suburbanite's.
The LVCVA reported average daily rates as $99.75 while a major hotel-booking site reported them to be $79.
For those of you keeping score at home, the LVCVA is being 26% more optimistic than the private company. The private company also says that rates dropped 18% in 6 months, and the LVCVA says they only fell 4% in an entire year.
Who's right? Who's wrong?
Who knows?
The thing about stats is ... they usually lie.
Numbers are easy to throw out, and since few people have the resources or initiative to double-check them, you can more or less make numbers up and still sound plausible. Even if you do know absolutes, there are a myriad of ways to manipulate them to show what you want to prove. For example, the Visitor's Authority may have used a smaller starting number (104 vs. 109) to make the decrease look less dramatic.
I just got out of the hospital, and first let me say that I very much appreciate all of the well-wishes. I even appreciate some of the questionable-wishes, such as those opining that I had some venereal disease, and even the one person who took the time out of his day to email me a simple "I hope you die".
I'm sure the latter was not a unique sentiment, so kudos for having the courage to say what many others were surely thinking. And by courage, I mean "sending an unsigned email from an anonymous email account". It must have taken hours to work up the strength to do that.
Can you imagine Rosa Parks in 2010?
From: sweet_mama_chocolate87156@yahoo.com
To: The Montgomery Transit Authority
I'm sick and tired of your discriminatory policies, and I'm not going to take it anymore. If you don't let black folks sit at the front of the bus, I'm gonna post all of your email addresses on alt.sex.bestiality and post pictures of your racist drivers on 4chan!"
The Black Panthers would probably coordinate wholly via Twitter, where uprisings would be routinely thwarted by "service unavailable" and "check out our latest deals!" messages. The 140 character limit would probably also lead to some confusion.
"We are sick and tired of the white devil keeping us down. If you are with us, fight the power and rally at the intersection of 181st Street and M..."
"Sorry, that last message was too long. We will be rallying at 181st Street and Market Avenue. We are mad as hell and will not take it anymore. Make sure you are there promptly at N..."
It's a good thing the civil rights movement happened 50 years ago.
On Thursday, President O'Drama signed the "Travel Promotion Act" into law.
This particular act is designed to convince people from other countries to vacation in the Unites Sates. The act will be funded by a $10 fee on all tourists to the U.S.
That's right, we will begin luring people to our great nation by charging them more money before they even set foot on our soil.
Earlier tonight, I engaged in a bit of ghetto gambling.
This was not the "play at the Western" version of ghetto gambling, instead, it was the cheap person version. Ghetto gambling is gaming that has all the fun of gambling, without any of the risk or reward. My own personal rendition of ghetto gambling involves taking only $20 to a local casino (usually the Sahara or Stratosphere) without an ATM card or even a wallet.
Then, I play along these lines:
I start out with $20, and I begin playing at a $3 or $5 table. I play a few hands until I double up or lose 50%. Unfortunately, I do not tip during these minor sessions unless I go on a big streak, and even then it's no more than a couple of bucks.
If I double up, I pocket $20, and then proceed to play with "free" money at whatever low-limit game I feel like playing. The worst I can do is break-even on the session.
If I get dinged for 50% early, I go to the $1 BJ tables or nickel Video Poker machines. If I manage to double up at these tables or machines, I go back to a "higher" limit ($3-$5) BJ table and repeat the process. If I lose it all ... I stop playing.
At times, I have been able to make a single $20 bill last two hours while ghetto gambling, while getting the occasional free drink in the process.
Read more ...
Now that the New Frontier is closing, I find myself stopping by it more and more often. Yesterday I went by to take some better pictures and grab some souvenirs.
I played one pull of the .25 slots and won 10 credits ($2.50). Since they still use coins, and not TITO, they were able to stiff me .25 when I cashed out. $20 with a 10 credit win – initial .25 for play, comes out to 22.25, right? Well, I got $22.00, and couldn’t prove otherwise. So, go ahead New Frontier, go nuts with the extra quarter. Buy an extra crayon to write room numbers with.
But I digress. As there was an affable crowd, I also played about $20 worth of Sigma Derby (video at top of post). I lost all of that. The favorites won almost every damn time, and it’s not fun betting on the favorites.
I also got a bunch of really nasty quarter cups. But while I was carrying it around with quarters, I realized how much I miss the quarter cups. I love the feel of all that steel in my hands, and nothing beats dropping them all over the floor and crawling around on your hands and knees on the filthy carpet chasing rolling quarters all over the place, then handing them to a surly cashier who dumps them into a probably-inaccurate hopper to be counted.
Ah, the good old days.
Now we have impersonal TITO (not affiliated with Jermaine, Marlon and Jackie).
Maybe I will miss that shithouse New Frontier after all.
Probably not, though.
BTW, you would think by watching that Sigma Derby video that I had bet and won on 8 credits. The 32 credit win on that combo was the highest paying I had seen for the session. But alas, the 4-5 combo LED was stuck on “8″, so that flashing eight was really “0″ … which is what I won on the race. Even when you win at the New Frontier … you lose. The New Frontier Sigma Derby is a fundamentally sound machine, but I hope whoever buys it throws a few bucks at it for a refurbish.
I think these machines are not a hit with the casinos because the power draw must be HUGE. I don’t know if the games pay for themselves. I rather doubt that they do. I know that are an attraction, but I don’t think the casino makes much cheese off of the game.
Unlike slot machines, you only play once per minute, instead of 20 times per minute … cutting way down on the amount of money wagered, the machine takes up a pretty large amount of space, probably enough for a double-sided bank of 8 slot machines … and the energy costs have to be huge. These are old-school machines that probably have a very inefficient energy design, and are probably a bitch and a half to maintain. And most people don’t wager tons of money on the races. I would imagine that a single $1 slot machine makes more raw cash than the Sigma Derby.
The above factors are probably why they have all but vanished from the casino-scape. Which is a shame, because it is a fun, cheap game to play. You can take a $20 roll of quarters and play for an hour. The one at the MGM is still going strong, but after the New Frontier goes, the MGM may be the last SD game in town … at least in the central part of town. I don’t venture to far-flung casinos like Texas Station or Whisky Pete’s in Primm to sniff out these machines, but as far as The Strip is concerned … the Derbys are an endangered species.
I love that bleeping game.
First palyed at Bally’s, then the moved it downstairs to the
bleeping shopping mall, then they took the sucker out.
Got to go back to the Frontier before they blow it up. Do you
you know when the explosion is scheduled?
It probably won’t come as a huge shock to anyone to learn that for 20 years or so, I led a fairly hard and fast life. If you name the vice, chances are good that I engaged in it and pushed it as far as it would go. It sounds eye-rollingly cliche’, but there really [...] […]
Pawn Shop near The Stratosphere There is one aspect of Rexville that people have been asking me to cover for roughly the past six months, but I have so far resisted doing so. At least in-depth. In addition to weekly motels, wedding chapels, drug sales, streetwalkers-r-us, tattoo parlors, strip clubs, and bail bonds places … [...] […]
I took these two months ago and just found them. Usually, I take skyline photos of the The Strip from the neighborhood, but rarely the reverse. This is what Rexville looks like from tourist corridor. I really wish the shyster hawking his wares to illegal aliens wasn’t in every photo, but props to the big-headed lawyer for at [...] […]
Downtown Las Vegas Newport Lofts and 18b Now, I’ve taken a lot of criticism for my “climate change” stance, but of all of the things I get criticized for, I consider these attacks to be the most unwarranted and unjustified. In my mind, when people criticize me for making fun of global warming, it is akin [...] […]
Las Vegas Strip Crowd The LVCVA reported average daily rates as $99.75 while a major hotel-booking site reported them to be $79. For those of you keeping score at home, the LVCVA is being 26% more optimistic than the private company. The private company also says that rates dropped 18% in 6 months, and the [...] […]
I got it from two different angles. If you look closely, you can see a pane of glass stretched out to form a plank. I think I just spotted what appears to be the jumping off point for the Strat’s new freefall “ride”. […]
A Photographer in the Luxor I just got out of the hospital, and first let me say that I very much appreciate all of the well-wishes. I even appreciate some of the questionable-wishes, such as those opining that I had some venereal disease, and even the one person who took the time out of [...] […]
Rex's Las Vegas Lists
I also got a bunch of really nasty quarter cups. But while I was carrying it around with quarters, I realized how much I miss the quarter cups. I love the feel of all that steel in my hands, and nothing beats dropping them all over the floor and crawling around on your hands and knees on the filthy carpet chasing rolling quarters all over the place, then handing them to a surly cashier who dumps them into a probably-inaccurate hopper to be counted.
I love that bleeping game.
First palyed at Bally’s, then the moved it downstairs to the
bleeping shopping mall, then they took the sucker out.
Got to go back to the Frontier before they blow it up. Do you
you know when the explosion is scheduled?