I was on The Strip for the majority of Friday night.
I started at Planet Aladdinwood, headed north, took in Fashionistas at the Empire Ballroom (which I will review later), dropped by Walgreens for some eye drops due to the 108 degrees and zero humidity, and finished up the night at the MGM Grand.
Of course, this is not particularly notable. Hanging out on The Strip is a normal routine for me.
So what was so notable about Friday?
First of all, The Strip was packed. Significantly above and beyond the normal Friday night crowds.
Secondly, I was having NBA All-Star Weekend flashbacks.
Since that fateful weekend in February, Las Vegas has been more or less back to “normal”. All big events from Nascar to the De La Hoya fight have gone off with a good vibe.
But something was happening Friday night. Exactly what, I dunno.
I parted ways at the Empire Ballroom, and struck out on my own. I wanted to strut. Kind of like John Travolta in the closing sequence of “Staying Alive”. Sometimes a cracker just has to strut. It’s a white thing … you wouldn’t understand.
But first, I needed eyedrops. There is nothing worse than strutting with irritated eyes. It just isn’t the same.
When I got to Walgreens, there were about 5 black guys involved in an altercation outside. Yelling, screaming, pushing, and shoving. I don’t know what the problem was.
Then I walked inside of Walgreens, and two security guards were holding a lady who was kicking, screaming, and yelling at the officers.
Whatever.
So I got my eyedrops, and headed south. I noticed a huge police presence on the street. There were cops, especially cops on bicycles, all over the place. They were stopping cars on The Strip left and right, parking their bikes in the middle of the road, holding up traffic, talking to drivers through the driver’s window. I have no idea what that was about either.
A few of them can be seen in this short video:
I took some photos of the cops, and someone in the crowd behind me yelled out “don’t take pictures of the police!”. So I immediately put down my camera and spanked myself. Or not. Actually, I took several more shots and didn’t look at the mystery person in the crowd. I don’t know who screamed it or why, but I thought it was an odd comment.
I headed down a little more to the south end of the Gameworks complex, passing a polite group of porn slappers:
Near the Gameworks staircase was a “gauntlet”. And by “gauntlet” I mean that there was a 50 foot stretch of the sidewalk where several “thugs” were standing on the sides of the sidewalk commenting on/harassing anyone who walked by. Not one woman walked by without being informed that one of the brothers would “tap that ass”, “hey bitch, show me them big fat titties” … you get the point.
And one of them, I am not kidding … glared at me and said “What are you looking at nigger?”. Of course it may have been “nigga” or one of the other spellings, but frankly I don’t see any difference between them. But being the tragically PC person that I am, I will use the sanitized MTV version with an “a” instead of the “er”.
I couldn’t help but chuckle when I heard it. It was funny to me. A tall white guy pushing 40 years old is now a nigga. Then he followed it up with, “whatchu laughin’ ’bout nigga?” and a couple of his homies stepped over with him.
It was at that point that a security guy from a nearby film-shoot walked through the gauntlet from the other direction. The “gangstas” must have thought he was a cop, because they quickly dispersed.
It is possible that this rent-a-cop unwittingly prevented me from getting shot and/or stabbed. Send your hate mail directly to him.
Please note: Now that I have been formally anointed as a “Nigga”, I demand that all of you refer to me as an “African-American”. It’s only fair.
So I proceeded on to the MGM. I decided to take the south entrance so that I could take some pictures of the MGM Lion lighting. The south sidewalk of the MGM (on Tropicana) was completely desolate. There were no pedestrians on the lower sidewalk as everyone was taking the various bridges.
Just as I lined up a photo shot, I heard “Nigga”, “Nigga”, “Nigga”, Nigga” probably about 50 times in the span of 10 seconds. I looked over, and about 15 black kids, anywhere from 14 to 20 years old, had emerged from beneath the pedestrian bridge from the MGM to the Trop. And boy were they hyped about something. They were jumping up and down, punching each other, climbing on each other’s back and repeating “Nigga” so often that I completely lost count.
And the real cherry part of this whole thing was … they were headed straight for me. Oh Joy!
So this group of model citizens gets to where I am standing, and I am getting eyeballed up and down. Then one of them yells out “Take that Nigga’s camera!”
Again … I’m a “Nigga”! For all of you with hate mail at the end of your fingertips, please do note that during the entire night, I did not hear one white person utter this term. Black people were yelling it at each other. They were yelling it at white people. Basically the entire Ebonics language has been stripped down to a single word … “Nigga”. Apparently, this word can denote anything, and its meaning is derived simply by intonation of the voice and/or having the shit beat out of you.
A one word language. Sweet!
So where was I?
Oh yeah, this pack of hooligans had been instructed by one of the main hooligans to take my nigga camera.
I just shoved the camera into my pocket, and stared back. There was really nothing I could do. There were about 15 of them, one of me, and all I could hope to do was take one of the little fuckers out for the betterment of society before the other 14 tore me apart and ate my carcass. One out of 15 is better than nothing, right?
After like a ten second staredown, one of the other guys screamed “Fuck that nigga, motherfucker ain’t nothin’, fuck that motherfucker” … and with that they very animatedly walked toward the corner of Trop and LVB.
I had pressed my luck enough on this night, so I headed into the MGM South Entrance … and low and behold, everything was perfectly normal. People of all colors were gambling and enjoying the property with not a care in the world. The Poker Room was filled to capacity, people were playing Sigma Derby, the blackjack tables were full, the slots were full, there was a long line to get into Club Tabu … it was great!
It was as if none of stuff outside had ever happened.
So I did some gaming, spoke to some people I recognized, enjoyed the music at the Centrifuge, and decided to head home. It had been a pretty full night. Some good food, a good show, some decent gaming, some good music, almost getting killed twice for no reason … I was ready to crash.
I hopped in a cab, and my driver was an American black guy. I asked him if he had noticed anything unusual tonight. He said “Man, I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s crazy tonight. As a matter of fact, once I drop you off, I’m going home. I don’t want to be out here anymore tonight.”
He told me (and I am paraphrasing) that prior to me, he had a group of people who hopped out of the cab and ran without paying, and confirmed that while The Strip was always packed on Friday night, that this night was significantly above normal. He was a cool driver, took an obscure shortcut that I knew cut driving time at least in half … so I tipped him double what I normally tip. Most drivers don’t take this particular shortcut because it is frowned upon (and possibly illegal), so I thought it was cool that he was willing to jet me home. It was about 4 minutes door-to-door as opposed to 15+ if we had sat at the saturated stoplight.
Okay, so was it a bad night? No, far from it. Planet Aladdinwood was cool, Fashionistas was a surprisingly good show, and the MGM was great as always.
My experiences with the thugz may have been a complete anomaly. Maybe I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I just happened to encounter the few obnoxious elements out that night. Luckily, they were confined to the street, and there were no issues at all inside the casinos.
But personally, it was the first time I have run into any major thug elements on The Strip since All-Star weekend.
Luckily, I am one of them now. So I’m pretty sure I’ll never have problems with those guys ever again.
VegasRex … Thug Fo’ Life!
Has a nice ring to it, no?
Full Moon!!
Two words, luv:
Full. Moon.
Whatever it was I can’t see the city of LV letting it go on like that to long or to often. They have to much to lose in tourism and that’s not like a couple of nice illegal imigrants standing on the street politely handing out pictures of mostly naked chicks on cards or in magazines. Something like that would put a damper on anyone’s vacation and make people not want to have “their Vegas showing.”
Wow..it makes me want to review my next vacation plans. If one of those dirty and stinky niggers would say just a world to my lady I would kill him,period.Stupid niggers,thank god I’m white.Man…Vegas is becoming a shitty place to be.
I check your site every day. It’s great What do you do other than this website? Like for a job?
Hope the strip is much quieter than that we’re there!
I am out on The Strip constantly, and I can assure you that it is almost always perfectly safe.
I don’t care where you are, The Bronx or Beverly Hills, or ANY Town, you can get asshole elements that come in from time to time.
It’s not a reflection on Las Vegas as a tourist destination … it’s just that when you get 300,000 people in a 2 square mile area on any given night … not all of those people are going to be decent people.
The law of averages.
I ran into the shitty element on this particular night. I usually don’t. You probably won’t.
I assure you that it was the exception, and not the rule.
It was also partially my own fault for taking a dark and deserted sidewalk (you can actually briefly see how unlit and isolated it was in part of the video) before I panned over to the Tropicana.
If you stay on the main drag of The Strip, then you are unlikely going to have any problems.
Unless there is an event that draws the Thug element into town. And I think the city learned its lesson from the All-Star game.
For some reason, problems always seem to occur around that movie theater in the Alley next to the MGM. That was where that security guard was mercilessly beaten by a pack of thugs last year. Frankly, I wish they would get rid of that movie theater as it tends to attract a crowd of bored kids looking for trouble.
“Maybe I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I just happened to encounter the few obnoxious elements out that night.”
When, exactly, is the right time to walk down The Strip? What part of The Strip is the “wrong place,” so I don’t accidentally trod upon someone’s turf while on vacation? I call “Bullshit!” These were thugs and nothing more, and *they* were “in the wrong place.”
I, too, have had an uneasy feeling in that area. Not sure if it’s still there, but just North was a club called Utopia that also seemed to attract an undesirable element that congregated along the section of LVB from the movie theatre to Fatburger.
Nevada has a Carry Concealed Weapon law, no?
I’ve been on the Strip hundreds of times over the years and have never seen anything like that. It sounds like a rare occurance, but maybe it’s a trend the casinos should be aware of. I don’t think any of the Strip hotels would appreciate a bunch of thugz harassing people in front of their places. That last thing they want is people to be afraid of coming there.
Thats a rough night to say the least, only time I’ve encountered something similar was 2 years ago by the Stardust parking lot, walking the strip at night, nothing as bad though, but for whatever reason, I sensed a lot of lurkng and my senses were a bit heightened.
I have found lately there are a lot of wanna be rap stars handing out cd’s in groups and once you take it they want you to pay them. This was up in those areas, and I’ve run into it nice, but in their defense, once I handed it back and said no thanks, I didn’t hear any grief.
The other area that bugs me a bit, is the margaritaville corner. Horrible hangout for the weekend on the corner, with O’Sheas now one big happy hour and margaritaville there, the sidewalk is almost unwalkable at night. (Especially if your with a woman) solo barging through doesn’t seem to be an issue. While I’ve never felt “unsafe” there, the combo of alchohol, likely underage teens, and crowd make it a bad combination that I’d rather avoid. I loved that the Flamingo went with a new restaurant all the years back and tore up the casino hallway there, but ever since that sidewalk is like one big carnival, I can’t believe there aren’t 3 or 4 accidents there a night from someone stumbling out into moving traffic. Maybe its because traffic is at such a standstill on Friday and Saturdays?
I have been to Vegas no less than once a year for the last 11 years and have been twice this year so far. I was staying at the Flamingo and decided to walk up to Planet HollyHood just to check it out. That short trip was quite an adventure. For the first time I witnessed women being groped in front of the Barbary Coast. It reminded me of Freaknik in Atlanta. There was a fight between a black female and black male on the pedestrian bridge between Bally’s and BC. There were “groups” of troublemakers loitering in front of the BC, Paris and the ‘Hood causing minor mayhem. I didn’t see anything happening in terms of what you experienced (to me anyway). My wife wants to take her nephew out there for his High School graduation present before he goes off to college. They won’t be going without me.
I think this is just more evidence suggesting the reputation that Downtown is somehow less safe than The Strip is hogwash.
I always feel WAY more safe in the FSE area than at any location on The Strip.
Of course, the casinos aren’t as “hip”, but maybe that’s what keeps the troublemakers away.
Al,
Why in the world would you take a high school kid to Vegas. I think that is the worst age for the kid to be in Vegas. They know what everything is and know that they can’t have any of it. At least with kids under 6 or 7 they have no clue.
This was probably a rare occurrence at least, I hope it was. The “life blood” of Vegas runs through the strip. The big players(Harrahs, MGM…etc) as well as the local gov’t realizes this and would be quick to squash any thing that gets between them and their ability to line there pockets.
In the several times that I’ve been to Vegas I’ve only had 1 “incident” while there. I was walking from terribles to the hard rock when some guy started pestering me for money. He started following me down the street and kept asking for money after following me for a while he finally realize that I wasn’t going to give him want he wanted. He screamed, that I was going to hell then started walking the other way.
Anyway Veagsrex, it looks like you have been indoctrinated. So welcume 2 da’hood.
that definitely must have been a full moon. I’ve never experienced situations like that in all my trips but there’s always a few bad apples.
Rex, I’m going to email you the official guide to being black so next time they call u a nigga, you’ll be prepared. The first thing you’ll find out is that we’re a loud people and sometimes we do it on purpose because it freaks white people out. My mom (who is white) does it to scare white people because it’s so damn easy. haha!
Andrew, you suck for your comments.
No Mandy,i’m honest and real and I do not need to be
hypocrit as you guys are in your country,or pretend to be.
You all think the same about black people(better be all dead),just let it go.
p.s. I love USA
Andrew, while I do agree that some people feel that way about us “dirty and stinky niggers”, you will find that there are alot of people that do not support that. I am sorry that your narrow point of view prevents you from recognizing the great things ALL minority groups bring to the table.
Jerry P,
That’s exactly what I’ve been saying, but does anyone listen to me? Nooooo. I say take him after he turns 21 so he can at least hang out in the casino even if he doesn’t want to gamble. Going to Vegas as a minor is like going to the Chicken Ranch as a Eunich.
Ya talking to me ??? I’m 34…uh..thanks for the hip hop guys,and thank you for pimping those Aston Martin’s rims,they ain’t that bad.