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 ...
I woke up today, and decided to grab some breakfast with a buddy of mine.
The streets were clear, and we were in a nice BMW convertible with the top down.
Driving such a machine a mere few blocks just seemed like a complete waste, and we somehow came up with the idea of heading out to Red Rock Station.
Neither one of us had been there for a couple of months, and it was about as far out of town as we could get without leaving Las Vegas, so why the hell not …
Traffic was extremely light the whole way, and it didn’t take more than 15 or 20 minutes to get there.
We took a seat in the restaurant called the “Grand Cafe”, and I ordered Huevos Rancheros.
I attempted to make the waitress uncomfortable a few times by introducing my buddy as my homosexual gay lover, requested side orders of coke and/or heroin, etc … but she was an older lady, and my attempts at humor largely fell flat as she just shot me quizzical “What the fuck are you talking about?” looks.
Eventually I ceased trying to entertain myself with this lady, because she either didn’t get it, or didn’t like me (or both).
She also got our orders mixed up and plopped a plate full of bacon and sausage down in front of my non-red-meat-eating friend … but it eventually got worked out.
Anyway, the food was really quite good … but breakfast would have been ever so slightly more entertaining if she could have made good with the cocaine.
I suppose that goes without saying though.
Anyway, after breakfast we headed out to see what was happening by the pool.
Even 15 miles off-strip, Vegas is still an utter sausage-fest, but I got my flag up to half-mast observing a few of the poolside waitresses.
One Asian waitress in particular had me dry-humping my zipper, and I remain impressed with the overall quality of the waitresses and their costumes.
Anyway, we were in the joint for a couple of hours, and it pretty much looks the same as it always has. I was there when the place opened, and not much has changed since opening day. It’s still a very nice place … especially for a “local’s casino”.
I still think it is a couple of notches above Green Valley Ranch, but much like the ongoing “Biggie vs. Tupac” debate, comparing GVR with RR will always be a bone of great contention among Vegas locals.
Can’t we just end the rivalry and stop the senseless shootings over this issue?
Anyway, on our way out, I noticed that on the marquee, Kanye “George Bush Does Not Care About Black People” West is scheduled to play at the casino later this month.
Red Rock strikes me as a really odd place for Kanye to play, but I guess the gig pays.
I’m not sure a casino is the best place to avoid gold diggers, but it ain’t like Kayne is a broke nigga, so it’s all good.
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
